What, the curtains?

Three types of people are attracted to Brown's Interior Design program: eighteen year old girls with spiky haircuts who wear scarves in the middle of July, sixty year old women who've managed to match their drapes with their carpeting, and extremely gay men, one of whose listed phone numbers was to a sex shop.

Last year, the program graduated ten students. The good news is that eight of the graduates found jobs with prestigious design firms; the bad news is that just ten students graduated. It's a fine program, really. It's run like a graduate program, very intense amounts of work and expectation. Interior Design matches the theoretical, the historical and the practical, hands-on approach. We have a wood-shop, where students work with ceilings, sub-flooring, and build chairs, all to give them the physical understanding that should compliment any designers work.

A great deal of hand-wringing occurs over how best to market and promote the thing, and much burden rests with the nincompoops in the corporate office who design the television commercials. They're misleading, because they show students rearranging flowery furniture and adorning sun-rooms with vases and paddy-whacks, like realtors prepping for a showing. In large part because they have no idea how to market it, the program's dropout rate is staggeringly high.

Brown, Art Institute, and the U of M also offer programs of a similar stripe. Oh, and UW Stout, but, really, Stout? I've always felt that our program could and should attract more students, but the how remains a total mystery. We're located near the Twin Cities, and have great national connections for job-placement purposes. All of the instructors have Masters Degrees in the field, and have been teaching respectfully for many years.

Few entering students are prepared to sit for hours studying building systems and codes, and fewer expect to know or care about why certain types of foam become potentially volatile when paired with different types of textiles. Most just want to pick out cool colors of linoleum and match paisley with polka-dots.

Yesterday I spent four hours with an international student from Bolivia, trying to find ways to enroll her into the program, so she could obtain a student visa and remain in the country. She didn't seem to want to return to Bolivia that badly. Dressed in a green, velvet blazer, the department chair visited with her, at length, and explained very well the numerous merits of his program, convincingly enough that she was determined to proceed with the application.

To determine if she'd be able to remain in the country, or have to return home to meet with her embassy, we met with the school President and Dean, in a closed-door session where we, my Director and I were informed that the program had closed. That's right: closed. Neither the Chair, nor any of us, who've been trying to enroll for the gimpy program had any idea. Sometimes, doing my job feels like going on a series of blind-dates in foreign cities in bars that only serve flat Sprite.

Awkwardly, I had to explain to the bemused Bolivian that, well, uh, the program she just got around to liking is nonexistent, and that I would do my damnedest to find another suitable program with a tad more stability, which would be any other program on planet earth.

Then, in order for her to catch her bus back to St. Paul, I dropped her off at the bus stop, and went, seething, to lunch. A half-hour later, I returned to work to see her still standing outside, in freezing rain, still waiting for a bus that evidently didn't come when we had expected. I felt foolish, and angry at having put her through the experience; angrier still at the school.

Once inside, clearly in the foulest of moods, a colleague asked why she hadn't enrolled. I swore him to secrecy, and told him that the program had closed. Within an hour, he sashayed into my boss's office, and told her that 'he had heard a rumor,' and blah, blah, blah. Who took that heat for opening his mouth on that one?

The program needs to be brought out to pasture and shot repeatedly, rather than allowing students, and admissions, these soft kernels of false pretense. It's awfully hard to sell a product that tomorrow may not exist. Our photography program is in the same, leaky canoe, but we continue to sell it, all too well aware that, within a closed-door session, fates are being determined, beyond our input and control.

I have worlds of faith in the faculty, and the curriculum. I've seen physical proof of the remarkable quality being produced from the discipline. The students who graduate are professional of the highest order, with reputations of being rock-ready the moment they enter the work force. My college is suffering an identity crisis at present, and needs seriously to determine which programs are successful, market them well, and never look back.