Editor’s note: Graduation ceremonies at South Dakota State University May 6 won’t only mark the end of studies for nearly 1,300 students, it will also culminate the academic careers of three department heads. They will be profiled in a three-part series. Today looks at Tim Steele, who heads the school of design and has taught at State since 1985.
The next article will profile Brad Woldt, psychology. Mary Arnold, journalism and mass communications, was profiled last week. The final working day for all three administrators in the College of Arts and Sciences is June 21.
BROOKINGS – Computers? In an art department? That idea was preposterous to university administration in 1990 when the purchase was planned.
That’s part of the change Tim Steele, head of the School of Design at South Dakota State University, has experienced in his 32 years here.
Today, graphic design students couldn’t operate without their Macintosh. It is as much of a tool in the liberal arts as it is in the hard sciences. The term “digital artwork” was a sophisticated way of saying “finger painting” when Steele was studying fine arts at Fort Wright College of the Holy Name in Spokane, Wash., in the late 1970s.
As he wraps up his final year of college teaching, he exits as the one who created a modern graphic design program at South Dakota State.
In 1985, Steele became the first person to be hired by the late Norman Gambill, who had become head of the Department of Visual Arts a year earlier.
“Norman had a lot of expertise, but he was not as confident in graphic design. I was hired to start the graphic design program and I had Norm’s blessing to take the program where it went,” Steele said.
“He was a huge influence on me. It was liberating in the way I could think or could be. I wasn’t required to be one way or the other,” he said.
Starting small, like six
When Steele went to deliver his first lecture to graphic design students, there was a group of eight. The next day there were six. Fortunately, there was no more attrition that semester. In 1986, Steele wrote the curriculum for a Bachelor of Science or a Bachelor of Arts degree in art with an emphasis in graphic design.
“At that time, all design classes were taught in the journalism department in the printing program and we had one art class. All of the graphic designers were headed to print shops,” Steele recalls.
But the transition to a design-oriented program began with Steele’s arrival. By 1995, a decade after Steele’s arrival, “We were easily the largest group of students in the art department” with 60 majors out of 90 total majors in the department. Another decade later, 2004, graphic design was its own major. There are now 140 graphic design majors.
Computers meet graphic design
Steele said the first Mac came out in 1985, and the process began to transfer graphic design from a hand-and-eye skill to computerization.
Of course, FreeHand and Illustrator weren’t among the students’ tools. Instead, the department had a Compugraphic typesetting machine for Steele’s first two to three years. The operator typed a line of copy. Hitting return sent the line to photo paper. There was no opportunity to correct copy after the first line had been typed.
The machines, while able to produce clean type in multiple typefaces, were prone to breakdowns, and service calls from the factory rep were expensive.
“Pat Leary (at Harold’s Printing in downtown Brookings) became a good friend. He always helped me out,” Steele recalled.
By 1990, the department hired a second graphic design instructor and the department had eight or nine Mac SEs.
“Journalism was doing the same thing. The university could not believe we needed computers in the art department. At this point, we quit using the Compugraphic.”
Photographics, which was a darkroom skill, was transitioning to computer.
The next step was the addition of 10 Dell computers, which were so prized that two students from outside the department gained access to Grove Hall through the campus steam tunnel and stole two of them, box and all. When the school year closed, the empty boxes were found outside their apartment and the burglars were convicted.
When the next Macintosh version was released, the art department was on the buyer’s list, and it has continually upgraded with Macs, Steele said.
Curiosity, responsibility
Regardless of the version of computer being used, Steele said he has “always tried to emphasize natural curiosity and personal responsibility. We go nowhere in our business without natural curiosity. Talent won’t make up for it, money won’t make up for it, time spent in front of an object won’t make up for it.”
Regarding personal responsibility, Steele said, “I never wanted students on my doorsteps telling me I didn’t prepare them. Personal responsibility involves getting things done when they needed to get done, taking responsibility for what they produced, giving people more than they wanted and doing due diligence on research.”
He also notes that more than technology has changed in 32 years of teaching.
“Now students have a desire to be more collaborative. Back when I started you never thought of putting two people together on a project, let alone six. Everybody does their own work. Now they come to us that way. They’re used to being more collaborative. We’ve followed that through in class, even in a drawing class,” Steele said.
Now it’s not uncommon for six to eight students to be drawing on a big sheet of paper on the wall with each working on their own design, he said.
Personal art interests
As far as Steele’s own art, he has specialized in painting, drawing and furniture art. He has had works accepted in numerous exhibits, but the most significant for him was one at the South Dakota Art Museum on campus in 2012. It was a two-person exhibit with colleague Randy Clark entitled “Home Furnishings and Art for Your Apartment.”
Steele’s contribution was life-size furniture pieces he had worked on for three to four years, all pieces being artistic and functional.
Perhaps it is fitting that his artistic passion now is photographing sunsets from his western Brookings home. “Each one of those sunsets is different. They’re like fingerprints. Even when there is cloud cover, there are still contrasts. My art has changed. Although I’m working on the same subject, the thumbprint is different.
“The nuances are more significant than the swings of media techniques. The small nuances are more significant than the new,” Steele said.
Retirement plans
Of course, come June 21 the swing will be more than a nuance.
He plans to literally cruise into retirement with a summer voyage to Alaska with his wife, Jean, a respiratory care therapist at Brookings Health System, who retires in August. It will be an opportunity to photograph whales and late-night sunsets. They will continue the trip by visiting West Coast national parks and their daughter.
They have three children: Jen, a retreat leader in Mesa, Ariz.; Mike, who is part of a cancer research team at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.; and Tyler, who sells microscopes in Salt Lake City.
He leaves a department and a School of Design that has grown in scope and numbers – from 60 majors to 400 when the recent additions of architecture, interior design and landscape design are included. Those programs joined with art education, graphic design and studio art to form the School of Design July 1, 2015.
Those from each of the programs and elsewhere will have a chance to wish Steele well at a 2 to 4 p.m. Friday, April 28, farewell in the South Dakota Art Museum.
