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For the Cleveland Institute of Art and many of its students, faculty, and graduates, 2014 was a year of recognition and milestones. As the calendar year closed, construction crews were completing work on the new, 80,000-square-foot George Gund Building; the new Uptown Residence Hall was completed in time to welcome the entering freshmen class in August; and CIA was again named one of the best colleges in the Midwest by The Princeton Review.

A dramatic time-lapse video shows CIA's new building springing to life, but the process actually took more than a year, from autumn 2013 until mid-winter 2014-2015. Early in 2015, non-academic departments will begin moving from CIA’s East Boulevard George Gund Building to the gleaming new, Euclid Avenue George Gund Building. The library and remaining academic departments on East Boulevard will move to the new complex during summer so that, by the start of the 2015-2016 academic year, the entire college will be unified on the Euclid Avenue site and all CIA students will – for the first time in more than a quarter of a century – learn, create, and inspire one another on a single campus.

CIA’s new Uptown Residence Hall was completed in time to welcome the entering freshmen class in August. This gleaming new facility was built by the visionary developer MRN Ltd. and designed by renowned architect Stanley Saitowitz. The hall accommodates 130 students in apartment-style suites with kitchenettes, semi-private bedrooms and bathrooms, and shared workspaces outfitted with drafting tables. Students enjoy lounges on every floor, decks with sweeping views of the city, even exercise equipment and laptop docking stations overlooking the new MOCA Cleveland.

CIA was one of only two art and design colleges named one of the best colleges in the Midwest by The Princeton Review. CIA’s profile on the Princeton Review site notes that “Academically, liberal arts are emphasized.” The profile also cites the personal studio space that each student receives, once in a major; the school’s flexibility in allowing students to explore disciplines outside their major; and the fact that faculty members are “actual working professionals.”

Other milestones and headlines in 2014 included:

• CIA announced it will offer a full-tuition, four-year scholarship to one Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) student enrolling at the college of art and design in the fall of 2015. The scholarship is open to any current senior at a CMSD high school who submits to CIA a complete application for admission, along with a complete portfolio or artwork, by the March 1, 2015 deadline, and is accepted for admission to CIA.

• Stephen Vetter, a renowned international development specialist, spent a week at CIA as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow in October presenting lectures, participating in a civic dialog, appearing on public radio, and answering questions in a nationally broadcast free speech forum. The Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows program is administered by the Council of Independent Colleges in Washington, D.C.

• Video artist Chi-Yu Liao was in residence for the fall 2014 semester as one of the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion artists. Coming from Taiwan, Liao immersed herself in American culture and included CIA students in her video work. “I really enjoyed the time and experience to work with people here,” she said in a panel discussion involving her fellow Creative Fusion artists in November.

• CIA bestowed its highest honors on accomplished ceramicist and Professor Judith Salomon and long-serving board leader Gary R. Johnson in October. Salomon received the Award for Artistic Achievement and Johnson received the Award for Service. Together, the awards recognize those who have made significant contributions to the arts through their own artistic pursuits or through their exceptional service and philanthropy.

• CIA alumnus, professor, and Chair of the Illustration Department Dominic Scibilia ’72 was honored with CIA’s Viktor Schreckengost Teaching Award in May. Named for the late artist, industrial designer, and 1929 graduate, the award is presented annually to current or former faculty members in recognition of teaching excellence at CIA over a period of at least 10 years.

• Internationally collected glass artist and CIA graduate Marc Petrovic ’91 was appointed assistant professor and chair of the Glass Department. Petrovic began teaching in fall, 2014 after the retirement of long-time department chair Brent Kee Young.

• CIA appointed award-winning designer Haishan Deng to lead its renowned transportation design program. Deng is the recipient of 12 design awards, including one from the German Association of the Automotive Industry, and a Michelin Challenge Design Award.

• After a national search, Erica Levin was appointed Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts, teaching film theory and history. She recently completed a doctorate in film and media studies at the University of California-Berkeley.

• Graphic Design major Nolan Beck ’15 designed a new seal for Cuyahoga County. Unveiled in June, the seal features line drawings representing the county’s strength in healthcare; the beauty of its forests, parks, rivers and Lake Erie; and the engineering, design, and unity signified by the region’s iconic bridges. A perimeter suggesting the cogs of a wheel symbolizes industry. Beck’s involvement began in fall 2013 with an assignment in Assistant Professor Larry O’Neal’s Advanced Studio course, after county officials reached out to CIA.

• Glass major Amanda Wilcox ’15 won a 2014 Niche Student Award in sculptural glass from Niche magazine. Nearly 600 entries were submitted to the competition by students enrolled in undergraduate, graduate and certificate arts programs in the U.S. and Canada. She is now a finalist for a 2015 award from the magazine.

• Current students and graduates of CIA’s Biomedical Art major collaborated with Case Western Reserve University computer programmers to create an embryology study app that includes interactive three-dimensional models and animation sequences. Medical students’ test scores have improved since they started using the app, according to Dr. John Fredieu at the CWRU School of Medicine.

• Nine CIA students won cash awards totaling $11,000 in an art contest sponsored by Cleveland-based Dealer Tire. Submissions were judged based on creativity, originality, technical execution, and how the artwork related to Dealer Tire’s core values.

• Kalamazoo, Michigan-based medical device firm Stryker sponsored a project in Spring 2014 semester through which Industrial Design students – after observing knee, hip, and ankle surgeries – developed new concepts for improving the ergonomics of orthopedic power tools. Stryker was so happy with the outcome that the company is currently sponsoring additional projects this academic year.

• Printmaking students participated in The Fluxus Arts Advocacy Project to create packets of printed and interactive materials that were sent to some 500 elected officials and other community leaders. The packets featured statistics about the benefits of arts to the nation’s economy and culture printed onto coasters, bumper stickers, business cards, and other unconventional materials.

• Two of the top three prizes in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Made Surreal – A Fashion Design Competition were taken by CIA students. Jewelry + Metals major Victoria Mearini ’17 won second place while Sculpture + Expanded Media major Leah Yochman ’16 and Photography + Video major Eric Payne ’17 won third place for their creation. Angela Oster ’05 was also finalist. The museum received submissions from more than 50 designers from Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York.

• Game Design majors Helen Su and Natilya Ratcliff spent the summer of 2014 interning at NASA Glenn Research Center where they worked on educational games in the Graphics & Visualization Lab, which is in the office of the Chief Information Officer.

• Animations created CIA students complementing original scores composed by Cleveland Institute of Music students were projected on the dome of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Nathan and Fannye Shafran Planetarium in a program called “360 Degrees of Sight + Sound: The Planetarium Project,” which was screened for the public in February and April. Participating students came from CIA’s Animation, Game Design, Illustration, Video, Industrial Design, Ceramics, and Painting departments.

• CIA students delighted a packed house when they presented NEO: A Runway Show in April. They modeled wearables – in the form of accessories, design, and conceptual art – before nearly 200 audience members in CIA’s Reinberger Galleries.

• In November and December, CIA’s Reinberber Galleries hosted Community Works: Artist as Social Agent, an exhibition curated by Gallery Director Bruce Checefsky. The show explored multi-layered narratives of identity, exile, and displacement through works of photography, video, installation, and other media by the following six artists: Maj Hasager (Denmark), Dor Guez (Israel), José Carlos Teixeira (Portugal), Caroline Woolard (USA), and Susan Jahoda (USA).

• Reinberger Galleries made the top 10 list when the international website Culture Trip surveyed Cleveland’s cultural offerings.

• More than a thousand high school students from Florida to California competed in CIA’s juried art contest, 2D3D. Now gearing up for its third year, this contest puts CIA on the map for talented students nationwide.

Above: Sculpture + Expanded Media major Leah Yochman ’16 (left) and Photography + Video major Eric Payne ’17, with their friend and model, in the Made Surreal fashion design competition.