Meet Dolev Bluvstein (CCS Physics student)

Editor's note: We are featuring "CCS stories" throughout the College's 50th Anniversary. Some stories will be personal stories and others will be written in the third person. Check the Anniversary page regularly to make sure you don't miss out and make sure to submit your story.

'Twas the day before Fall quarter of my Freshman year. Four friends and I walked for over an hour to get to the CCS building to get our keys. We got to the front doors at about 5:15, brimming and exploding with excitement. But even though we were so excited to go into the CCS building, our new home and center for intellectual development, the front doors were locked. We turned around, with our heads down, disappointed.

Suddenly, we hear a creak, and we turn around to see the door swing open with a Dean Bruce Tiffney standing in the doorway, with the sun beaming over his head. He smiles his big smile and grins his big grin and says:

“Come on in.”

I will never forget that image. That was easily the most symbolic thing that could have possibly happened 7 hours before I officially started my intellectual journey at the College of Creative Studies. If, at midnight, Einstein and Feynman rode down from Heaven on College of Creative Studies White Horses with “Welcome to College” written on textbooks and science equipment, then yeah, sure, maybe that would have been more symbolic.

He wasn’t inviting us into a building. He was inviting us into a home: into an intellectual hub that seeks to create knowledge and discover the world around us, in all its intricate details. The sun was beaming behind him as he reached out and offered his hand to help us out of Plato’s cave.

Bruce Tiffney is no longer dean, but Interim Dean Kathy Foltz has morphed into that role. Deans, students, and staff will come and go; new CCS buildings may even come and go, but the home inside CCS will continue to morph around its central principles of creation and discovery. In my time at CCS I have had the privilege of a wonderful adviser, Tengiz Bibilashvili, but even more I have had the privilege of incredible friends who have used their own interpretations of "creative studies" and diversified my own.