2018 SCC Faculty Excellence Award honoree Robbie Miller (center) works with digital design students.

Chair of Art Department Honored with SCC Faculty Excellence Award

For Robbie Miller, associate professor of art and chair of the Art Department, doing his job at Santiago Canyon College is like winning the lottery - every day.

“I’m honored to be paid to do this,” says Miller, who teaches four art classes every semester in addition to his duties as chair. He was recently named the college’s Outstanding Full-Time Faculty Member. “To be nominated for an award by my group of peers is humbling.”

On his first day at SCC, he recalls, every staff and faculty member he bumped into welcomed him and offered to help with his transition, “and they were sincere.” After seven years, he is pleased that the college has worked with him to attract and matriculate more art students, build new facilities, and witness the success of burgeoning artists in various fields.

Miller’s top priority was to develop a robust art curriculum and to attract additional art students to the college. After five years of effort, 33 students graduated with certificates or A.A. degrees compared to two degrees awarded the previous spring; every art class is full and there is demand for more, he says. Miller wrote the curriculum for every digital arts class.

As opportunities for artists increase due to advances in illustration and graphic arts, Miller said many more students are investigating art degrees. Artists are in demand for companies such as Disney, and for interior design, studio art, illustration and photography positions.

His second focus was to reconstruct the D building, which houses the Art Department, using the latest technology. “Students probably had better technology on the phones in their pockets,” he remembers. Miller attracted federal grants to help pay for new TVs, computers and software; built a new gallery to exhibit art; and created a new digital laboratory. The improvements were made based on his drawings, which the architect used to develop the blueprint.

“Students feel honored to use these facilities,” Miller says. “We work hard to schedule classes so that they are offered when students need to take them, and that the classes do not overlap.” That way a student can take a course in the morning and have the studio time in the afternoon, with the art history class in the middle. “They immerse themselves in the arts,” he notes.

In addition to Miller, who is a professional photographer, nine adjunct faculty members - all of whom are working artists - teach art courses at SCC.

One of his former students, Analise Copenhaver, went on to attend the Art Institute of Chicago, a nationally ranked program, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Today she works in Chicago as an artist; one of her paintings is displayed prominently on the SCC campus.

Prior to coming to SCC, Miller was an adjunct professor at Cal State Fullerton, Fullerton College and Santa Ana College, teaching painting, drawing, art history and new media. “SCC is a smaller campus and they wanted someone to be department chair and to teach,” he remembers. “That jack-of-all-trades requirement fit what I do perfectly.”

His first visit to the SCC was for his job interview. “This is a beautiful area of Orange County that I’d never seen before,” he says, “and the campus was amazing, let alone being situated on a hill overlooking it all. I felt like I was on vacation because everyone was so friendly. I got very lucky with this position.”

Miller’s office is ensconced between the digital lab, gallery and studios. “One time my intermediate photography students were working on portraits in the studio and the intro photography class was in the digital lab doing editing and making prints,” he recalls, “and we were swapping out a show in the gallery featuring alumni.

“I went into my office, froze for a second, thinking ‘this is incredible. It is so cool that SCC allows me to make this happen.’”

In the future, Miller says he wants to make the college’s art history curriculum more robust and to increase the number of honors classes.