It’s only natural to assume that an art and design school would be a hotbed of creativity.

But, when it comes to the Savannah College of Art and Design, “hotbed” likely is too mild a word.

In only 31 years of existence, SCAD has become the largest art school in the United States and has brightened and energized Savannah’s Historic District in the process.

The college has renovated and given new life to more than 50 old buildings in the city’s downtown; has been the impetus for the establishment of numerous galleries, shops and other types of businesses; and has brought to town a plethora of cultural programs, presentations and festivals, the foremost of which is a celebration of cinema that’s gained worldwide recognition.

“It is really impossible to measure the enormous contributions of SCAD to historic preservation in Savannah,” said Mark McDonald, until recently the executive director of the Historic Savannah Foundation, the organization that has been at the forefront of restoration efforts locally since the mid-1950s.

“The college has rehabilitated so many ‘white elephant’ buildings that would have been so difficult to find adaptive reuses for; they have created a housing market in a great number of transitional neighborhoods, trained hundreds of students in preservation techniques and principles and, perhaps, most importantly, have created a vitality and energy that has helped enliven the colonial city of Savannah,” said McDonald when asked about the significance of the college’s preservation endeavors and other contributions to the city.

“SCAD’s concept of creating an urban campus has been transformative.”

Among the school’s many structural rehabilitation projects since its founding in 1978 have been the transformation of a vacant department store on Broughton Street into the Jen Library and the conversion of a one-time carriage factory on Montgomery Street into Montgomery Hall, which is the college’s film and digital media center.  Within the past two years, the college has made the former Congregation B’nai B’rith synagogue at 120 Montgomery St., which was built in 1909, into the SCAD Student Center, and has converted the one-time U.S. Marine hospital at 115 E. York St. into a complex of administrative and business offices. The 67,000-square-foot, Mediterranean-style building had most recently housed the Westside Urban Health Center.

Currently, SCAD is renovating the old Richard Arnold High School building on Bull Street at 35th Street, with plans calling for the imposing edifice to house liberal arts and arts history classes — a move that will afford more space for accommodating the college’s burgeoning student body of more than 7,000.

The building, which will be named Arnold Hall, is scheduled to be in use this fall.  Among its features is a 500-seat auditorium that’s expected to provide, in the words of SCAD Chief Academic Officer Tom Fischer, an “interesting new venue” for Savannah.

While the college’s achievements in historic preservation are substantial, the main goal of the institution is producing graduates armed with the know-how and skills that will enable them to succeed in art-related fields.  SCAD, as an administrator said a few years ago, has no intention of developing “starving artists,” and its students’ choices of degree programs bear witness to that attitude; favored fields of study involve computer arts, graphic design, photography, film and television, and architecture.

Many of the college’s graduates have chosen to continue living in Savannah after finishing school and have brought their individual contributions to the city’s creative environment.  According to SCAD Alumni Services, more than 25 local businesses and companies are either owned or co-owned by SCAD graduates.  Among these enterprises are art and crafts galleries; retail businesses that are fashion- and design-oriented; advertising, marketing and graphic design outfits; interior design firms; and printing companies.

“My take on SCAD is that it has become an asset that Savannah can leverage to create great jobs,” said Chris Miller, the founder of The Creative Coast Initiative, which for several years recruited and promoted knowledge-based business in the Savannah area.  Now the owner of a consulting firm, Miller in 2007 helped merge the Initiative with the Coastal Business, Education and Technology Alliance to establish the Creative Coast Alliance, whose mission is to advance a high-wage Savannah economy, and he serves as a consultant and advisor to that organization.

Asked about the impact of the college on the city, Miller noted there is a “symbiotic relationship” between the two —meaning each entity benefits by feeding off the other.

Savannah’s beauty, tolerance and its own creativity have been factors “that have allowed SCAD to grow,” he said.

He indicated that a result of the SCAD-Savannah relationship is the proliferation of art galleries in the city.

“If you just do a Yellow Page search for art galleries in New York City, you would probably find a thousand,” said Miller.  That, he said, might rightfully lead you to believe that New York is the art gallery capital of the United States.

“But,” he said, “Savannah has about four-and-a-half times the number of art galleries per capita as New York City’’ —  meaning that a great deal of superlative artwork can be found here, too.

SCAD offers more than 30 majors and 40 minors to prospective students, and several new, innovative academic programs are on the horizon.

One of the most cutting-edge, according to Chief Academic Officer Fischer, involves a fledgling field of study that SCAD calls “service design.”

Taking into account the fact that the economy of the United States has become more and more service-oriented, the college is seeking to devise a design program that will, Fischer indicated, emphasize the “concept of creating better experiences for people receiving services.”

The service design program will be for graduate students and is the work of several faculty members under the direction of Tom Gattis, the chair of the industrial design sector of the School of Design.

“This program has been proposed, and I’m fairly sure it will be approved and instituted in the next year and a half,” Fischer said during an interview in early April.

He indicated that SCAD is leading the way in the realm of service design education.

“A few schools offer studies in this field,” he said, “but we will be the first to offer a graduate-degree program.”

In an effort to enhance the college’s fashion design program, which, according to Fischer, is already a “really significant” field of study at SCAD, the school is in the process of adding two components to complete what he calls “the triad of fashion.”

The second component is a program in accessory design that’s “been developed as a minor and now will become a major in the fall for undergraduates and graduate students.”

The third component is a fashion marketing and merchandising program that will deal with the way luxury items are advertised and packaged for consumers.

“A lot of our students in design end up in marketing,” said Fischer, so having such a program is a logical extension of the fashion- and accessory-design fields.

Courses in fashion marketing and merchandising have been developed and proposed, he said, with the program expected to be offered beginning in the fall of 2009.

Plans also call for a minor in scientific illustration to be launched this autumn; for an expansion of the school’s museum-studies program; and for the addition of a minor program in arts administration that has been approved and should go into effect in the fall.

One other program, characterized as “rather amazing” by Fischer, deals with equine studies and stems from SCAD’s involvement in equestrian events and its recent creation of an equestrian center on U.S. Highway 17 in South Carolina just north of Savannah.

“The center has provided us with arguably the number-one equestrian facility of any college in the country,” said Fischer, and it has led to an “interest in the management of equestrian businesses.”

Equine studies will be a degree program that will involve the management of equestrian facilities and events such as horse shows, and plans call for it to be offered in the fall of 2009.

Embodiments of SCAD creativity that are more visible to the general public than academic programs are the many events staged by the college, in particular its Sidewalk Arts Festival, which features a chalk-drawing competition on the walkways of Forsyth Park; its International Festival, which celebrates the diversity of the school’s international arts community via traditional music, dance, art and food; and the Savannah Film Festival.

The first of those two are held in the springtime; the 11th edition of the Film Festival — which features independent, innovative and influential film from around the world, as well as workshops, panel discussions and presentations of well-known visiting artists and filmmakers — will be held during Oct. 25-Nov. 1.

Several of SCAD’s academic departments offer lecture series that are free and open to the public.  Among them are year-long series on architectural history, art history, and innovative teaching and learning, and there’s also an annual visiting writers series.