Academic Commons Program

Academic Commons Program

 

The two-year Academic Commons Program (ACP) – funded by a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation in 2012 and co-directed by Patricia Phillips and Jennifer Liese – advanced an essential goal in RISD’s Strategic Plan: to develop dynamic new academic programs, enriched and flexible curriculum, and a culture of teaching innovation. Integrative teaching explicitly connects various disciplines, ideas, theories, and practices to prepare students to think flexibly and synthetically and to make their own connections in an increasingly complex world. The ACP awarded fellowships and grants to RISD’s full- and part-time faculty, graduate students, and postgrads in support of independent research and co-curricular projects (workshops, lectures, etc.) focused on integrative teaching and learning across the undergraduate programs.

Integrative teaching was already happening at RISD—when history and drawing instruction took place in the same room, or when writing or scientific research methods were applied in the studio, for instance. The ACP’s purpose was to support more of it, to make it visible, and to learn from it. Gathered here are a collection of reports written by inspired recipients of ACP fellowships and grants who blurred the boundaries between curricula to explore innovative teaching, learning and co-curricular experiences.

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Reports from 2014

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Promoting a Peripatetic Pedagogy, Christina Bertoni

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Mapping Paradigms in Art and Design, Marie Cieri

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Writing in Apparel, Antonio Ciutto

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Toward an Interdivisional Curriculum in Computer Programming at RISD, Shawn Greenlee

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Play as Design Process, Cas Holman

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Instructions for Code, Jerel Johnson

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The Thesis Grid: A Writing and Design Process, Andrew Law and Christina Galvez

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Ekphrasis and Its Reverse, Samuel Leader

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Experiences at the Intersection of Design Thinking and Contemplative Study, Khipra Nichols

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Creating Self-Organizing Studios, Daniel Peltz

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Working with Words: Writing Pedagogy in Art and Design Education, Phoebe Stubbs and Miriam Cabell

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Coordinating the Code Studio, Clement Valla

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A Department of the Relationship of Ideas and Problems: An Attempt to Grasp the History and State of Interdisciplinary Study in the Undergraduate Fine Arts Curriculum at RISD, Kevin Zucker

Reports from 2013

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RISD Written All Over It: An ABC of RISD Writing Now, Then, and Next, Mairéad Byrne

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In the Words of the DP: A Study of the Undergraduate Written Thesis, Emily Cornell

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Thinking Bodies, Thinking Minds: Educating with Movement in Art and Design, Leslie Hirst and Pascale Rihouet

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Sites for Integrative Arts Education: A Study of the Undergraduate Critique, Sara Raffo

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Investigating the Lab: Experiments within Studio Practice, Sophia Sobers

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Materials + Process: An Exhibition of Student-Made Materials, Diana Wagner