Published
Thu, Mar 18, 2021, 03:16
- Over the years, the school's faculty included John Cage, Morton Subotnick, Robert Ashley and Maggi Payne.
Today, Mills College President Elizabeth L. Hillman announced that the 169-year-old Oakland, California institution will confer its final degrees in 2023.
In an open letter, Hillman attributed the decision to the "economic burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic, structural changes across higher education, and Mills' declining enrollment and budget deficits," stating that the college will transition into an institute that will continue Mills' mission "to foster women's leadership and student success, advance gender and racial equity, and cultivate innovative pedagogy, research and critical thinking."
As an undergraduate college for women and gender non-binary students with graduate programs for all genders, Mills has long been a crucible of progressive and radical thought. In 2014, Mills became the first single-sex college in the US to welcome transgender students.
Mills' music program has also had an incalculable impact on new music and electronic music. Over the decades, the music school counted John Cage, Terry Riley and Anthony Braxton as faculty members, with alumni including Laurie Anderson, Steve Reich, Holly Herndon, Sarah Davachi and Seth Horvitz (Rrose), to name a few.
In 1966, the San Francisco Tape Music Center, co-founded by former Mills faculty member and Buchla pioneer Morton Subotnick, relocated to Mills campus, where it was later dubbed the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM). This would become the nerve center for experimental music on campus. CCM's directors of the years included Pauline Oliveros, Robert Ashley and Maggi Payne.
Alumni and figures from the electronic music world mourned Mills' decision to close its traditional programs.
For more on Mills College and the Center for Contemporary Music, check out the school's Archive & History page.