RISD’s 2025–26 Academic Year Begins with Hope and Inspiration

Students, staff, and faculty got to their feet to applaud Provost Touba Ghadessi’s moving welcome at this year’s Convocation ceremony in the RISD Auditorium. After introducing academic leaders to the crowd, Ghadessi spoke about a pair of paintings that once belonged to her late father and their powerful call to action against despotism, ignorance, and cultural erasure. 

“He talked about them often,” Ghadessi recalled, “telling me that the flowers in the painting would always rise and break through the stone because of their strong roots and relentless determination. To my father, these paintings affirmed that human dignity should center us, that we too could rise and break the cruel forces of despotism.”

“You belong to a collective movement of hope,” she told new and returning students. “Here the core of who you are will inspire and anchor you as you create, fail, get back up, and create again.”

Ghadessi, President Crystal Williams, and RISD Museum Director Tsugumi Maki addressed first-year students along with new grad students and returning students preparing to embark on a year of discovery, experimentation, and risk taking. Williams’ speech focused on the notion of community and the role of the artist in imagining and designing a brighter future. 

“Urgent problems require innovative solutions,” Williams said. “Artists and designers fight tyranny and injustice through their work, provoking thought and helping us connect to our humanity.”

Maki’s remarks also reflected on the connections between art, design, and community, and she noted that a “spirit of collaboration extends across campus.” She invited students to find new perspectives by visiting the RISD Museum and shared an insider tip, welcoming them to avoid the notorious trek up College Hill by grabbing a Chace Center elevator and cutting through the third-floor museum galleries.

The inspirational event followed a seamless and sunny weekend of student move-ins supported by dedicated RISD staff members and student volunteers. Students took part in a variety of orientation sessions, a dance party in RISD’s Beaux-Arts-style Fleet Library, a picnic at Tillinghast Place especially for grad students, board games on Prospect Terrace, and President Williams’ annual “hello-goodbye” speech for students and their loved ones in the First Baptist Church in America.

Inside the 250-year-old building, Williams welcomed the Class of 2029, including new international students who overcame unprecedented challenges to secure student visas and follow their dreams to study at RISD. She noted that current RISD students represent 63 countries around the globe, creating an international community of “makers, visionaries, doers, innovators, and creatives that spans religions, cultures, languages, genders, and belief systems.” 

“One of the most important lessons you will learn while you’re here is how to iterate,” she added. “You’ll learn to make a first pass and then a second pass, seek feedback and revise, adding and subtracting as necessary again and again until the piece you originally envisioned—only better—emerges.”

After her address, students and families spilled out into the sunshine for a catered reception, a lot of hugging, and—of course—selfies with President Williams and their new community of enterprising makers and thinkers.

Top image: Provost Touba Ghadessi welcomes new and returning students at Convocation 2025. Photo by Jaime Marland

Simone Solondz
September 4, 2025