Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

One of the things that has distinguished Rhode Island School of Design from other art and design schools is its emphasis on the liberal arts. Beginning in the 1930s, the college’s administration and faculty instituted a requirement that all students receive a well-rounded education, not just training in an art or design field. This philosophy has come to mean in practical terms that students take a third of their courses in Liberal Arts. The three Liberal Arts departments at RISD – History, Philosophy and Social Sciences; Literary Arts and Studies; and Theory and History of Art and Design – attract top-tier faculty from major research universities from around the world. Not surprisingly, many of the Liberal Arts faculty attracted to RISD have interdisciplinary interests, and in 2015, the Liberal Arts Division began designing a program in Sustainability Studies, bringing environmental humanities and environmental social sciences into dialogue in a single graduate program. In Fall 2018, the MA program in Nature Culture Sustainability Studies enrolled its first six students. This session will explore the program design, the challenges to getting college-wide support, the lessons learned from the recruitment process, and an evaluation of the current state and possible future.