Name: Roger Mandle
Age: 60
Position: President of the Rhode Island School of Design
Background: Appointed president of RISD in 1993, Mandle has been a nationally known figure in the field of education in the arts and humanities for 25 years. He has served as the associate director of the Minneapolis Museum of Art; associate director, then director of the Toledo Museum of Art; and deputy director and chief curator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Mandle has served for eight years as a member of the National Committee for Education Standards in the Arts and is currently a member of the Executive Committee of the Ambassadors for the Arts, appointed by former President Clinton.
Education: Cum laude graduate of Williams College; M.A. from New York University; Ph.D. in Art History from Case Western University
Residence: Providence
Family: Married, two adult children; three grandchildren.
PBN: Describe a college student. Where are they leaning career-wise? What are their interests? Their concerns? Challenges?
MANDLE: I think at RISD there isn’t such a thing as “a” college student – it’s very hard to prototype one particular type of person and have that speak for everyone. In fact if anything, I think you could say that RISD students try to press the boundaries so that – it’s sort of like centrifugal force – with each student pressing the boundaries of his or her exploration of their studies. We challenge them to do that, and the ropes that hold them in to the center are the very strong content-organized curriculum we have. That includes not just giving them a set of skills and experiences with various media, including modern technology, but also a very strong liberal arts component. Fundamentally, whether we educate artists or designers, we want them to be educated to have something to say – not just to be able to make something, but the need to imbue that something they’re making with meaning.
You mentioned technology. What kind of an impact has technology had on what you do?
Very dramatic. RISD’s 125 years old. Remember that technologies back then were Industrial Revolution technologies. They were machines pushed by water power and steam power, belts. Today’s technologies are encompassed by bits and bytes. Each of those technologies are represented here on campus. We still have a metalworking shop, we still teach people drawing. All students must take seven and a half hours of drawing three times a week to really hone their skills so their hand and their eye and their mind work together. Then they can graduate to working on the lathe or the computer.
So you find yourself always in the process of adapting to encompass these technologies.
Oh yes, and every new one that comes along, every one of those media that the artists and designers try to master, we try to push. We will have our students try to get computers to do things that the manufacturers of them would not even suspect they could do.
What is your enrollment?
2,109 students. They’re all full-time. We have virtually no part-time students at RISD, although we have a very large continuing education program. Some 7,500 people a year take courses in that.
How does being small enhance a student’s learning experience? How do you balance the demand – and perhaps the desire – for institutional growth with the advantages of fine arts learning in a small setting?
Our institution will grow in terms of improving the space and the equipment that our students have, and in financial support for the programs that our students aspire to have when they come here. We’re like Harvard or Williams, I suppose, in the sense that we don’t aspire to add students without a reason. Our undergraduate student body has only added about 20 students since 1990. Our graduate program has grown, however, and we see more opportunity for graduate students here, so if there’s any area of potential growth, it would be there.
Given the current economic climate, once they graduate, are your students finding jobs?
During the dotcom era, our design students particularly were being snapped up, some of them before they graduated, particularly in the animation field. Things have slowed there to some extent, but we still are very optimistic. Our graduates, generally, have found jobs in their chosen field within two years of graduation. Some of them in the design fields start out making very significant sums of money their first couple of years.
Does the Rhode Island business community tap into the talent that RISD has to offer?
I would say that the Rhode Island really does hire frequently from our student body, as do others in our region. Martha Stewart, for example, in Connecticut and New York has between 20 and 25 graduates working for herLocal design firms, local architecture firms, local industrial design and jewelry firms – any area where there is design, you’ll find our students being hired.
How do you maintain academic credibility while managing to remain competitive?
We can’t remain competitive unless we have the continued support and involvement of the local business community. We have had – for a long time, going back to the founding of the institution – connections with the jewelry, the textiles, the furniture, the apparel, the toy manufacturers in our area. And the more we enhance those, the better we are, but in addition we’re beginning to create businesses of our own. A lot of the people who graduate become young entrepreneurs with start-up businesses based on products that they have created.
That sounds like the perfect lead-in for you to tell me about a new project. RISD recently announced a $2 million federal appropriation for the development and support of the RISD Center for Integrative Technologies. Tell me about that.
The Center for Integrative Technologies is a new building in downtown Providence – it’s the third building downtown that we’ve taken overIt’s the Mason Building, located right next to the Fletcher Building. Since those two buildings share floors, they’ll open up and be one continuous, large building for, even as many as 120 students. Those 120 students will have advanced technologies brought to their capabilities. We’ll be able to use that federal funding to create a core of technology in that building that will help our continuing education center, we’ll offer high tech courses in design and we’ll have a floor of incubator space where the businesses that our graduates and the students in our CE (continuing education) courses will be able to be located.
How many businesses do you think you’ll be able to incubate at a given time?
Between 10 and a dozen. They will be mentored by the Center for Design & Business.
We see that our public institutions of higher learning are constantly faced with budget issues. Are there advantages to being a private institution?
I think there are a lot of advantages to being a private institution. First of all, we are free to chart our own course. Particularly being an arts institution dedicated to art and design, it’s very important that we have freedom to turn quickly. A small institution like RISD is much more easily able to adapt to today’s conditions, be they expansive or contractive than a large, state-run university.
How critical to your job is raising capital?
It’s very critical. I probably spend more than half my time now concentrating on building support for the institution, not only through private contributions but also government sources like the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, federal appropriations such as the one we just achieved through the Small Business Administration and working with government officials and business leaders. We collaborate a great deal with business leaders to try to help leverage the economy in our area too, because we believe so strongly that a strong local economy is an enriched environment for our students and for our faculty to live in. That’s why we are so active in downtown revitalization, in building greater quality in our public educational system and collaborating with CCRI, URI – our public institutions – on various initiatives. We feel it is particularly important that we are good citizens, because if we are good citizens as an institution, we are also encouraging our students to be good citizens when they
graduate. If we are aloof, if we sort of stay to ourselves, we get the environment that we deserve.
And one of the most important functions of an artist is to interact.
Absolutely. We want our students and faculty to make a difference in the region.
What make Providence and RISD a good fit?
Well, that’s like asking the sunflower whether it’s a good fit to be in the garden it’s growing in. We’re a good fit in Providence because we were born here and we have aspirations to continue to be part of the community. We’re not trying to be a flower we’re not, we’re trying to be what our soil tells us we can be.
You have had a front row seat for the Providence Renaissance. What kinds of things would you like to see happen next?
I think I’d like to see greater investment in the downtown arts district. I think that’s coming alongI’d like to see the possibility of revitalized small manufacturing in our region, particularly those products that are created out of good design. We can help there. That’s one of our missions, I think, is to inspire good design in products. I’d like to see the Heritage Harbor Museum finished and a real “museum mile” developed that connects the Heritage Harbor Museum and our museumI’d like to see the rebirth of living downtown. I think there’s a tremendous potential for sophisticated living in downtown Providence. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I’d like to see our public school systems improved. I’d like to see the art education programs strengthened in those schools. The extraordinary diversity we have in our student body in the public schools should receive the kind of training in the arts that allows them to express their own cultural heritage as well.
