Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design's Rapid Response Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

This content was previously published by Campus Management, now part of Anthology. Product and/or solution names may have changed.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, terms like “transformation” take on a special urgency. Even as many higher education institutions have recognized the value of moving their systems to the cloud over the past several years, “social distancing” was not part of the lexicon at the time.

For most institutions, it was the idea of serving a greater diversity of students, offering more program flexibility and online modalities, allocating more resources around student success, and having a platform that could easily grow with them. Now it’s a critical factor in delivering education and training as an essential service, even as ground campuses remain closed and classroom chairs empty.

Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design (RMCAD) in Denver, Colorado is no exception. Since 1963, the college’s mission has been to make RMCAD a ‘community of creatives’ that instills in all students a passion for creativity, innovation, and a desire for lifelong learning—both in the fine arts and applied arts. Offering on-campus, online, and hybrid programs, the college was nonetheless ready to pivot to fully online operations when the pandemic hit.