A blustery Southern California night opened AIGA’s second Schools of Thoughts conference, as about 200 design educators in process black peered over Lucite-framed spectacles at the entrance to Art Center’s slick new campus. Former students chatted up their mentors at almost every table, giving a full-circle sense of purpose to this reception that kicked off the three-day event.

Acoustics were predictably dicey in a room named the Wind Tunnel, but the former supersonic testing facility was a fitting environment for the keynote speaker, futurist Bruce Sterling. The prolific science fiction novelist and contributing editor at Wired is also a design educator; as Visionary in Residence at Art Center, his assignments have students concepting in the year 2010. “Futurist thinking in design is much more interesting,” Sterling said. “There’s more of an attack on the status quo.” Sterling champions a movement that charges designers with creating and maintaining a responsible visual culture. His philosophy mandates that all design must set out to solve various societal issues and, most critically, address a rigorous environmental agenda. Educators are obligated to impress these values into their students.

Historical studies were steeped in technology. Kathy McCoy and Lorraine Wild traced Rob Roy Kelly’s quest to reform design programs across the country, then found themselves subjects of other panels discussing ways to archive and access information about design history.

Perhaps the most future-forward aspects of design education were testimonials from elementary school teachers. Using design-based methodology like simulated societies, these educators have found dramatic success across their disciplines. More importantly, they have the test scores to prove it. With the fate of funding balancing on stringent government mandates, design could save the day for socioeconomically depressed educational programs. Educator Meredith Davis has focused on formulating a structured curriculum that will be widely disseminated and implemented.

Sterling’s call to action echoed throughout the Wind Tunnel in several presentations on the prevalence of design for the community. “Personal design essays” that call on students to solve a social issue, propaganda movements, and urban renewal projects are common practice—as are the interdisciplinary collaborations that make them possible. Some master’s programs have been restructured to specifically incorporate community outreach into thesis projects.

Experiments at the intersection of form and intuition were contested in the only truly controversial panel of the day. A group of younger educators showed student work that had evolved from a series of loose explorations and wondered aloud if they were indeed teaching design concepts. Such unfocused creativity seemed to stray from Sterling’s orders from the night before, but is it no longer acceptable to simply design for the sake of creating?

Although five countries were represented in the contingency, Schools of Thoughts 2 was expectedly Cali-centric. Co-chairs Louise Sandhaus and Petrula Vrontikis lent the most esteemed minds from their respective programs, local pedagogy powerhouses Cal-Arts and Art Center. Both schools attended in force and dominated the lists of speakers and panels.

“On one level we’re trying to bring the stronger, more considered voices to really help the conversation about the larger questions of what we’re doing at this time and the vital issues to think about as educators,” said Sandhaus. “We have this other layer of what’s going on day to day.” This is where some educators isolated in smaller design programs felt they could have benefited more from specific, real-world examples and executions.

During the final breakout session educators reviewed hot topics that triggered changes in many of the attendees’ own agendas. Sean Donahue, an instructor at Art Center, argued for a redefinition of the explorations questioned during the panel. “It seems to me that in order to move beyond rhetoric we need to show what we are doing or not doing to enable this,” he said. “It is the act of seeing these examples that enables us to understand how these values translate into a graphic form that moves beyond convention.”

Meredith Davis closed the conference with a comprehensive overview of education programs and an unsettling design trend: Most graduates aren’t able to find work right out of college. Redefining the roles designers take in the hierarchy of culture will determine how design can command respect as a viable industry. And that begins with credibility in the classroom.

“Instructors constantly ask students to take fresh perspectives on content,” said Kristina Bell of the University of Hawaii. “It seems only fitting then that we be willing to shape and retool syllabi to address contemporary definitions of the discipline.” Schools of Thoughts was out for the day, but these educators each rushed home to start their homework.