This Friday, Feb. 11, SCAD will celebrate the powerful role of women in Georgia history with the 2022 induction ceremony for the Savannah Women of Vision investiture. SCAD is welcoming four new honorees this year—Linda J. Evans, Sarah Mills Hodge, Joyce Roché, and Gale Singer—into its elite cadre of Savannah trailblazers.

Savannah Women of Vision, established by SCAD President and Founder Paula Wallace, recognizes women of peerless valor, altruism, and intellect whose remarkable ideas, insightful leadership, and distinguished service form the fabric of the Savannah community.

The university will celebrate the 2022 honorees with a public event Friday, Feb. 11, at 3:30 p.m. in Arnold Hall Theater, 1810 Bull Street. The celebration will include original poems read by SCAD alumni, a screening of the SCAD-produced documentary Savannah Women of Vision: Etched in History, and a live performance by members of SCAD's elite vocal ensemble the HoneyBees featuring American Idol winner Candice Glover (B.F.A., dramatic writing).

As a permanent tribute, gold relief portraits of Evans, Hodge, Roché, and Singer—carved by SCAD alum Michael Porten (M.F.A., painting, 2012; B.F.A., illustration, 2004)—will ornament the Savannah Women of Vision gallery in Arnold Hall, home to SCAD's School of Liberal Arts.

"When SCAD students, community members, guests, and school children visit the Savannah Women of Vision gallery in Arnold Hall, I want them to look up at those radiant portraits and feel inspired, loved, and seen," President Wallace said. "I want our students and community to know that smart, fearless women have always made history in Savannah."

President Wallace created the Savannah Women of Vision investiture to elevate recognition of strong female leadership and its salutary influence on society. She chose honorary portraits to adorn the walls of Arnold Hall, where a 1930s New Deal-era mural depicting titans of Savannah history is notable in its omission of women. With the addition of this year's honorees, President Wallace continues a vital tradition of civic recognition, commending and commemorating the profound influence of women whose ingenuity and dedication have indelibly shaped Savannah.

In addition to Friday's celebration, Arnold Hall will be open to the public Saturday, Feb. 12, from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. for docent-led tours of the Savannah Women of Vision portrait gallery. Throughout the year, the university offers tours to K–12 students, educators, and others, and a free curriculum guide provides additional historic context. 

This year's honorees join 17 other women, inducted in 2020, 2018, and 2016: Emma Morel Adler, Mother Mathilda Beasley, Mary Musgrove Matthews Bosomworth, Miriam Center, Edna Jackson, Alice Andrews Jepson, Clermont Huger Lee, Nancy N. Lewis, Juliette Gordon Low, Abigail Minis, Mary Lane Morrison, Flannery O'Connor, Suzanne Shank, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, Fredericka Washington, Sema Wilkes, and Frances Wong.

Learn more about Savannah Women of Vision.

SCAD is proud to announce the formation of new multidisciplinary studio course Design for Good, an initiative of the university's community service design studio, SCAD SERVE. The ten-week courses engage students' creative brilliance to generate elevated, community-centered solutions aimed at making a difference in the university's hometown communities of Atlanta and Savannah.

For the inaugural Design for Good course, SCAD SERVE aligned with Sweet Auburn Works, an Atlanta non-profit organization dedicated to preserving, revitalizing, and promoting the commercial and cultural legacy of the Sweet Auburn Historic District. Sweet Auburn Works approached SCAD to collaborate on a multi-faceted implementation project reimagining and elevating the neighborhood's commercial corridor, while paying homage to its rich cultural legacy. Drawing from the university's global reputation for preservation, adaptive reuse, and historic revitalization, SCAD conceived the Design for Good course within SCAD SERVE, inspired by the university's forty-plus-years of uplifting community neighbors in need.

Launched in Fall 2021, SCAD SERVE Design for Good brought together students from the university's top-ranked degree programs in Atlanta and Savannah to research and formulate design solutions for two of Sweet Auburn Works' keystone initiatives: the newly launched SPARK Innovation Lab, and famed neighborhood institution Sweet Auburn Bread Company and its owner and pastry chef, Sonya Jones.

For the Sweet Auburn Bread Company project, SCAD students conducted an entrepreneur and business assessment, then formulated a strategy providing Chef Sonya with recommendations for storefront buildout, interior bakery redesign, marketing and branding, and visual communication strategy to help Sweet Auburn Bread Company reach new heights. The inventive and inspiring business design solutions developed by SCAD students will be formally implemented by Sweet Auburn Bread Company in the coming months.

SCAD SERVE's Design for Good curriculum, in partnership with Sweet Auburn Works, will continue throughout the 2022 academic year as SCAD students produce innovative design solutions to support the continued development of the SPARK Innovation Lab, a hybrid community/retail/office space intent on supporting local entrepreneurs housed in the renowned historic Odd Fellows Building at 220 Auburn Avenue.

"SCAD SERVE concentrates SCAD's considerable design-for-good actions with purpose and intention," said Dean Ballas, Senior Executive Director of Design for Good. "Students engaged in our Design for Good courses exemplify verve, design expertise, and academic prowess via incredibly meaningful solutions that improve quality of life. The impactful outcomes of the Sweet Auburn Works' SPARK Innovation Lab and Sweet Auburn Bread Company Design for Good courses are two notable examples of SCAD's community-focused design-for-good philosophy in action."

Designated a National Historic Neighborhood, Auburn Avenue in the heart of downtown Atlanta was home to Atlanta's highly prosperous Black community and businesses, financial institutions, churches and entertainment venues from the 1920s to 1950s. A cornerstone of the Black community, Atlanta civil rights leader John Wesley Dobbs—known as the unofficial mayor of Auburn Avenue—often commented that the street was paved in gold and affectionately dubbed the district "Sweet Auburn," a moniker that lives on today.

In addition to the neighborhood's home as the city's Black entrepreneurial and entertainment epicenter, Sweet Auburn is cemented as an iconic place in American history as the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, who was raised in the community along with many other civic, religious, and business leaders who have shaped Atlanta and the New South. Over time, the neighborhood fell victim to depopulation and disinvestment, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 to help protect its legacy. Despite the designation, Sweet Auburn has recently been identified as one of America's Most Endangered Historic Sites.

"The resurgence of Sweet Auburn will be guided by creativity, talent, empathy and an insistence on excellence," said LeJuano Varnell, Executive Director of Sweet Auburn Works. "Those are also guiding principles that the young professionals from SCAD's Design for Good courses have brought to the community."

Bank of America is an integral partner in the revitalization efforts of the Sweet Auburn neighborhood, by providing grants of up to $25,000 per business to local entrepreneurs through the Sweet Auburn Works Accelerator Fund. This grant is part of the company's five-year, $1.25 billion commitment to advance economic opportunity by supporting minority entrepreneurs.

Through SCAD SERVE's Design for Good course, SCAD students and faculty will continue to collaborate with Sweet Auburn Works and the neighborhood's vital flagship entrepreneurial ventures. The ongoing design projects continue to pay tribute to the strength of Atlanta's Black history, create conditions for a more equitable future, and pave the way for Sweet Auburn's rebirth and next generation.

For more information visit SCAD SERVE.

"Part of education is the ability to inculcate a sense of social and political agency," says Dr. Gayatri Devi, professor of liberal arts. "This means students have total freedom to articulate their sense of who they are, and the critical attention they pay to issues outside of their own lives is amazing."

Dr. Devi joined the SCAD faculty in Fall 2021, intent on recontextualizing her expertise and beliefs after nearly three decades in higher education. "I've never taught at a university like SCAD," she says. "The fact that SCAD caters exclusively to the arts and humanities and design and performing arts is incredibly affirming to me."

SCAD Chair of Liberal Arts, Dr. Rebecca Cantor shares this enthusiasm: "Dr. Devi is a pro in every sense of the word. A seasoned writer, scholar, and educator, she brings all her experience into the classroom every day. I am thrilled to have Dr. Devi join the department, and I'm excited for every student who will get to take a class with her at SCAD."

This quarter, Dr. Devi is teaching From Ink to Ideas (ENGL 123). "One of the assignments is an ecopoetics assignment, where students identify an environmental issue that they care about. The first part of the assignment is a creative response to the environmental issue they've chosen. The second part is like an artist statement, explaining their thinking and why they picked this issue. I receive incredible essays from students with paintings and drawings and comics as part of the work."

Dr. Devi also teaches Foundations of Story (ENGL 142) "where we look at narrative theory, and how to construct stories in different traditions in different genres" and, at Dr. Cantor's behest, Cinema in Context: From the Fairground to the French New Wave (CINE 705).

"In my graduate seminar, I have students from the U.S., China, Taiwan, Turkmenistan, Nepal, India, South Korea, and different parts of South America and Central America," Dr. Devi explains. "They all have frames of reference to film traditions from their own country."

A proponent of what she terms "transnational curiosity," Dr. Devi was born in Travancore, in the state of Kerala, India, and came to the U.S. in 1990 to earn her Ph.D. at University of North Dakota. (She retains ties to the institution as contributing editor to North Dakota Quarterly.) Devi speaks Malayam ("my mother tongue"), Hindi, and English, and studied Sanskrit to facilitate reading the classical poet and playwright Kalidasa. She co-edited the book Humor in Middle Eastern Cinema (Wayne State University Press, 2014), available at the Jen Library, and her next book, on indigenous cinema worldwide, is forthcoming later this year.

It is something of a sweet surprise then, when Dr. Devi reveals that she has "always wanted to be a torch singer" and that being a "big fan of Johnny Mercer" contributed to her interest in living in Savannah. Perhaps this fun fact shouldn't be unexpected, and actually reflects a pedagogically pertinent worldview.

As Dr. Devi says: "Deep cultural contact, deep love and respect for other people and their cultural products—to me, those things matter."

Learn more about the diverse degree programs at SCAD.

SCAD Atlanta student Linxin "April" Lu (M.F.A., advertising) has been awarded first place ($5,000 prize) at the Student Shark Tank competition at the Global Wellness Summit, for her idea for Sveeet, a portable saliva test for diabetic youth. Shaped like a fortune cookie, Sveeet is a concept device intended to use biocensors able to detect glucose levels. Lu accepted the award after presenting at the summit, held in Boston in December 2021.

In addition to April, the Sveeet project group included SCAD Atlanta students Zhentao "Evens" Xia (M.F.A., advertising), Yuxin "Elle" Yi (M.F.A., advertising), and Yuting "Tibo" Zhu (M.F.A., advertising). The students were guided by advertising professor Gauri Misra-Deshpande during graduate coursework culminating in the project.

"These SCAD Atlanta advertising students are prepared to create product ideas within the multi-billion-dollar wellness innovation industry," Misra-Deshpande said. "They are taught to understand market, audience, brand needs, and how to create a story that resonates with all stakeholders."

The students developed Sveeet in a virtual setting in 2021; they were grouped by professor Misra-Deshpande out of time-zone necessity, conducting their work live while in China. (All four students have since returned to in-person, on-ground learning in Atlanta.) 

"The diligent Sveeet team worked virtually from different cities in China," confirms Misra-Deshpande. "They and their class focused on audience definition, empathy mapping, product design exercises, and storytelling. Students with language and cultural diversity were guided through wellness market landscape and innovation paradigms to conceptualize solutions."

April prepared with SCADamp associate director and communication coach Greg Skura prior to her presentation on stage in Boston. The Shark Tank of Wellness awards were judged by Frank Pitsikalis, founder and CEO, ResortSuite; Amir Alroy, co-founder, Welltech Ventures; Karen Ballou, founder & CEO, Immunocologie Skincare, and Mia Kyricos, Chief Love Officer, Kyricos & Associates.

April Lu: "Because the Global Wellness Summit allowed one person on stage, I presented. As a team, we were all responsible for different roles: I was responsible for the video, Evens took charge of the digital prototype and 3D modeling, Tibo was in charge of branding, and Elle was in charge of research. Once we had our key selling point, we wrote a creative brief and went from there."

For the Sveeet team, connecting over Zoom was a daily activity. Unsurprisingly, when it came time to discuss her Global Wellness win with SCADworks, April coordinated her three other Sveeet team members for a video chat where they offered insights into their process, and reactions to the award.

Elle Yi: "With the focus on global wellness, we started with the realization that some of our own family members are diabetic, so we decided to focus on the blood sugar problem. The first part of our research was into the many products that already exist, and how it's gone beyond having to prick your finger into testing with saliva. So, we focused on designing a device that would do that."

Evens Xia: "As a group, we did a lot of prototyping to refine the idea. We changed the shape many times, until we settled on the curvy fortune cookie shape that we knew will appeal to children."

Tibo Zhu: "When we thought about branding, we knew the product would be the same worldwide, but it would have to be branded and advertised differently in different countries and cultures."

Linxin Lu: "Sveeet has the tagline 'The best is yet to come' and I was having difficulty pronouncing it.  I worked with our SCADamp coach Greg on that until I was comfortable saying it in competition. I was still nervous, but I realized I need to be ambitious when I speak English."

Evens: "She did a great job presenting the work, showing our idea, and expressing the emotions of the product. Sveeet is a concept that has real potential to be developed into a product in the global marketplace."

Congratulations to SCAD Atlanta student Rui Wang (M.F.A., advertising) who won second place ($2,500) at this year's Global Wellness Summit for his idea, a circadian-sensitive sleep skylight called Sora.

Enjoy an intimate look at two new SCAD Museum of Fashion + Film exhibitions at a curator-led, members-only tour, this Thursday, January 13, 2022, 6 p.m. in Atlanta.

SCAD FASH director of fashion exhibitions Rafael Gomes will give a behind-the-scenes tour of some of fashion history's greatest runway moments as he guides museumgoers through an exhibition of the photography of Robert Fairer. Robert Fairer Backstage Pass: Dior, Galliano, Jacobs, and McQueen features intimate portraits of supermodels, designers, and creatives capture the zeitgeist of fashion at the turn of the 21st-century.

The exclusive SCAD FASH also invites guests to witness the future of fashion with Robert Wun: Between Reality and Fantasy. The exhibition offers the opportunity to discover the bold work of emerging fashion designer Wun, a rising star in the fashion world who has dressed fashion mavens Billy Porter, Solange Knowles, Lady Gaga, Céline Dion, Issa Rae, and Tessa Thompson.

This tour is open to SCAD FASH members only. Space is limited, with admission through a first-come, first-serviced basis. Members may RSVP to [email protected].

About the exhibitions:

Robert Fairer Backstage Pass: Dior, Galliano, Jacobs, and McQueen
Before instantaneous access to fashion shows via livestreaming and social media, London-based artist Robert Fairer was backstage photographing the designers, models, hair and makeup artists, and stylists working in crowded spaces at a frenetic pace, moments before the final looks were presented. His intuitive ability to frame the beauty, drama, and energy backstage resulted in stunning images—found in the pages of British Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and American Vogue—that celebrate the creative talents who contribute to the magic of the runway. A captivating record of a bygone era, the exhibition features behind-the-scenes photographs from the house of Dior, John Galliano, Marc Jacobs, and Alexander McQueen.

Robert Wun: Between Reality and Fantasy
Robert Wun favors a narrative approach to fashion design, embracing a global perspective that honors his heritage yet refuses preconceived notions of Asian identity. He often looks to nature to inform his work, relating the asymmetry of organic forms to the complexity of being human. Energized by the potential of design to function as a universal language, Wun translates bold conceptual ideas into technically rigorous yet accessible garments that empower the wearer.

Rafael Gomes is the director of SCAD fashion exhibitions for the Savannah College of Art and Design. Before joining SCAD, Gomes was an archivist and exhibition coordinator at Vivienne Westwood, where he oversaw the coordination and styling of global fashion shoots, videos and fashion shows. Gomes also designed, planned and executed large-scale exhibitions at numerous world-renowned museums and galleries, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Palace of Versailles, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the SCAD Museum of Art.

Learn more about SCAD FASH, and become a member today.

Take the curator-led, members-only tour, Thurs., Jan, 13, 2022, 6 p.m.

For Danielle Elsener (B.F.A., fashion, 2013), a time of global tumult has been anything but idle. Since receiving the Evian Activate Movement Program grant in July 2020, the visionary designer was a featured exhibitor with the ZWDO collective at COP26 UN Climate Change Conference; collaborated with popular Portland, Oregon legacy brand Settlemier's Jackets; set up her zero-waste manufacturing facility DECODE MFG in Brooklyn Navy Yard; and headlined the ongoing exhibition "Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics" at the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt museum. 

She also found time to get hitched to her sweetheart and business partner, Clay. Way to go, Danielle!

Danielle Elsener:

In fall 2020, a SCAD graduate, Julia Blandford (B.F.A., fashion marketing and management, 2020), asked if she could interview me for her podcast Seeking Sustainability. Stephen Campbell from Settlemier's Jackets heard it and got in touch. Settlemier's are a third-generation-owned company who were still working off of cardboard patterns. I digitized their patterns on a software called CLO3D, then we began the process of designing a zero-waste varsity jacket, which meant figuring out how to retain components like wool trim and snap fronts. We've been able to design a jacket with all the key details. It's led to significant interest and sizable orders.

Collaborating with Settlemier's was wonderful, and when I decided to move to New York, I wanted to keep working with them. Since we opened our DECODE manufacturing facility, we've been able to take some overflow work from them to fill orders for zero-waste varsity jackets. It was really the first backing we needed to make the decision that yes, opening our own facility is feasible.

Zero-waste design is a methodology that takes existing objects and reworks them in a manner that uses 100% of the material, without sacrificing design. In the world of manufacturing, it's hard to get people to change how they do things. Yet, with the current challenges in the global supply chain, right now there are a huge number of American companies looking for domestic manufacturers. I realized that to create this world that I want of zero-waste design, I needed to open a facility and do manufacturing myself.

At DECODE, we've been hiring skilled laborers—specifically production sewers who know how to use industrial sewing machines and understand techniques for efficiency. I've found great people. We are building up our zero-waste basics line: t-shirts, hoodies, sweatpants. There are tons of companies out there looking for a t-shirt that's good to print on, but there isn't a zero-waste one that you can buy commercially. Once we have that solid foundation, I'll flex my design muscles and start making collections and capsules and collaborations with artists—all that fun stuff.

With Zero Waste Design Online (ZWDO), we are a collective of four women from around the world who all practice zero-waste design. For COP26, we worked with Sustainable Fashion Scotland to create a group exhibit called Generation of Waste that represented all the stages that take place in the typical fashion lifecycle. We were the only fashion-related exhibition in the delegate zone at COP26, which brings legitimacy in the minds of policy makers, who see that what we're presenting is actionable. This can bring about significant change.

DECODE is a sustainable business that makes sustainable products. We also need to be a self-sustaining business where we have enough orders coming in. There's so much need in manufacturing right now that I'm getting phone calls from people, like, "We need 200 skirts by next week!" I have to remember I opened DECODE MFG for a reason. I want to stick to that purpose, or else what's the point of becoming just another manufacturing facility? As a business owner, it's about keeping everyone here involved in the purpose of what we're doing. It's a really exciting time.

Visit Danielle and DECODE.

Learn more about this pattern master in our previous post from 2020.

SCAD has launched the new SCAD School of Business Innovation, which strategically incorporates a diverse array of top-ranked academic programs focused on preparing creative professionals to lead transformative change across key industries.

"For more than 40 years, SCAD has reinvented itself in service of our mission to prepare students for creative professions, always focused on the future," said SCAD President and Founder Paula Wallace. "We changed the game for R&D with SCADpro, our innovation studio where students work directly with the world's most valuable brands—from Amazon and Google to Delta, Deloitte, HP, and Capital One. SCAD's buoyant partnerships with the professions are why SCAD grads have enjoyed a 99 percent employment rate for the last four years straight. Now, to ensure the continued elite career preparation of tomorrow's leaders in every sector of the global economy, SCAD invents again. I'm so pleased to announce the formation of the SCAD School of Business Innovation."

Bolstering SCAD's international reputation as the preeminent source of knowledge in the disciplines it teaches, the School of Business Innovation offers 15 graduate and undergraduate degrees in advertising and branding, business of beauty and fragrance, creative business leadership, design management, luxury and brand management, service design, and social strategy and management.

The SCAD School of Business Innovation prepares the next generation of creative leaders to navigate the rapidly changing business landscape through in-depth industry knowledge, design thinking, research, and collaboration. With curriculum focused on the fundamentals of business design and economics, quantitative insights, global supply chain management, lifecycle marketing, brand acceleration, social analytics and more, the school's premier degree programs empower students to become forward-thinking subject matter experts who will deliver transformative innovation to businesses.

SCAD School of Business Innovation leaders Victor Ermoli (standing, left) and Meloney Moore (standing, right) are flanked by (seated, left to right) faculty leads Chris Peeler, Alessandro Cannata, Oscar Betancur, and John Denham.

The School of Business Innovation is led by Dean Victor Ermoli. Also overseeing the School of Design, Dean Ermoli has been with SCAD for more than two decades and has led the curriculum design of several programs in both schools. Ermoli has been named one of the 25 "Most Admired Educators in America" by DesignIntelligence, holds undergraduate and graduate industrial design degrees, and leads through the lens of design and entrepreneurship. In addition to patents in the U.S. and Canada, and more than 30 years of design experience, Dean Ermoli has led studio classes where his students designed products for Coca-Cola, Fossil, Pentair, Dell Computers, and many more prestigious companies.

The School of Business Innovation is also led by Associate Dean Meloney Moore, who held executive and management leadership roles in companies including Estée Lauder, Liz Claiborne, and Toys "R" Us. Moore, who also leads the SCAD business of beauty and fragrance program, holds undergraduate and graduate business administration degrees and brings brand-oriented, global business perspective to the school leadership.

Learn more here.

Who better to do this work? Sauda Mitchell (B.A., visual communication, 2013) is an archivist, artist, and educator—indivisible facets of a unified identity, all on display in her solo exhibition Re-Cor-Dare, at the Jepson Center in Savannah.

"Having attended SCAD, having worked at the Georgia Historical Society, having archived and processed the W.W. Law Collection—all those experiences have shaped my view of history," Mitchell says. "It's my responsibility to share what I have had the privilege to engage with."

Re-Cor-Dare—impeccably installed in a light-filled upper wing of the Telfair's flagship museum—comprises a series of works in an array of tactile media: prints, paintings, artist books, textiles. The exhibition's title is an etymological extension of the act of recording, incorporating the Latin roots "cor" (heart) and "dare" (to give).

The formal evolution of Re-Cor-Dare dates to 2017 and Mitchell's SCAD Alumni Atelier residency when, she explains, "I met board members from Friends of the African American Arts, which led to crossing paths with Erin [Dunn, Telfair associate curator], who scheduled a visit to my studio. I showed her my sketches for Voyage, and she asked if I'd be the next #art912 artist"—the Telfair initiative dedicated to exhibiting artists living and working in Savannah.

Displayed in the gallery's hull-like big room, Voyage Windsails No. 1-5 are hand-painted acrylic, cotton fabric, and hand-dyed indigo textile pieces depicting a journey in the Atlantic slave trade. The sails— mounted in windows, not on walls—render the gallery pelagic. Iconography reappears. "The star is significant because it references the journey enslaved people made," Mitchell says. Speakers in a half-baffled corner swell with Robert Glasper's 2004 rendition of Herbie Hancock's 1965 composition Maiden Voyage. The immersive presentation suits the work.

Sauda Mitchell (American, b. 1981); Voyage No. 3, 2020; linoleum on paper; courtesy of the artist.

"Inspiration came from a poem I wrote as a SCAD student, titled Voyage, about the Middle Passage," Mitchell explains. "The poem had been tucked away for years. Then, when I heard Glasper's Maiden Voyage, it was as if I was transported into a ship in the Middle Passage, I could hear moans, bees buzzing, water—all elements that were very much part of my poem. I revisited my sketchbook and reread that poem, and it was timed perfectly to the music. From that experience I decide to create a series called Voyage."

On an adjacent wall, sense memories manifest in a lively collaboration between the artist and her father, wood carver Alfonzo Mitchell.

"As a child, I'd go downtown and smell the tobacco and see it going out of the silos," says Sauda, a Winston-Salem, NC native. Finding Grandma Judie comprise two pieces whose flue-cured whole tobacco leaves hang from walking sticks carved by the elder Mitchell. Viewers peer through the long leaves to see portraits of ancestors.

"I'd conducted genealogy for other patrons at the Georgia Historical Society, but never provided myself that service," Mitchell says. "When I started digging, I discovered that my grandmother's maiden name was Hairston. That's how I made the connection to the Hairston family, and found the book by Henry Wiencek." As documented in The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White (St. Martin's Press, 1999), the Hairstons owned several plantations and thousands of people—including Mitchell's great-great grandmother. "This is the first time that I am incorporating my own family history and how it unveiled itself into my work."

Re-Cor-Dare exemplifies Mitchell's mastery at using archival research to facilitate creation in the resonant present, an ability that makes her invaluable as the much-beloved archives and special collections librarian at SCAD. "It's an energetic collaboration with SCAD faculty, always," Mitchell says, of connecting students to proper collection items, and supporting their ideal learning outcomes. "In order to curate and bring together a collection of resources for students to engage with, you have to understand what they're learning, and what is going to propel them and inspire them." And who better to do that work?

Portrait of Sauda Mitchell by Labeeb Abdullah (B.F.A., motion media, 2004).

Re-Cor-Dare is on view at the Jepson Center in Savannah through Feb. 27, 2022.

The student experience at SCAD is as diverse as the student body itself. Offering more than 100 graduate and undergraduate degree programs to the nearly 16,000 currently enrolled students, SCAD offers personal coaching, a professional presentation studio, and peerless facilities to empower students to create the future of art and design. Here are ten memorable posts from 2021 that focused on student work.

Stina Wen: like a fist: Working in alternative materials including concrete, this jewelry graduate student was featured to great success at Trunk Show 2021, part of SCAD Fashion Week.

Nathaniel Adair's balancing act: A commitment to refinement is the key to this sculptor's artistic process. SCAD Studio, the industrial design and sculpture facility in Midtown Atlanta, is his mecca.

Makumbi Muleba's power of connection: A branded entertainment graduate student at SCAD Atlanta, Muleba returned to his native Zambia to create a program teaching digital literacy to young women.

Emily Castro: in motion: This soccer standout and motion media designer has found a way to combine her passions in pursuit of her ideal creative career.

‘When Dada Meets…' Changran Du: This graphic design graduate student's innovative exhibition catalog won the International Design Awards' Gold Award, and the admiration of her thesis chair.

Zikun "Tim" Teng: filmmaker in progress: What does it means to be a filmmaker? An industrious graduate student from Tianjin, China is intent on expanding the possibilities.

The essential freshness of Archana Menon: Panel appearances at WantedDesign Manhattan and Design Miami rounded off the year for this furniture design graduate student. Bigger benchmarks are yet to come.

Usman Ibrahim's busy work: Anyone strolling through Savannah's Forsyth Park this year would have seen the inspired, enigmatic installation by this radical typographer. But what did it mean?

Ivana stays on brand: A desire to understand human motivation drives this branded entertainment student to develop new approaches to connecting—and to help her family's restaurant group grow.

Zachra Pradipta defines UX design: From a SCADpro project to an internship with Amazon, this UX designer was interviewed in May, right as she was about to graduate and embark on her creative career.

Thank you for following SCADworks this year. See you in 2022!

Speaking with alumni about their professional accomplishments illuminates the value and diversity of the SCAD experience. With over 40,000 degree-holding Bees worldwide, career success is woven into every fiber of the university. Here are ten memorable posts from 2021 that focused on work by our stellar alumni.

SCADpro Fund backs Angela Benton's Streamlytics: After her previous startups garnered praise from CNN, this design superstar's newest venture is changing the monetization of personal data.

Hanna Allen: the perfect twist: This Atlanta-based sculptor's work is strong enough to support climbing and swinging. Her choice of material is surprising.

Anna Haldewang brings almonds joy: Since this post back in April, this agripreneur's latest innovation has been named a Top-10 New Product Winner at the World AG Expo 2022.

AnimationFest presents ‘The Ocean Duck': This short film by animation alumni Huda Razak and My Anh Ngo lit up this year's signature festival with its unique take on the illuminated manuscript.

Joel Ax named one of 100 Greatest Men's Swimmers and Divers: The College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of American named this furniture design alumnus to a list that includes iconic Olympians Caleb Dressel and Mark Spitz.

Maren Krings' vision: As our planet experiences a cataclysmic climate crisis, this widely traveled photographer promotes an actionable solution.

Sierra Lawson tells her story: Following an internship with Blumhouse Productions, this dramatic writer is parlaying her family-focused scripts into an inspiring phenomenon.

Anthony TungNing Huang: dancing in ink: An exquisite poster design for The Royal Ballet was the result of this accomplished illustrator's investigation of a new technique.

Johnathan Hayden flies high: New York Fashion Week 2021 attendees sang the praises of this designer's stunning debut collection, a conceptual collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Reid.

Catalog alchemist Alaina Colleen: The 2021-2022 SCAD course catalog creator transformed classic inspirations into a stunning set of SCAD-style symbols. Fit for an art car too!

Thank you for following SCADworks this year. See you in 2022!