IAIA starts construction on new student housing

Nov. 27—The Institute of American Indian Arts has been a work in progress for 61 years, and the progress in the works right now is building a new, mixed-use housing facility for the college's students with families.

Demolition started three weeks ago on two of three casitas with 16 units that originally started as student housing in 2001. They have housed mostly students with families since IAIA's Residence Center was built in 2008.

The new housing will claim the patch of land from the casitas.

The facility is the first new structure at IAIA's 140-acre Rancho Viejo campus since the Performing Arts and Fitness Center opened in 2018.

The 18,000-square-foot housing complex with have 13 units about 800 square feet each and two artists' studios measuring a combined 3,000 square feet.

"We'd like to have more than that, but we don't have the funding," said IAIA President Robert Martin. "We hope to have additional units in the future."

The $11.9 million housing facility is being funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education, federal Title III funding and $2.5 million in private unrestricted gifts, Martin said.

The 20-year-old casitas needed replacing as maintenance had been increasing across the last decade.

"The foundation is starting to move a bit," said Larry Mirabal, IAIA's vice president of operations and finance, referring to the casitas' underpinnings.

The new housing is the only major new construction project in a 2020 master plan that focuses more on renovations and improvements.

"We are limiting new construction," Martin said. "We have a lot of square footage we would like to use more efficiently."

The facility is designed for student families, though in recent years some units were opened to single students on a first-come, first-served basis. The units are designed for four residents — either a family or four single students with two sharing each of the two bedrooms in each unit.

There are common areas with kitchen and living rooms.

"Right now, the priority has to be for families," Martin said. "We always have a few vacancies at any time."

Martin expects the building to be ready for students by August.

IAIA took on the property on A Van Nu Po Road in 2000 with "no road, no anything," after 20 years at the College of Santa Fe, which today is known as the city-owned midtown campus.

"When I came, we didn't have a bookstore or viable food service," said Martin, who is in his 17th year as IAIA president. "We grew some of the greens in our greenhouse. We had labs in regular classrooms. Sculpture was in a third of the maintenance building."

The Institute of American Arts is a fine arts college that focuses on Native American arts and culture. The institute has 500 full-time students, including on-campus, online and graduate students. About 300 students study on-campus, and about two-thirds of them live there, Martin said.

IAIA started as a high school, eventually became a two-year college, then in 2001 a four-year college. It offers undergraduate degrees in cinematic arts and technology, creative writing, Indigenous liberal studies, museum studies, performing arts and studio arts.

IAIA added its first master's degree program, in creative writing, in 2013, with master's degrees in studio arts and cultural administration following in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

"I want to add a Ph.D. in Indigenous liberal students," Martin said. "I think research and scholarly publications will become a large part of what we do."

Martin said IAIA has become influential across the country.

"Wherever you go and see contemporary Native art, there is probably a connection to IAIA," Martin said.