Cornish College of the Arts president announces his retirement

Sergei P. Tschernisch, president of Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts, says he will retire from his post at the end of the 2010-11 academic year.

An ebullient, vigorous and respected arts educator who turned 70 this year, Tschernisch assumed his Cornish job in 1994 and has significantly expanded the campus, enrollment and reputation of a once-sleepy private school that focuses on degree programs in the visual and performing arts.

In recent years, Tschernisch boldly instigated and presided over a period of remarkable expansion of Cornish. Enrollment has swelled from 500 students in 1994 to about 800 this year. And the school's big plans to add and modernize facilities were realized, despite limited dollars.

In a prepared statement, Cornish board chairman John Gordon Hill praised Tschernisch's "vision and energy," and termed him "the most influential figure in the history of this institution since [founder] Nellie Cornish herself."

Chatting in his light, airy office in the main Denny Triangle-area building Cornish acquired in 2002, the avuncular Tschernisch said he is leaving because he's fulfilled much of his mandate at Cornish. "When I came, I set out to do a number of things, and I think we've been able to accomplish most of them."

Determined to move Cornish out of cramped, scattered quarters on Capitol Hill, where the school was started in 1914, Tschernisch spearheaded a capital drive to purchase and renovate six buildings on the edge of downtown.

The project is costing the college $87.7 million, with about $42 million raised so far through gifts, pledges and sales of some of the college's Capitol Hill properties. A separate, $7 million fund drive, to add to the school's endowment and develop the campus further, has raised about $5 million.

Tschernisch also lifted full-time faculty salaries to near-parity with similar colleges ("the pay was woefully low when I arrived"), and broadened the curriculum.

"The training of an artist is also the education of an artist," Tschernisch said. "A student may be a great dancer, but you can't ignore educating them in the sciences and humanities also."

Jim Tune, president and CEO of Seattle's ArtsFund, said he views Tschernisch as "the savior of Cornish College. He's been transformational. ... It's just a totally different place under his leadership, a much better place."

Keenly aware of Cornish's ties to such seminal modern artists as choreographer (and onetime faculty member) Martha Graham and composer John Cage (a former Cornish student), Tschernisch kept the school "very much involved in the real world of the arts. This has never been an ivory tower."

Born in Kiev, Russia, in 1939, Tschernisch came to the U.S. at age 3. He attended San Francisco State University and Stanford University and trained as an actor and director at the seminal San Francisco Actors Workshop.

"I never intended to be an academic," he said, with a chuckle. But colleagues got him involved in the inception of the Disney-funded arts school, California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, where he spent 12 years on staff.

He went on to work at other educational institutions, and before joining Cornish was dean of the arts school at Loyola-Marymount College in Southern California.

Tschernisch's announcement marks another leadership shift at a prime Seattle arts institution. Mimi Gates recently retired as head of Seattle Arts Museum; Bartlett Sher will leave his top job at Intiman Theatre at the end of 2010; and Gerard Schwarz is slated to retire as music director-chief conductor of the Seattle Symphony in 2011.

Tschernisch plans to stay in Seattle with actress wife, Kate Purwin, and their twin 8-year-old sons Sigmund and Sasha. He has no set future plans, but hopes to direct and perform in theater again.

"I adore this place and am proud of what we've done," he said fondly of Cornish. "And as I tell each graduating class, when you leave the womb here and go into the big world it can be scary, but exciting too. I'm staying open to all possibilities."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com

Cornish College of the Arts purchased and renovated six buildings on the edge of downtown for its move from Capitol Hill, not five as this story originally reported on July 2, 2009.