Richard Rogers

Richard L. Rogers served as President of the College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit for 25 years, from 1994-2019.  CCS is an independent, not-for-profit college of art and design with a deep commitment to community engagement.  It enrolled over 1460 students at his retirement.

During Rick’s tenure CCS more than doubled its enrollment and physical space, established seven new undergraduate departments, launched four graduate programs, quadrupled its on-campus residential population, and saw more than a tenfold increase in its endowment.  The College also was rebranded.  He launched community outreach programs reaching 3,000 Detroit youth annually, co-founded an art and design-focused, K-12 charter school, and also co-founded Design Core Detroit, an economic development office within CCS that helps grow design businesses and champions the value of design.  Design Core was instrumental in having Detroit designated as the first and only UNESCO City of Design in the U.S.

Rick led numerous projects to ensure that CCS had state-of-the art facilities for art and design education.  On the College’s original site, he and his colleagues developed a cohesive campus involving building acquisitions, construction of a 104,000 sf academic building, renovation of existing structures, upgrades of all educational equipment, and development of a two-acre sculpture garden in collaboration with the Detroit Institute of Arts.  With the goal of redefining the role of an art and design college in an urban setting, the College repurposed a 760,000 sf building as a second campus in Detroit.  It now houses CCS’s undergraduate and graduate design departments, community programs, and economic development office, 300 beds of college housing, the charter school’s grades 6-12, dining services, conference center, book and art supply store, gymnasium, and Shinola, a maker of watches and leather goods.  The project generated over 500 new, permanent jobs in the midst of the Great Recession.

Rick has served on numerous boards of not-for-profit organizations.  He currently chairs the board of the McGregor Fund, a foundation devoted to addressing basic human needs and alleviating poverty in the Detroit metropolitan region.  He is an Honorary Trustee of the Detroit Institute of Arts and has been an advisory panel member for the Urban Land Institute.

Prior to CCS, Rick was Vice President and Secretary at The New School in New York City.  He received a B.A. and M.A. from Yale University and an M.S.Ed. from the Bank Street College of Education.