The Very Real Virtual Life of a SCAD Student

One thing the current pandemic has made clear, within the context of modern careers, is that flexibility and internet savvy are major keys to success. 

—Art & Object magazine

In early July, SCAD announced our plan for Fall 2020, with courses delivered primarily virtually and with some students coming to Atlanta and Savannah to access SCAD physical resources integral to their disciplines. (You can see the full FAQ here.) While some first-year SCAD students look forward to being on campus this September, the reality is that most will not be physically in Savannah or Atlanta until 2021. 

Real talk: This past spring, online instruction for many high school students was less than ideal, even when teachers gave it their all. Some districts and schools reported fewer than half of students actually logged in—ever. I spoke to other parents who said their children's online Zoom classes were rather empty, with students sleeping or leaving the room altogether and cameras recording empty walls and ceilings. 

Students deserve more—and at SCAD, they get more. Far more.

Naturally, students long to hear a teacher's voice without the mediation of Zoom, to exchange ideas in a lively discussion with other people in the same room, to smell autumn woodsmoke as you walk home with a friend from an afternoon class. Whatever post-COVID life looks like, all of us want to be there, sooner rather than later. There's good news, though, for students beginning at SCAD this fall. The unforgettable intellectual, creative, and social engagement that defines #SCADlife is alive and well online and awaiting first-year Bees this September. Here's what that engagement could look like, no matter where you live or what you're studying. 

MONDAY

I think having class meetings with the professor at set times via Zoom has made a world of difference in bringing the online schooling to a new level. Having the classes recorded also makes it very easy to go back and rewatch demonstrations.

—SCAD student, animation

The week begins with drawing at 8 a.m., DRAW 100 Drawing I: Form and Space (Mondays and Wednesdays), which focuses on visual research. The first half-hour features a brief lecture on the history of linear perspective and its application to architecture, fashion, film, and fine art, followed by a demonstration by the professor, where an overhead camera allows you to follow hand movements. 

At 11 a.m., you're zooming 40,000 feet upward and 2,500 years rearward in CTXT 121 Visual Culture in Context: Caves to Cathedrals (Mondays and Wednesdays), exploring how culture shapes creative production. Your professor—who holds a Ph.D. in midcentury modern art and architecture and consulted on production design for Mad Men for a few years—has assigned a group project on Greek temples. Specifically, temples and their architectural descendants in our cities today, such as churches and courthouses. You decide to partner with a classmate who happens to live in your town, whom you met in a breakout group on day one. 

The rest of your afternoon is devoted to homework, including an impromptu Zoom chat with a SCAD librarian who's helping you find those sources on Greek architecture, leading to a discussion of Greek myth and comics. The librarian has found a book that might work (Greek Sanctuaries and Temple Architecture by Mary Emerson) and is shipping it to you today. When the book arrives a few days later, you'll find Classics and Comics by Kovacs and Marshall in the package, too, with a note. "Thought you'd like this one, as well!").

TUESDAY

The Guests and Gusto series has brought me so much joy while living at home! It's wonderful to still learn from industry professionals and engage in additional learning in ways we'd have access to on campus. 

—SCAD student, film

Devote your morning to self-care with a virtual Bee Well group session at 9:30 a.m., "Coffee with a Counselor," where you engage in casual conversation with other Bees about your lives, what you're working on, and how you're keeping organized, which is perfect, because at 11 a.m., you jump right into DSGN 100 Design 1: Elements and Organization (Tuesdays and Thursdays), taught by a designer whose career spans from Samsung to Subaru.

Over the next 150 minutes, you learn about mood boards, a key element in the design process. You've just been assigned the creation of a sharable digital mood board, which leads you—after a late lunch—to the SCAD Help Desk, for assistance downloading and launching Adobe Creative Cloud on your laptop. As soon as you've got it downloaded, you're on a Slack channel of SCAD students who live in your area, asking who knows how to use Adobe Illustrator. A SCAD graphic design junior pipes in with an offer to help, and now you have another new friend.

At 4 p.m., you catch a Guests & Gusto master class with Radford Sechrist, creator of DreamWorks' Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, who discusses creating memorable characters. At 6 p.m., you hit Instagram Live for a workout with actor, fitness influencer, and SCAD Bee Jake DuPree (B.F.A., performing arts, 2010), who influences your abs to be sore. But a good sore. 

WEDNESDAY

Speaking with industry professionals in class has given me a clearer vision of what my future career could look like. I've gotten so many questions answered and hearing about their path that they've made in their career makes me extremely excited to keep pushing.  

—SCAD student, accessory design

Class discussion and professor demos fill much of the day, 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Your DRAW 100 professor, a former colorist for Marvel, has got you carrying your sketchbook everywhere. Drawing (and the pandemic) has transformed you into a people-watcher. At the grocery store and at the park, you find yourself studying eyes, gestures, light, the facades of buildings. Where before you saw only color, now you see shades of meaning. 

A SCAD friend Slacks about a Bee Well group session he's been loving, which addresses social anxiety in virtual environments. After lunch, you decide to check it out, and what you learn is, most everybody feels this way, which makes you feel better. 

One of your drawing assignments is to create a series of thumbnails from still life, and so you spend the afternoon taking a long walk, ending up in front of an old church, where you draw thumbnails of the Doric columns in the stark shadows of dusk. This is something you can use in your CTXT 121 assignment, too. On your way home, you listen to a master class with activist and artist Le'Andra LeSeur (B.F.A., photography, 2014) on the role of art in social movements. How might your work change the world?

THURSDAY

I love watching the live demo sessions we have in class with screensharing. It is an invaluable tool to be able to follow along. Oddly, I felt more heard because they get to see a full screen of my work.

—SCAD student, advertising

Okay, so, one of your classmates in DSGN 100 apparently has more than 50K followers. What??? Before class, you log on to a SCADextra workshop with a professor from social strategy and management who shares a few tips on upping your Instagram game. Later, in DSGN 100, learn about the similarities among mood boards and storyboards and maquettes—how every designer and artist and performer generates and elaborates and improves on their ideas through continuous iteration. 

That afternoon, you have choices. Participate in the master class with SCAD alum Cesar Idrobo (M.A., accessory design, 2016; B.F.A., industrial design, 2012), now designing footwear with YEEZY, or the SCADamp workshop on effective virtual presentations? You choose the latter because your Greek architecture assignment, due in three weeks, culminates in a 10-minute group presentation by you and your partner. Eleven other slightly nervous students join the workshop (3-4:30 p.m.), and 90 minutes later, after laughing about your own awkwardness, you feel like you've known these people for years.

That afternoon, you and your project partner meet for the first time in real life (and in masks) outside at a coffee shop near the cathedral you drew the other day. This is the building you'll write about for CTXT 121, you both decide. That night, the SCAD pod in your city decides to get together and have a social-distanced watch party in someone's backyard. Half the group wants to watch "The Long Night" episode of GoT, the other half wants to watch The Office. Fierce debate ensues.

FRIDAY

Parents, if you haven’t talked to your friends with children at other schools, please do. SCAD is ahead of the curve in this pandemic. 

—Lucinda Fox, SCAD parent

For every SCAD Bee, Friday is a dedicated day for homework, studio time, and extra help sessions with professors. From 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., your DSGN 100 professor is holding a help session on Adobe Illustrator, and six students log on for the demo. Ask a thousand questions, and by lunch, you've got it. After a quick Bee Well yoga session, you spend the rest of the day becoming an Adobe guru and by late afternoon, you've created a mood board for your cat, which you post to Slack and Insta. A dozen new followers in one day. Not bad.

Celebrate with a bike ride while listening to a SCAD interview with design historian and Town & Country Editor-in-Chief Stellene Volandes while wondering what sort of interview you'll be giving one day. Who will you become? 

Let the question hang in the air for now. You're heading to a meetup with your new SCAD friends and dreaming about winter quarter already, eager to attend television premiers at SCAD aTVfest and new exhibitions at SCAD deFINE ART and excited to meet so many people you already know and love.

I think it’s lovely that even from afar, my peers and I still reach out to each other for help and inspiration.

—SCAD student, graphic design

At SCAD, our mission rings out a clarion call to prepare talented students for creative professions through engaged teaching and learning—before, during, and long after this public health crisis. As writer Anna Claire Mauney wrote recently for Art & Object magazine, artists and designers who know how to communicate and share ideas in the virtual world are thriving during this pandemic. Every week of the upcoming quarter promises new discoveries that advance students toward sustained, rewarding careers, with the versatility to engage clients and colleagues in any environment, physical or digital. Work from home is here to stay, and SCAD ensures tomorrow's creative pros are ready for it.

* * *

So, here it is again, in condensed form:

A Week in the Life of a Virtual SCAD Student

The following hypothetical schedule features a class schedule and course assignments common for first-year SCAD students, as well as actual events and learning resources offered to students through virtual learning at SCAD, with daily activations including:

• Guests & Gusto, master classes with top industry pros, including recent guests Outer Banks star Madelyn Cline and André Benjamin of Outkast;
•  SCADamp coaching on how to speak with confidence online and in person;
•  Bee Well group sessions to explore, share, listen;
• SCADfit workouts, classic barre, flow yoga, body weight boot camp, and;
•  SCADextra workshops led by professors on everything from pitching TV shows to embroidery and launching a new business.

In addition to academic courses, literally hundreds of virtual engagement opportunities await incoming SCAD Bees in Fall 2020, studying from locations around the world.

MONDAY

8-10:30 a.m.                        DRAW 100 Drawing I: Form and Space

11:00 a.m.-1:30 p.m.           CTXT 121 Visual Culture in Context: Caves to Cathedrals

3-4:30 p.m.                          Homework

4:30-5:30 p.m.                     Virtual chat with SCAD librarian to find research materials

TUESDAY

9:30-10:30 a.m.                    Bee Well's "Coffee with a Counselor" group session

11 a.m.-1:30 p.m.                 DSGN 100 Design I: Elements and Organization

3:15-3:30 p.m.                      SCAD Help Desk assistance with software download

4-5 p.m.                                Guests & Gusto master class with Radford Sechrist, creator of DreamWorks' Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

6-7 p.m.                                 Live workout with Jake DuPree (B.F.A., performing arts, 2010)

WEDNESDAY

8-10:30 a.m.                          DRAW 100 Drawing I: Form and Space

11 a.m.-1:30 p.m.                 CTXT 121 Visual Culture in Context: Caves to Cathedrals

3-4 p.m.                                 Bee Well's "Social Spectrum" group session

4:30-6 p.m.                            Homework and fresh air

6-7 p.m.                                 Guests & Gusto master class with activist and artist Le'Andra LeSeur (B.F.A., photography, 2014) on the role of art in social movements

THURSDAY

9:30-10:30 a.m.                    SCADextra workshop: "Mastering Your Social Media Presence"

11 a.m.-1:30 p.m.                 DSGN 100 Design I: Elements and Organization

2:30-3:30 p.m.                      SCADamp professional presentation workshop: "Establishing Your Presence" and Guests & Gusto master class with YEEZY footwear designer Cesar Idrobo (M.A., accessory design, 2016; B.F.A., industrial design, 2012)

4-6 p.m.                                 Homework

FRIDAY

10 a.m.-12 p.m.                    DSGN 100 extra help session with professor

2-3 p.m.                                Bee Well vinyasa yoga

4-5:30 p.m.                           Homework

6-7 p.m.                                 "On Creativity" interview with Town & Country Editor-in-Chief Stellene Volandes

WEEKEND

Homework and, if necessary, virtual visits with professors during office hours