The Design Program just turned on the light bulb with two new thoughts: It's time to change colleges and add new directions.
After nearly 70 years in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the program is planning this upcoming academic year to move into the College of Letters and Science's Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.
A shining light for Design's future is the new, multimillion-dollar California Lighting Technology Center. Administered by two new faculty members, Michael Siminovitch and Kostas Papamichael, the center will do research on creating energy-efficient lighting that also emphasizes market-friendly design.
The Design Program move is only administrative: The faculty, staff and students are staying in Walker Hall and a number of temporary buildings until new accommodations are built.
All of this change is creating a sense of expectation in the program. In fact, some who thought they were ready to retire don't want to leave now. Mary Nakai, the first secretary hired in the Department of Environmental Design in 1982, this year said she was retiring only to decide to come back and work part time. Design professor Dolph Gotelli is doing the same, so he can run the Design Museum and help plan for a new art museum near Mondavi Center.
The official paper transfer is hoped to be accomplished by July 1, pending college faculty approvals, according to Dean Elizabeth Langland. The Landscape Design Program, which joined with Design to create the Department of Environmental Design in 1982, will remain in the ag and environmental college.
"We're delighted to have Design in HArCS," Langland says. "Design programs are usually affiliated with art and humanities programs. We expect major synergies within the division with Design's move." She pointed to the many crossover interests between Design and Art, Art History, Technocultural Studies, and Theatre and Dance.
Pat Harrison, co-chair of the Department of Environmental Design and director of the Design Program, sees the move as an "amplifier" of her unit's many past successes.
"We've had 30 years of fashion shows, design exhibitions, successful students, award-winning projects," Harrison says. "This move allows us to build on that success and explore new opportunities."
Their closer proximity offers the departments of Art and Art History and the Design Program to more clearly articulate the differences and shared interests between their disciplines.
"We are planning a more explicit emphasis on design professions and on the role of design in creating a bridge between technology and social patterns by creating objects and environments," Harrison adds.
Harrison is the main motivator behind bringing the lighting design center to UC Davis, having encouraged Siminovitch and Papamichael to choose UC Davis as the best home for their program.
Vice Chancellor for Research Barry Klein, who enthusiastically endorses the program as a good fit with UC Davis and the Design Program, says, "Your 'better light bulb' must be designed for widespread use and acceptance, otherwise it is merely a theoretical better light bulb."
Harrison points out that the new center has this kind of practical approach as its core mission. It will be partners with industry, public utilities and the California Energy Commission to ensure that the efforts of the center are quickly put to use.
Design has a long history on campus. In fact, the major components of the program -- textile and clothing design, interior design, basic design and design history -- have been campus mainstay courses since 1936 when the home economics major was first established.
In 1965, the Department of Home Economics was split apart in recognition of how the subject had splintered into many vigorous disciplines, ranging from nutrition to child development, consumer economics, textile science -- and design. By 1966 a design major was established and, in 1967, the program moved in a new umbrella department called Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences.
Just as Home Economics proved to be an inadequate shell for burgeoning research and teaching in the 1960s, by the early 1980s, ABS was finding the same conditions. Its Design Program alone drew 320 majors and was the third largest major in the college.
In 1980, Design joined Landscape Architecture and started the paperwork to become an official "department" -- an 11-year quest. In the meantime, the Design Gallery (renamed a few years ago to the Design Museum) opened under the direction of Gotelli in 1984 as a major component of the program's outreach efforts.
Due to retirements in the past few years, Design, once with a senate faculty of 10, will be bringing only 4.5 existing senate faculty positions to HArCS. However, two new faculty positions are now being recruited for, and the dean expects to be filling more positions in the near future. Several lecturers who have been relied upon to supplement the senate faculty in teaching the popular major will remain with the program.
Undergraduate majors will find a few differences changing from one college to the other, including new requirements for foreign language and upper-division composition.
With the arrival of Siminovitch and Papamichael, the faculty plans to add a lighting emphasis for the program's 350 majors, Harrison says.
The Design faculty and staff plan to take the strengths of its past and add them to an exciting future, say Harrison and others.
Nakai, with her 22-year-vantage point, says, "It's so creative here, there is always something happening. It's never been a boring place to work."