Rhode Island School of Design

Students who come to Rhode Island School of Design (RISD, pronounced riz-dee) join an intense creative artists’ community that has been internationally respected for its excellent education for more than 130 years. This dynamic atmosphere—created among people with similar interests, talents, and focus—is frequently noted by many sources as a distinguishing feature of RISD, which has been cited consistently as a leading visual arts college in numerous college guides and surveys.

RISD’s 2,260 students, coming from more than forty-five nations around the world, find an extensive range of sixteen majors in areas of architecture, design, and the fine arts. This diverse choice of disciplines creates an enriched environment of ideas and personal directions. Students find balance in the curriculum between focus on their major interest, experimentation in related studios, and innovative cross-disciplinary study. It is a frequent happening at RISD for a student in one studio major to work jointly with a classmate from another department on a single project, broadening understanding of the creative opportunities between disciplines. Digital technology continues to expand the range of tools available to artists and designers, and RISD now has more than 400 computer systems and related equipment available in twenty departmental and specialized labs. A number of departments now assign each student a powerful laptop computer with specialized software, running on a wireless campus network. There are a number of real-world connections to industry at RISD, involving research design studios sponsored by NASA, Sikorsky, Rubbermaid, and Nissan and innovative courses taught jointly with other colleges, such as the product development collaboration between RISD’s Industrial Design Department and M.B.A. students from MIT.

The environment of the college is greatly enhanced by the advanced projects and research undertaken by 400 graduate students in seventeen graduate programs. RISD’s graduate programs are widely respected and frequently cited in surveys as leaders in their visual disciplines.

RISD’s 400 studio faculty members are among the leaders in the visual arts, passionate about the fulfillment that the arts bring to the individual and the role of the arts and design in society. They include designers of products found in most homes, award-winning authors and illustrators, painters and sculptors whose work can be seen in major museums and galleries, and acclaimed architects, filmmakers, and textile artists.

Liberal arts form an important component of each student’s study as well, and RISD invests notably in the quality of its academic course offerings. There are 28 full-time faculty members in liberal arts departments, all holding the highest degree in their discipline, and 55 part-time faculty members who specialize in certain areas; this number and quality of academic faculty members is unusual for a visual arts college and results in a varied selection of more than 210 courses yearly. Students may choose to enrich the basic liberal arts requirements by pursuing a concentration in art history; English; or history, philosophy, and social sciences. RISD students may also enroll for courses at our neighbor, Brown University.

RISD is located in Providence, described in numerous media stories as a “Renaissance City” and chronicled recently in Money magazine as “the best place to live in the eastern United States.” Home to students from a number of colleges, Providence offers numerous social and cultural opportunities and an active visual and performing arts community.

Comprehensive career planning support is available to all students and alumni in the Alumni and Career Services Office. Seminars on a wide array of topics that are critical to artists and their career development, individual career counseling, on-campus recruiting, and online listings of available jobs, internships, and fellowships are among the services available. Students are encouraged to participate in professional internships and, on average, more than 60 percent of graduates have experienced at least one internship opportunity. Students have interned recently at WGBE, Cannondale, Walt Disney, Pixar, and Pentagram. RISD surveys all graduates one year after the completion of their studies and, consistently, about 91 percent are employed in their discipline or a related art or design field.

RISD alumni consistently win major competitions, prestigious awards, and recognition for their works in the arts, industry, and education. David Weisner and Chris van Allsburg have won the nationally acclaimed Caldecott Medal for their children’s books. Designer Nicole Miller is noted for her collections of women’s apparel and men’s accessories. Roz Chast’s books of her own cartoons (featured often in The New Yorker) and Henry Horenstein’s photography books have won numerous awards. Seth MacFarlane is the creator of the animated sitcom, Family Guy. Architect Deborah Berke is recognized for her work in a variety of residential and commercial settings. Glass artists Toots Zynsky and Howard Ben Tre, painter Kara Walker, and filmmakers Martha Coolidge and Gus van Sant are but a few of the successes among RISD’s 16,000 alumni. In 2007, four RISD alums were awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, bringing the total to eight RISE recipients of this prestigious award over the last ten years. Profiles of many others are available on RISD’s Web site at http://www.risd.edu.

Program Facilities

RISD’s facilities consist of forty buildings with more than 1,000,000 square feet of space, including specialized studio spaces and equipment; access to studio spaces, with upperclass students often having a private studio space; sixteen residence halls offering a variety of living environments; the Museum of Art, with more than 85,000 objects frequently used for study purposes by faculty members and students; a library with more than 130,000 volumes, including artist’s and rare books, an image research collection of 470,000 clippings and photographs and 160,000 slides; and the Nature Lab with 80,000 objects available for study and research.

Faculty and Resident Artists

RISD has 480 faculty members, 145 of them full-time and readily available to students on campus. More than 200 artists and guest critics visit the campus on average each year. Among recent visitors were Janine Antoni, sculptor; Philip Glass, composer/musician; Pat Olezko, performance artist; David Byrne, musician; Todd Oldham, designer; David Hickey, art critic; James Rosenquist, painter; Gore Vidal, author; and Dale Chihuly, glass artist.

Special Programs

The European Honors Program allows students to study in Rome for their junior or senior year. Study-abroad exchange agreements are in place with fifty other art and design colleges around the world. Wintersession term provides unique study opportunities each year, including travel-abroad courses (recently to Italy, Switzerland, Paris, Cuba, Ghana, New Zealand, and Mexico). Mobility program are available with thirty-two other arts colleges. RISD also offers a Summer Studies Program, with courses designed to meet the needs of beginning to advanced students. These courses run from two to six weeks, many offer college credit, and all are taught by distinguished teachers drawn from the School’s regular faculty members or visiting experts. Summer Studies also offers a study-abroad option.

Application Procedures

Deadline--freshmen: February 15; transfers: March 15. Notification date--freshmen: April 1; transfers: April 25. Required: essay, high school transcript, college transcript(s) for transfer students, portfolio, SAT or ACT test scores, 3 original drawings. Recommended: minimum 3.0 high school GPA, 3 letters of recommendation. Auditions held 1 time. the submission of slides may be substituted for portfolios (slides, prints, or digital files required).

Rhode Island School of Design

Program Facilities

Faculty and Resident Artists

Student Exhibit Opportunities

Special Programs

Application Procedures

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