Inside Columbia College Chicago’s glitzy glass student center, the walls are a canvas for campus life. “Call For Art,” lists a taped flyer. “Do you craft?” reads another. Beside them, hand-drawn stickers advertise a student podcast.

Over its 135-year history, the South Loop school has educated hundreds of thousands of alumni and artists — winners of Academy Awards, Grammys, Pulitzer Prizes. Elsewhere on campus, there’s a fashion lab, a bookbinding studio and a 260-seat movie theater.

That rich legacy of creatives was the main draw for Shantay Bolton, Columbia’s first new president in more than a decade. After the school’s nationwide, yearlong search, she officially stepped into the role on July 1.

“We are never losing sight of that mission,” Bolton told the Tribune in a recent interview

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