Columbia College Chicago
Columbia College Chicago is a private art college in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1890, it has 4,200 students pursuing degrees in more than 40 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. It is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.
As of July 1, 2025, Shantay N. Bolton is the president and CEO of Columbia College Chicago.
Columbia College Chicago is the host institution of several affiliated educational, cultural, and research organizations, including the Center for Black Music Research, the Center for Book and Paper Arts, the Center for Community Arts Partnerships, the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography.
Columbia College Chicago is not affiliated with Columbia University, Columbia College Hollywood, or any other Columbia College in the United States. However, Columbia College Hollywood was originally founded as a branch campus of Columbia College Chicago from 1952-1957.
History
Columbia College Chicago was founded in 1890 as the Columbia School of Oratory by Mary A. Blood and Ida Morey Riley, both graduates of the Monroe Conservatory of Oratory, in Boston, Massachusetts. Anticipating a strong need for public speaking at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas, Blood and Riley were inspired to open their school in the exposition city, Chicago, and adopt the exposition's name. Blood and Riley became the college's first co-presidents, until Riley died in 1901; Blood served in this capacity until she died in 1927. The women established a co-educational school that "should stand for high ideals, for the teaching of expression by methods truly educational, for the gospel of good cheer, and for the building of sterling good character" in the Stevens' Art Gallery Building, 24 East Adams Street.The school ran as a sole proprietary business from 1890 to 1904, when the school became incorporated by the state of Illinois. On May 5, 1904, the school incorporated itself again in order to change its name to the Columbia College of Expression, adding coursework in teaching to the curriculum.
When Blood died in 1927, George L. Scherger assumed the office of president after serving as a former member of the board of directors. Under his leadership, Scherger signed the paperwork at the board's annual meeting on April 14, 1928, to change the school's name to the Mary A. Blood School of Speech Arts. However, by April 30, 1928, the school reverted its name to the Columbia College of Expression by the board of directors, George L. Scherger, Herman H. Hegner, and Erme Rowe Hegner. During Scherger's presidency, the college became an official sister institution with the Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College, a family-run school centered on training its students for teaching kindergarten. As the president of the Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College, Bertha Hofer Hegner assumed the role as the fourth president of Columbia College of Expression in 1929 when Scherger resigned to become an assistant pastor of St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Hegner served as the institution's head, although due to illness, her son, Herman Hofer Hegner served as acting president of the institutions from 1930 until 1936. By 1934, college curriculum also focused on the growing field of radio broadcasting. In 1934, Herman Hofer Hegner hired Norman Alexandroff, a radio programmer, to develop a radio curriculum for the colleges, as both institutions were suffering financially. When Bertha Hofer Hegner retired in 1936 for health reasons, she was made president emeritus of the institutions and Herman Hofer Hegner became the institutions' official president.
During Herman Hofner Hegner's presidency, the Columbia College of Expression was advertised under different names including, Columbia College of Speech and Drama, the Radio Institute of Columbia School of Speech and Drama, and Columbia College of Speech, Drama, and Radio. However, the college was never incorporated under any of these names by the state of Illinois. As the radio program gained prominence, Alexandroff was named as the vice president of the Columbia College of Expression and became a member on the board of directors at both institutions by 1937.
The college left its partnership with the Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College, named Norman Alexandroff as its president, and filed the Columbia College of Expression as a not for profit corporation on December 3, 1943. On February 5, 1944, the college re-filed as a not for profit corporation and changed its name to Columbia College. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the college broadened its educational base to include television, journalism, marketing, and other mass-communication areas. Alexandroff also oversaw the development of the extension campuses of the school, Columbia College Pan-Americano in Mexico City, Mexico, and Columbia Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California. Both of these campuses became independent of their parent in the late 1950s. Prosperity was short lived, however, and by 1961, the college had fewer than 200 students and a part-time faculty of 25.
Norman Alexandroff remained the president of the college until his death on May 26, 1960, and his son, Mirron Alexandroff, assumed the role of president by 1961. Mike Alexandroff had worked at the college since 1947 and as president, he created a liberal arts college with a "hands-on minds-on" approach to arts and media education with a progressive social agenda. He established a generous admissions policy so that qualified high school graduates could attend college courses taught by some of the most influential and creative professionals in Chicago. For the next thirty years, Alexandroff worked to build the college into an urban institution that helped to change the face of higher education.
With this renewed focus on building its academic program, the institution was awarded full accreditation in 1974 from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and in 1984, received accreditation for its graduate programs. In 1975, when the college's enrollment exceeded 2,000, it purchased its first real estate, the building at 600 South Michigan Avenue. At the time of Alexandroff's retirement in 1992, the college served 6,791 students and owned or rented more than of instructional, performance, and administrative space.
From 1992 until 2000, John B. Duff, former commissioner of the Chicago Public Library and former chancellor of the Massachusetts Board of Regents of Higher Education, served as the college's president. On October 28, 1997, the college changed its name to Columbia College Chicago, and the institution continued to expand its educational programs and add to its physical campus by purchasing available buildings in the South Loop. This played a significant part in its presence in the South Loop and downtown Chicago. The college's campus occupies almost two dozen buildings and utilizes over 2.5 million square feet.
In 2000, Warrick L. Carter became the college's president. Through 2010, under his leadership, the college created student-based initiatives such as Manifest, the annual urban arts festival celebrating Columbia's graduating students, and ShopColumbia, a store where students can showcase and sell their work on campus; partnered with local universities to construct the University Center; purchased campus buildings; added curricula; and oversaw the college's first constructed building, the Media Production Center.
The college has grown international exchanges, including associations with Dublin Institute of Technology, the University of East London, and the Lorenzo de' Medici Italian International Institute. Through the vast diversity of students and graduates, the school brings a rich vision and a multiplicity of voices to American culture, encouraging students to "author the culture of their times".
However, Columbia has not been exempt from internal and external criticism. During the 2011–12 school year, the college administration attempted to implement a set of sweeping changes to the college's curriculum, staffing policies, and overall institutional structure, through an initiative dubbed Blueprint | Prioritization. As the specifics of the changes and cutbacks came to light over the course of the school year, students and faculty from affected departments and majors vocalized their opposition to the cutbacks by staging protests during administrative meetings, mic-checking Interim Provost Louise Love during an open hearing about the proposed cutbacks, and circulating petitions calling for certain decisions, and even the entire process, to be reversed, citing "union busting" practices, consistent tuition hikes, and frequent, unexplained personnel changes across the college.
Press coverage and local awareness of the college's troubles surrounding Prioritization increased rapidly after Deanna Issacs, a reporter for the Chicago Reader, was shut out of President Warrick Carter's annual State of the College Address to the student body, which had been advertised as "open to the public." During the meeting, at which the president had been questioned extensively by students about cutbacks and tuition hikes, Carter appeared to lose his temper at one point, aggressively telling a student to "shut up," in his response to a question about his salary, which exceeds $400,000 per year. In addition to the reader, the grievances voiced over the Blueprint | Prioritization cutbacks received coverage in the Chicago Tribune, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Time Out Chicago.
As of September 2012, most of the proposed changes from Prioritization had yet to be implemented. Programs and departments that were at one point or another slated for cuts include the Center for Black Music Research, the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, the Fiction Writing Department, the college's recycling program, which employed student workers to collect refuse, and the top-10 ranked Cultural Studies program, one of the few standalone undergraduate programs of its kind in the nation.
On May 9, 2012, President Warrick Carter announced he would retire a year earlier than expected, stepping down at the end of the 2012–13 academic year.
On July 1, 2013, Kwang-Wu Kim became Columbia College's 10th president. Kim holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts and an Artist Diploma from the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher and served as Fleisher's teaching associate.
In February 2024, Kim announced that he would step down as president in July 2024, replaced by an interim president. Jerry Tarrer was appointed as the Interim President following Dr. Kim's departure.