1st 4-Year Class to Be Graduated at Art Institute : Education: The Laguna Beach school, which opened on the Festival of Arts grounds in 1962, will award bachelor of fine arts degrees to 15 seniors.

Fifteen seniors will receive their bachelor of fine arts degrees in Friday’s commencement at the Art Institute of Southern California--the school’s first four-year graduating class.

The school, which opened on the grounds of the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts in 1962 and moved to its current location in 1977, was accredited by the National Assn. of Schools of Art and Design in 1985, making it the only private art institute in Orange County eligible to award a bachelor of fine arts degree.

Two bachelor’s degrees were awarded last year, but this is the first four-year graduating class.

Roger Armstrong, a local artist and cartoonist who is a founding instructor of the college, will offer the keynote speech at the 3 p.m. ceremony. He will also receive an honorary doctorate. Nancy Snyder, chairwoman of the board of trustees, and outgoing institute president William Otton will present degrees to the graduating seniors.

The institute, set in rustic Laguna Canyon, recently raised protests from local environmental groups with announcement of a planned expansion, but school officials said the alarm is premature. Russell E. Lewis, vice president of academic affairs, said that several expansion options are under consideration but that school trustees and administration favor a plan to “grow slowly through an evolutionary process.”

Lewis said the school would eventually like to add a combined lecture hall, student center and library, along with several small studio buildings, on its present property over the next several years. “It was never intended to be an overnight, one- or two-year process,” Lewis said.

The school has 105 full-time-equivalent students now, and Lewis said it could accommodate about 150 without any expansion. School officials would like to grow to about 200 students, but Lewis emphasized that they will work to address environmental concerns before finalizing any expansion plans.

“The canyon is an issue that we at the college are very sensitive to,” Lewis said. “We have students who would be the first to protest” if school expansion threatened the canyon.

The 1990 art institute graduates are:

Ann Bowen, Irvine; Richard Burmood, Denver; Tim Centeno, Laguna Beach; Dawn Demoli, Steamboat Springs, Colo.; Sharon Inbar, Israel; Kristen Kramer, Sylvania, Ohio; Mark Murray, Redlands; Brenda Rangel, Lakewood.

Also Jennifer Reed, Charlotte, N.C.; Suzanne Chonette, Bath, N.Y.; Liz Reilly, Cumberland, R.I.; Helen Zeughauser, St. Albens, W. Va.; Diane Kane, La Canada; Gerald Silva, Berkeley; Catherine Cooper, Laguna Beach.