The Department of Industrial Design, in the Division of Architecture and Design, at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), invites applications for full-time faculty appointment at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor, to commence in fall 2025. Rank will be dependent on professional status and teaching experience.
RISD recognizes principles of social equity, inclusion, and diversity as fundamental to its academic mission as an art and design school. We understand these principles to require ongoing attention to difference and expansion of the forms of knowledge from which our curricula originate. RISD is engaged in the collective work of institutional transformation and would value applicants whose pedagogical and professional experiences have prepared them to foster equitable teaching and learning environments. We encourage applicants whose teaching and professional work (creative practice and/or academic scholarship) centers on bodies of knowledge from historically underrepresented communities. We are eager to welcome applicants who can help advance the institution’s social equity, inclusion, and diversity goals and those from groups whose underrepresentation in the American professoriate has been severe and long standing, including Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other People of Color, people who identify as LGBTQIA+, veterans, people with disabilities, and first-generation college students.
The Industrial Design Department is aligned with RISD’s efforts to shape more just societies, to address sustainability and the climate crisis, and to contribute new knowledge through creative inquiry and practice. We seek candidates who are accomplished designers, have a clear and compelling research agenda – as evidenced through their creative, scholarly or professional work – and who share our deep commitment to teaching and design education. Candidates should be able and ready to teach a range of core and advanced coursework.
We seek active makers with a full creative process that includes immersive exploration with tools and materials concluding with end-focused instrumental uses of digital fabrication. A strong candidate would be able to teach making with traditional tools and digital ways of making, such as CNC, physical computing, generative AI tools and other digital fabrication. A successful applicant will help champion these two worlds within the department, helping advance how we can best engage traditional making and emerging technology to expand and enrich how we teach design.
Candidates should possess the ability and desire to work collaboratively as part of a creative team of faculty. Successful candidates will join faculty colleagues with diverse skills and experiences in stewarding the development and growth of the Department and its graduate and undergraduate programs.
Required Qualifications
- Either an undergraduate degree in Industrial Design or closely related field; or an undergraduate degree in any field followed by a master’s degree in Industrial Design or closely related field
- Demonstrated expertise in traditional making techniques
- Demonstrated expertise in digital making tools
- Evidence of collegiate teaching experience and ability, commensurate with the rank the applicant is seeking.
- A clear research, or design, agenda that can be demonstrated through academic publications, organized symposia, curated exhibitions, installations, and/or significant professional work.
- Demonstrated creativity in both professional work and teaching.
- Ability to teach and advise undergraduate and graduate students.
- Ability to support a culturally diverse group of students in their creative process..
- Ability to work collaboratively with others (students, faculty, and staff) to create a supportive learning environment.
- A demonstrated teaching and/or professional record that exemplifies inclusionary practice.
Preferred Qualifications
- Evidence of academic leadership capacity, for instance, as Graduate Program Director, Department Head, or Committee Chair. (Department faculty are appointed to these positions on a cyclical basis, to oversee curriculum, the department budget, facilities, and staff, and to lead continuous faculty development.)
RISD/ Department Description
Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) is an undergraduate and graduate college of art and design with approximately 2,500 graduate and undergraduate students. RISD has a critical review process, which is very similar to the tenure process. RISD supports faculty professional practice with sabbaticals, pre-critical review leave, conference funds, and professional development grants. For more information about RISD, please visit www.risd.edu.
With 16 full-time faculty and 40 part-time faculty, the Industrial Design departments runs 138 classes (per year) for 265 BFA candidates, 35 MID candidates, students from the joint Masters of Arts and Design Engineering (MADE) with Brown University, and a limited number of non-major students from across RISD and Brown.
In Industrial Design we believe that designers must be critical makers and critical thinkers. To enable our students to learn, think, and lead, we use material making and material design to gain hands-on design experience; to explore how to apply these processes to new products, services, and systems; and to gain mastery of the mindsets and methods to create new and meaningful innovation. For more about the department visit: https://id.risd.edu/
Our alumni go on to become professional and academic leaders in a field that is no longer narrowly focused on the creation of industrial goods. They design the objects, experiences, services and systems that give shape to contemporary life and beyond.
Faculty Responsibilities
The full-time faculty teaching load is five teaching units a year. In addition to teaching, full-time faculty are expected to maintain a dynamic professional practice, serve on college committees, advise students, participate in curriculum development and other departmental and/or divisional activities and projects, and contribute to the vibrancy of the intellectual life of the college.
Union Yes Salary Information
For information about base pay for this position, please refer to Article XII “Salaries” (p. 19-22) in the Faculty Association Collective Bargaining Contract 2022-2025. The contract indicates the minimum base salary for each rank.
Pre-employment Requirement
The successful candidate will be required to meet our pre-employment background screening requirements.
Special Instructions to Applicants
RISD Faculty Search Committees comprise colleagues from within and outside of the hiring Department.
Please attach the following to the appropriate links in the section labeled “Documents Needed to Apply”:
1.) Letter of intent that addresses the qualifications and responsibilities listed above
2.) Curriculum vitae
3.) A teaching philosophy that articulates your approach to inclusive pedagogy
4.) Examples of two relevant syllabi for courses taught or proposed (if courses were team taught, highlight your contribution)
5.) Two brief course descriptions (an undergraduate skills course and an undergraduate studio) that you would be interested in teaching
6.) A portfolio of recent professional work (20 images maximum, in one PDF). The portfolio should include a brief statement to assist the committee in understanding the work and its relation to your research statement. URLs within the PDF to digital or motion work are allowable
7.) A research statement that includes a summary of your area of interest, current goals, outcomes and future plans (Attach to the section labeled “Writing Sample”)
8.) A portfolio of examples of student work, where possible these selections should reflect your teaching pedagogy and teaching philosophy (20 images maximum, in one PDF). The portfolio should also include a brief statement to assist the committee in understanding the work and its relation to your teaching statement. URLs within the PDF to digital or motion work are allowable.
Applications may not be edited once they are certified and submitted.
File size is limited to 10 MB per file.
Only materials that have been requested will be considered.
Names and contact information for three references are requested as part of the application process at the finalist stage.
Review of applications begins immediately and continues until the position is filled. Candidates who submit their materials by December 14, 2024 are assured full consideration.
EEO Statement
RISD is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetics, or any other protected characteristic as established by law.
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