Spring 2022 Community Announcements

Dear students, faculty, and staff,

Today the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion. This is monumental news. For many in our community, it is devastating news. For others in our community, it is a cause for celebration. For yet uninterested others, the news seems inconsequential or quotidian. That our community is comprised of such differences of opinion is unsurprising. We are a diverse, global community. It stands to reason that our ideas and beliefs are not and will not always be in accord. Nor should they be.

But disagreeing does not mean we cannot and should not coexist. The opposite is true, particularly for artists, designers, and knowledge-makers. Because we disagree—and only when we discuss, engage, and test those differences—our work, our art, and our designs are made stronger, more dynamic, more complex, and impactful.

As a society, we don’t often discuss our differences of opinion as openly, regularly, healthily, or with as much curiosity as we might. But how we harbor our differences of opinion can be the difference between fostering a community in which respect, dignity, and heterogeneous thinking are the norm and a community that silences, shuns, ignores, or demeans.

It strikes me that it is at precisely times like this when we should reaffirm our commitment to not only being in productive community with each other despite our differences—profound as they sometimes are—but also a commitment to actively seeking to understand another’s point of view. In seeking to understand, I believe, we deepen our knowledge, fortitude, and pathways for change-making. What I’m talking about is not abstract but concrete.

So, in light of that belief and to help our RISD community develop more means of actively and immediately engaging across differences, I seek your ideas for specific community-driven program structures and initiatives that my office might support. If you have suggestions to enable engagement across profound social, ethical, moral, and intellectual differences—whether it is this debate or others—that are programmatic in nature and fueled by your interests and current events, please follow this link and share your thoughts. I am asking for ideas about structures, programs, and initiatives, not topics.

When we return from the summer, members of my team will have synthesized your suggestions and begun to develop structured ways to enable us here at RISD to speak across our differences productively and with the goal of mutual understanding.

In the immediate term, however, and concerning today’s momentous decision by the Supreme Court, please know that if you need support, the below resources are available to you.

I look forward to our future conversations, RISD. Take good care. Sincerely,

Crystal Williams | she/hers
President

Student Support

Counseling and Psychological Services 401-454-6637
counserv@risd.edu healthandwellness.risd.edu

Employee Support

Coastline EAP, Employee Assistance Confidential counseling and referral/resources 24-hours a day at 800-445-1195

Dear RISD Faculty, Staff and Students,

I write to you today with an update on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 and 2023 budgets. As you know, RISD experienced significant financial challenges due to the pandemic in FY20 and FY21, requiring everyone to assist in minimizing the impact to RISD. Your efforts allowed RISD to continue operating throughout the pandemic and limit the financial impact to RISD resulting in a combined $12 million budget deficit for those two years. FY22 has been stronger, leaving us with a positive year-end projection of $8 million. This helps to counter, in part, the concerning impact of the previous year's $12 million deficit but still does not cover the combined deficit of the prior two years. RISD will need to continue to manage its resources carefully in the years ahead.

The reasons for the FY22 result surplus are many, including 1) student enrollment surpassed budget expectations, landing at 2,576 for the fall semester, 2) the staff vacancy rate was close to 13% for the year resulting in savings in salary lines, 3) non-personnel spending was lower than anticipated and 4) a bond refinancing in the fall resulted in over $1 million of savings. We were able to achieve this result while:

keeping the cost of attendance increase at 2.5%,
increasing financial aid to a record level,
restoring salaries and retirement contributions, providing salary increases, and seeing no increase to medical insurance premiums for our faculty and staff, and
restoring investments in facilities deferred facilities maintenance, technology infrastructure, and strategic initiatives.
On June 3, the RISD Board of Trustees approved the operating budget for FY23. The budget assumes record enrollment of 2,626 students, a 2.3% cost of attendance increase (the lowest since 1975), a 7.2% increase in financial aid, revenue growth in most categories, restoration of most non-personnel expense categories (factoring in inflation), and an increase in facilities deferred maintenance and technology infrastructure spending. The planned budget enables us to continue to make investments in our strategic initiatives including social equity and inclusion priorities and revenue generating activities such as institutional advancement, continuing education, expanded education, research and conferences and events. It also includes $3 million to address the deficit and allow us to continue to recover from FY20 and FY21.

In addition, as a result of market conditions, I am thrilled that we are able to include in the budget a 4% salary increase for non-union staff and a 0% increase in medical premiums for faculty and staff. The 4% increase is the largest RISD has been able to provide in several years. It may not be an amount we are able to replicate in future years due to increasing pressure on revenues and expenses, but I am so happy that we can do it this year to acknowledge employees for their great work.

We expect the coming year to be another exciting but unpredictable one. We will continue to monitor the impact of inflation on RISD, COVID-19 will continue to need to be managed, and we expect that the labor market will remain competitive. However, we are in a position of relative strength compared to many higher education institutions thanks to strong enrollment, the opportunity for future revenue growth, and incredibly dedicated faculty and staff.

As we look beyond FY23, we expect to experience continued pressures concerning cost of attendance and access to RISD, now further exacerbated by inflation. We will continue to work to keep the rate of increases of cost of attendance as low as possible, while also growing financial aid, and continuing to invest in our people, facilities, technology and strategic plan. In order to do that, we must be aggressive in growing non-tuition revenue and finding ways to minimize the cost of what we do. I look forward to working with you on how we will do that work.

Congratulations on a great year. I hope you have a wonderful summer. Best regards,

Crystal Williams | she/hers
President

Dear students, faculty and staff,

Since the announcement of Provost Kleinman’s departure this summer, I have been developing a plan for the interim and long-term leadership of academic affairs. My focus has been two-fold: ensuring we have a smooth immediate transition and preparing us to find the best next leader to take us into the future.

My first priority was to identify an exceptional interim provost. After speaking with potential candidates and seeking input from Cabinet, Deans Council and the Faculty Steering Committee, I am thrilled to announce that Anais Arpy Missakian, Pevaroff-Cohn Family Endowed Chair in Textiles will become RISD’s interim provost effective July 15 for one year or until such time as a new provost is hired and begins. To ensure a smooth transition, Professor Missakian will begin shadowing Provost Kleinman on June 1. As a long time and highly respected faculty leader, Anais Missakian has garnered the broad support of her peers and is ideally positioned to immediately step into the interim provost position, leading Academic Affairs at this pivotal moment in our institution's history. Professor Missakian has held multiple institutional, divisional, and departmental leadership positions, including serving as Dean of Fine Arts (2011-2014), Department Head and Professor of Textiles (2005-2011; 2014-2020), and Graduate Program Director (2000-2005, 2020 to present). She will work closely with Provost Kleinman over the coming months to prepare to serve as our interim leader.

My second priority was to lay the groundwork to launch an international search for RISD’s next provost. To manage the search, we have retained Sheryl Ash at Isaacson Miller. Sheryl and her team have led several recent RISD searches, including for my position and Provost Kleinman’s. Through those searches Sheryl and her team have gotten to know our institution and priorities well. They also bring a depth of knowledge about both the higher education and arts and culture sectors. I have every confidence that Sheryl and her team will be able to expeditiously launch this search and help us identify a strong pool of candidates.

We will launch the search for RISD’s next provost this fall. In preparation, one of my immediate next steps is to seek community input to inform the position profile. That will happen this semester by way of a brief survey and in the beginning of fall by way of listening sessions. I am also focused this semester on forming the search committee. As in the past, the committee will be constituted with a combination of community members that I appoint. The Faculty Steering Committee will recommend faculty members for the committee to me based on a nomination process that they will run. In the early fall, through a consultative process, we will develop additional parameters for the search, including how candidates will engage with members of the community.

While we can’t predict exactly how long the search will take, my hope is that we will welcome our next provost in summer 2023. I would like to thank Professor Missakian for stepping in to lead us in the year ahead, along with the strong team of deans who will be in place for the coming academic year.

Dear students, faculty and staff,

I write with bittersweet news that Vice President & Associate Provost for Social Equity & Inclusion and Professor of Literary Arts and Studies Matthew Shenoda will be leaving RISD on June 30 to become Professor and Chair of the Department of Literary Arts at Brown University. As a fellow poet, I personally understand what a tremendous opportunity this is for Vice President Shenoda and I can say that this news will bring great excitement to many in the field of poetry and literary arts.

At Brown, Vice President Shenoda will lead a historically significant department at an exciting and pivotal moment in our field, and he will join a cohort of new arts chairs across Brown’s campus to further deepen the arts there. After four years in our administration and many previous years of working in higher education administration, Vice President Shenoda is returning to his artistic roots at an ideal time in his career. As many know, he has continued to do significant work in his artistic practice while helping lead RISD’s SEI efforts and his newest book will be released this fall. This unique opportunity at Brown will allow Vice President Shenoda to fully turn his attention to his own research, writing and editorial work, and to focus on teaching and doing the work about which he is so deeply passionate.

I am grateful for the time Vice President Shenoda has spent propelling RISD’s commitment to social equity and inclusion, and to advancing our structures in this vein. Since joining our community in 2018 as our inaugural Vice President and Associate Provost for SEI, he has created the Center for SEI and the SEI Faculty Research Fellows program with in it; he has, with the Dean of Faculty and many community members, helped develop and support the Teaching and Learning Lab, the Decolonial Teaching in Action course for faculty, and extensive curricular and public programming; and he has also broadened engagement with students as it relates to SEI by bringing an associate dean focused on students into the Center for SEI, creating several SEI Student Advocate positions, and continuing to develop the Office of Intercultural Student Engagement. The latter has included expanding Project Thrive to a four-year program and launching the First-Generation to College Pre-Orientation Program in collaboration with both academic and student affairs. Vice President Shenoda has also helped expand the Office of Title IX + Institutional Discrimination to address all forms of bias discrimination in our community. In addition, he has worked closely with the dean of faculty and provost’s office to help guide and develop more robust systems to address diversity in hiring, curriculum development, and policy across the institution, including spearheading the cluster hire for the Schiller Family Professorships in Race in Art and Design.

I share this lengthy list of accomplishments to not only spotlight Vice President Shenoda’s accomplishments but also to celebrate and remind us how much RISD has advanced during his tenure. Please join me in congratulating Matthew on his new role at Brown and stay tuned for an invitation to come together to celebrate his impact on our community.

I am working on a leadership plan for our Center for Social Equity and Inclusion and our SEI efforts across campus and will be back in touch soon to share details. While there is considerable transition underway, my commitment, as well as the Board of Trustees’, to further bolstering and amplifying our focus on social equity and inclusion is unwavering. I am looking toward the dynamic year ahead with excitement about continuing to galvanize our collective institutional goals.

Dear RISD Community,

With deep sadness, I write to let you know that Hillary Ginsberg, a valued member of the RISD Dining and Catering team, passed away unexpectedly last week.

Service details are not yet available. For those who would like to send a card or message to Hillary’s family, Cassie Goryl in Human Resources will collect and forward them.

As we process this loss, support resources are available. Students may schedule an appointment with a therapist in CAPS at 401-454-6637 or counserv@risd.edu. For faculty or staff, Coastline EAP, our Employee Assistance provider, offers confidential counseling and referral/resource services 24 hours a day at 800-445-1195.

Our deepest sympathies are with Hillary’s family, co-workers and friends during this difficult time.

May you all be well. Take good care.

Dear students, faculty and staff,

I write today about an upcoming leadership transition. Provost Kent Kleinman will be leaving RISD on July 15 to become the faculty director of the Brown Arts Institute.

At Brown, Provost Kleinman will direct operations and development of all Brown Arts Institute programs that engage members of the university’s community, including the six academic departments under the institute’s umbrella: music, theatre arts and performance studies, modern culture and media, visual art, history of art and architecture, and literary arts. Provost Kleinman will also serve as a professor of the practice in the Department of History of Art and Architecture.

As you all know and I have seen in my short time here, Provost Kleinman has been an exceptional leader for our institution. RISD is a stronger place thanks to his tireless dedication to advancing our academic mission. While Provost Kleiman will be greatly missed, I am thrilled for him to take on this exciting opportunity at Brown and I look forward to collaborating with him in his new role up the hill.

Provost Kleinman’s departure coincides with other leadership changes in academic affairs. We are lucky to have several extraordinary faculty members stepping into interim dean roles, joining our other exceptional academic leaders. I thank them in advance for their partnership and expertise. While change can be daunting, I am confident, with this group of leaders at the helm, that we can ensure a smooth transition as we look boldly toward the future together.

In the weeks ahead I will work closely with the Provost to develop a transition plan, which I will share with the community once final. We will also soon announce an opportunity to celebrate his time at RISD. In the meantime, please join me in congratulating Provost Kleinman!

Dear RISD students, faculty and staff,

Good afternoon! I am thrilled to write to you today as I begin my first week as RISD’s 18th president and as we embark upon the second half of the spring semester.

Being here and among you feels wonderful. I began my first day as President on Friday in the presence of so many who joined us at the welcome event in What Cheer Garage. I want to especially thank the Facilities crew who cleared the garage of equipment so that our community could gather so joyfully. I also want to thank the Catering team and other members of Auxiliary Services for their outstanding work. The cupcakes and brownies were divine! And, I was touched by the generous and warm welcome messages so many posted to the wall display. Thank you, all.

It was thrilling to meet so many students and faculty and staff. There was a great deal of joy and optimism in the air, buoying and reflective of RISD’s past and, importantly, our future. Some of you started to share what brought you here, what has kept you here, and what excites you about our future. I love hearing those stories and your vision. They help me understand RISD.

I have already learned that RISD is a community of distinct and necessary talents, each importantly supporting our excellence. Each individual, team and department contributes to our collective work, which is to, among other things, educate and amplify art and design and creatives, and to do so in a community that values human heterogeneity as a source of mutual power, insightfulness and creativity. 

Many have asked me what I hope to accomplish as president. The first thing I want to do is learn more. So, guided by the excellent work of the Presidential Introduction and Engagement Committee, to whom I extend my heartfelt gratitude, my immediate focus is to immerse myself in our community and learn as much as I can from each of you. I hope you will be honest and forthcoming—tell me what RISD means to you, what you find joyful about this place and what opportunities you see.

In mid-May, I’ll communicate details concerning the first of several listening sessions. Because of the excitement of this time of year at RISD, we’ll begin the sessions in the summer, and they’ll run through the fall. They will be designed to seek input from across our community. I envision these sessions as structured conversations—sometimes open to all constituencies and sometimes more narrowly focused on just one. The information we gather from you during these sessions will help me better understand RISD and begin to identify an exciting, collectively derived, and informed vision for our future. Thank you in advance for your patience because learning does take time.

So let’s get started. If you see me out and about, please introduce yourself. If you’d like to see what I’m up to, visit risd.edu and follow RISD’s social media accounts. If you have a thought or idea, drop me a note at president@risd.edu. You can also direct questions and suggestions to Becky Ebeling (bebeling@risd.edu), who serves as my interim Chief of Staff while I determine how best to staff my office.

As I said, I had the pleasure of meeting many of you at Friday’s gathering, and I am looking forward to a week of many more wonderful conversations. The Presidential Introduction and Engagement Committee is graciously hosting a second welcome event for me, that unfortunately must be postponed until next week due to weather. I would love to see you there next Wednesday, April 13 from 11 am to 2 pm in Market Square. (Please RSVP if you plan to attend on April 13.)