Enable America Jobs

Job Summary Overview:

The Division of Experimental and Foundation Studies at Rhode Island School of Design invites applications for a full-time faculty appointment in Spatial Dynamics at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor, to commence fall 2024. Rank will be dependent on 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 differential embodied experience 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 seek applicants whose teaching and professional work (creative practice and/or academic scholarship) attends to embodied difference as intersectional and centers on bodies of knowledge from historically underrepresented communities. We particularly encourage 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 Division of Experimental and Foundation Studies invites applications for faculty positions in Spatial Dynamics from designers, architects, and artists who are enthusiastic about teaching first-year students who will go on to major in one of sixteen design, architecture, and fine arts programs at RISD .

We seek candidates whose knowledge, creative practice, and/or teaching may center on issues of sustainability, accessibility, physics, mathematics, biomaterials, computation and technology including artificial intelligence, within an art and design cultural context. Ideal candidates should have a distinctive vision and pedagogical approach and be prepared to teach Spatial Dynamics as a vital experience for a range of disciplines and a diverse student body.

Candidates should be equipped to teach a diverse student body, including international students, BIPoC students, LGBTQ+ and first-generation college students, and engage across various cultures. Applicants should be prepared to develop syllabi and lead classes and critiques that model constructive, inclusive discussions, and that encourage students to grow creatively and intellectually. Faculty are expected to be able to integrate new technologies into their courses.

In addition, successful candidates will be able to approach Spatial Dynamics from multiple directions: as a specific method of investigating visual and spatial phenomena, as a mode of speculation and inquiry, and as an essential activity intrinsic to all artists and designers.

Candidates should have a developed professional practice. The Division is open to hiring designers and artists from various spatial disciplines and interdisciplinary practices whose primary mode of work includes innovative physical making.

Creativity in both professional work and teaching are essential.

Job Qualifications Required:

• Masters degree in a field relevant to teaching Spatial Dynamics, or commensurate professional experience

• Teaching at the college level as an instructor of record

• Demonstrated commitment to undergraduate teaching, with a clear ability to teach a diverse student body and employ inclusive pedagogies

• Demonstrated record of supporting a globally and culturally diverse body of students in developing a creative and critical approach to Spatial Dynamics

• Demonstrated commitment to effectively mentor and advise students, including students from minorities and marginalized social groups

• Thorough knowledge and understanding of the safe operation of wood shop equipment, including the ability to teach students, new to working three dimensionally, the safe use of hand and machine tools, as well as construction and assembly processes with a range of traditional and new materials.

• Demonstrated knowledge of digital and analog technologies relevant to the teaching of Spatial Dynamics

• Demonstrated experience working with and/or teaching with a range of materials

• A strong record of an innovative professional or creative practice and dissemination of the work through exhibitions or commissions (as appropriate to the field), appropriate to the level of appointment

Job Qualifications Preferred:

• Demonstrated experience in the fields of design, architecture, or the built environment

• Professional work, creative practice, and or research within an art and design cultural context that addresses one or more of the following issues: sustainability, accessibility, physics, mathematics, biomaterials, computation and technology including artificial intelligence

• Demonstrated experience teaching first-year students or working with beginning students in a similar capacity

Employment Type: Full-Time

Department: Division of Experimental + Foundation Studies