A visit to Columbia College of Art and Design
Columbia College Chicago is a private college located in the city’s South Loop neighborhood situated over several city blocks in the downtown area and central business district. This urban campus is home to 6,500 undergraduate students offering a customizable curriculum that blends creative and media arts, liberal arts and business in more than 60 degree programs (BFA, BA, BS, and BMus) in a wide range of majors (and 63 minors) including in animation, film, theatre, music and dance. They require auditions and portfolio reviews prior to direct admission to their BFA and BMus degree programs. For undecided majors, students apply to the BA/BS programs.
The city of Chicago is the heart of this campus, and is at the heart of the Columbia Core curriculum - which integrates exploration of Chicago with their innovative and collaborative, socially and artistically relevant courses. For example, this summer students may participate in the Summer Social Justice & Creativity Institute to research and discuss social justice issues and artists’ creative interventions and how Chicagoland is impacted as a result.
We took the Media Arts tour which featured the Cinema and Television program. The highlight of the tour was seeing the spaces used for editing, effects, color correction, finishing and mastering films. Students have access to computer labs, private editing rooms and collaborative work spaces. The television and cinema equipment centers have everything you may need for a project from lighting rigs, cameras to green screens. The Media Production Center is a huge sound stage and production facility for in-house cinematography and television production work by students. Columbia College Chicago offers both BFA and BA programs for film. The BFA is a more intensive concentration and requires more studio and production work.
City life is the norm for students. Dorms are furnished apartments with access to fitness centers and open spaces, although many students live off campus (further away from school in other Chicagoland neighborhoods) and take advantage of their unlimited train rides using their U-Pass. The apartment style dorm we saw even had a washer/dryer in it! We enjoyed some Chicago deep dish pizza at a shop just down the way from the end of our tour. There are lots of options for dining and tourism in the area!