How the UArts closure transformed Moore College of Art & Design, the last art-centered college in Philly

In the post-University of the Arts Philadelphia education landscape, there’s one art-centered college left in the city: Moore College of Art and Design.

Though Moore is tiny — it had just 396 students enrolled last fall — it’s absorbing 114 UArts students this semester. (It’s also picking up 12 students from Delaware College of Art and Design, which has just closed, and two from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which will stop granting degrees in 2025.)

That represents an enormous increase in enrollment, and one the college had no idea was coming.

Moore president Cathy Young compared the changes at Moore to a business trying to scale up by more than 30% in just two months.

“Summer is typically a slow time in higher ed, but this summer for us has been full steam ahead,” she said. “It almost felt like the COVID time in higher ed — we’re running to adapt to a new set of circumstances.”

» READ MORE: Where did the UArts students land after the shutdown? Nearly 750 are at other colleges, and many at Temple.

Young and her team were just as shocked as anyone at the news that UArts was closing.

“We were heartbroken,” said Young. “Our team immediately sprang into action, working around the clock.”

Moore was one of the first three announced “teach-out partners,” or schools that agreed to expedited transfer opportunities for UArts students. Eighty UArts students attended the first open house Moore offered; more came to sessions held virtually. The goal, Young said, was getting students and their families as much information as they could, quickly.

“We recognized that this is a terribly confusing, upsetting experience for students and their parents,” Young said.

Moore moved to staff up, adding employees in student affairs, academic affairs, and housing. They found more places for students to live. They bought extra furniture so the bumper crop of students had places to sit and created new studios so they have room to work.

It’s not lost on Young that Moore is the last independent art school left standing in the city.

“We take very seriously our responsibility and opportunity to really support these students,” Young said.

» READ MORE: The UArts closure in students and faculty’s own words, photos, and illustrations

Personalized admissions counseling was a must. But Moore also wanted to very visibly welcome students.

So they got Goat, a large metal work of art sculpted by Zivia Brown — a UArts illustration major transferring to Moore for her senior year — and, on Thursday, installed it in a prominent place on campus.

Brown’s piece had been installed in a UArts courtyard. When she and her mother heard the school was closing, they extracted Goat themselves, using tools they found at home and a neighbor’s borrowed truck.

After Moore officials read about Brown’s, and Goat’s, plight, they reached out to her — she had already signed up for a Moore open house.

“They said, hey, we want the goat, and you,” said Brown, 22.

Now painted orange, Goat traveled from Brown’s Germantown home to Center City in the college gallery manager’s truck, greeted by TV cameras and Young herself.

“For a number of students, [Goat] represented the institution to them,” Young said. “We wanted our transfer students to know that we honor the institutions they’re coming from.”

Brown is thrilled that Goat, now painted orange, has a new home, and so does she. She said the Moore transfer process has been smooth, from matching her UArts financial aid package to helping her map out her final two semesters.

“It’s been pretty easy,” Brown said.

On Friday, Brown was packing to move into a Moore apartment and preparing to start classes on Aug. 22. Brown is nervous, she said, but also excited.

“Even though it’s been the whole summer, it still feels very fresh,” Brown said of UArts closing. “It still feels like ‘oh, gosh, everything has changed.’ But Moore has been so nice, and very accepting. I’m excited to be in this new community.”

UArts’ sudden, shocking closure has made many students and families wary.

“I’ve had a lot of parents ask, ‘We just watched our school close for financial reasons. How do we know that’s not going to happen to Moore?’” Young said. “But Moore is really financially healthy and that is because we have a business model that works for our size.”

The school has had an operating surplus for the last 23 years, Young said, and its endowment is healthy. Every student gets some form of scholarship, and every student gets $1,000 toward a paid internship.

“When you see these art and design institutions close, there’s a question that comes up about the viability of that education,” Young said. Moore is an art school, but it’s also career-focused because it has to be.

“Creativity, that’s the currency of the future,” said Young. “This is what we do here — we not only nurture creatives, but we turn their passion into a paycheck.”