Hi neighbors,

Happy Spring! It’s hard to believe that we have just passed the one year mark of teaching, learning and working within the uncertainty and restrictions of a global pandemic. However, RISD students, faculty, and staff continue to find new ways of making and engaging. In fact, the institution is already exploring what post-pandemic life will look like for our RISD community in the months and years ahead. This means thinking about how can we take the lessons we have learned over the past year to make positive change. How we can adapt our curricula to incorporate technology in new and inventive ways while also while returning to hands-on making and learning?  How can we evolve to support flexible working to help employees have better balance while still fostering inter-personal connection and collaboration?  I will share more in future emails! 
 
In the meantime, below you will find updates about campus activities and events over the next few weeks. As always, my goal is for this correspondence is to keep you well informed. So, if you have any questions or concerns, or if you would like me to address a certain topic, I would encourage you to reach out. Do you know others who might be interested in receiving periodic updates from RISD? Please feel free to forward this email and encourage them to join the email list!
 
Sincerely,
Bethany Costello
Director of Community Engagement

Commencement 

On June 5, RISD will celebrate the achievements and perseverance of 403 undergraduate and 212 graduate students as they receive their degrees. The speaking program will be entirely virtual, followed by an in-person processional and degree conferral along South Water Street. Artist and designer Virgil Abloh will deliver the keynote address and receive an Honorary Degree along with architect Elizabeth Diller, OBEY Giant founder Shepard Fairey 92 IL and playwright Lynn Nottage. RISD will host the in-person portion with the upmost regard to safety, and in communication with state and city officials as well as you, our neighbors.
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COVID Update

As of Wednesday, April 21, the institution had a total of 35 positive cases out of 14,831 tests administered since the spring semester started. RISD’s covid.risd.edu website is frequently updated to share current information about RISD’s health and safety protocol and planning. All students, faculty and staff are required to follow extensive health and safety protocol, including weekly or biweekly surveillance testing to maintain access to campus buildings.
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Fall Planning 

RISD is simultaneously planning for two possible fall scenarios: “near normal” and “vaccine failure.” In a recent communication to the RISD community, President Rosanne Somerson said, “We are encouraged by positive trends and hopeful that our fall semester will look as close to normal as possible, but we’re also preparing for unexpected challenges.” Decision making, she adds, has been—and will continue to be—guided by three primary goals: community health and safety, academic integrity, and financial viability. Additionally, in an effort to keep our community safe, RISD will mandate vaccines for students and strongly encourage it for employees. The institution will offer a RISD specific vaccine clinic next week. 
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Presidential Search Update 

The Presidential search has now entered its next phase, focused on identifying potential candidates, assessing their potential and building the candidate pool over the next six weeks. This will be, by design, a quiet period, during which it is unlikely that there will be updates to share. In a message to the campus community RISD’s Board of Trustees Chair Michael Spalter reaffirmed the Board’s commitment to allowing this search to take as long as is needed to find the best next leader, noting the search committee is expecting the process to extend past President Somerson’s retirement in June, and they will likely identify an interim president in May.
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RISD Announces Land Acknowledgment 

After two years of research and relationship building, RISD has developed a land acknowledgment for institution-wide use, intended to evolve over time as relationships and contexts change. Members of the RISD Museum’s Americas Research Initiative—Mariani Lefas-Tetenes, Gina Borromeo, Amy Pickworth—led this effort and conducted research, working with John Brown (Narragansett), Lorén Spears (Niantic/Narragansett), and Sherenté Mishitashin Harris (BRDD 23 PT, Niantic/Narragansett). RISD is working to build real, authentic relationships with Indigenous people of the Narragansett Tribe in Rhode Island, and critically interrogating the fraught history and structures of the college and museum in order to take real action to support Indigenous communities.
 
Land Acknowledgment Text
Rhode Island School of Design is built on what is now called College Hill, part of the ancestral homelands of the Narragansett Nation, the only federally recognized tribe in Rhode Island. Indigenous people from many nations—near and far—live, study and work in Providence today. RISD community members are committed to actively addressing the many violent legacies of colonialism in our daily work. The amplification of Native voices and histories is crucial to rectifying the destructive past, and we gratefully acknowledge the ongoing critical contributions of Indigenous people across our state, region and nation.
 

Echoes of Jim Crow – An Interactive Campus Exhibit

Don’t You Sit Down: Shades of Jim Crow, 1960 –, is a public, interactive on-campus exhibition by @risdintar that brings to life the civil rights movement and ongoing struggle against racism and segregation in the US. It is on view at the RISD Museum North Main St. entrance and in Market Square. Using video, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, the exhibition focuses on the Greensboro, NC Woolworth sit-in and moves through time to illuminate America’s struggle against segregation and highlight historic activists like Rosa Parks and Ida B. Wells but also citizens whose stories have rarely been told. Although the Museum itself remains closed to the general public, the exhibit is viewable from outside and accessible with your smart phone.
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Upcoming events open to the community - Read more 

Virtual Lecture – Thursday, May 6, 4:30pm
Peter McCoy | Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing and Working with Fungi
McCoy will present on his book, also titled Radical Mycology, and the development of Mycologos, a platform that produces educational materials that enable individuals and organizations to readily apply the arts and sciences of mycology throughout their lives and livelihoods. As we examine parallels of culture and mycology, we will discuss the ethos of citizen science and civic research, as community-based projects expand the dialogues of mycological futures. Register here
 
Community Conversation – Wednesday, May 12, 6-8pm
Community conversation | African Food and Culture
The African Alliance of Rhode Island invites the RISD community to a conversation about urban agriculture and a virtual visit to its Bami Farm in Providence. Members of RISD’s Architecture department will be on hand to present their 2020 collaborative greenhouse project with the African Alliance, and we’ll also discuss the cultural, community and health benefits of growing. Register here