The Rhode Island School of Design, Department of Illustration invites applications for a critical-review track Assistant or Associate Professor with an appointment to begin Fall 2026. Rank commensurate with professional status and teaching experience.
RISD recognizes principles of social equity, inclusion, and diversity as fundamental to its mission as an art and design school. These principles require sustained attention to a multiplicity of differences and call for an expansion of the forms of knowledge that shape our curricula and pedagogy. RISD is committed to the collective work of institutional transformation and values applicants whose teaching, pedagogical and professional experiences have prepared them to foster and sustain equitable learning environments. We especially welcome faculty whose pedagogy engages diverse perspectives, expands forms of knowledge, and helps foster a culture of belonging where all students, staff, and faculty can thrive.
We seek an experienced educator and illustrator capable of teaching coursework centered on studio practice while also addressing the conceptual dimensions of illustrative art and its relevance to contemporary professional practice. The successful candidate will have a strong professional record, characterized by a forward-thinking portfolio of work and a critical perspective on the trajectory of Illustration. The department welcomes candidates whose teaching and professional practice centers on bodies of knowledge that emerge from historically underrepresented, marginalized, and/or underserved communities.
Applicants must be capable of critically implementing new curricular offerings in conceptual, and/or narrative-based approaches to image-making. We are seeking an artist with an eye on emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligences (AI) and an understanding of the various factors affecting contemporary illustration.
Joining a full-time faculty of fifteen, the new faculty member will also work alongside 46 active part-time faculty who represent an unusually broad scope of engagement in artistic and professional practice. In addition to teaching, professional practice, academic advising and college service, full-time faculty members contribute to the life of the department in a variety of ways, including involvement in curriculum development, strengthening our community of more than 360 students, and working on special initiatives that benefit the department, both public facing and internal.
New faculty members also have the opportunity to introduce offerings to the department’s broad array of elective courses. Individual faculty expertise is a vital element in our continually evolving curriculum.
Require Qualifications
- MFA or its equivalent in illustration or a related field, or an equivalent combination of applicable academic, professional, and community-based experience.
- Demonstrated commitment to fostering equitable learning environments where a diverse student body can thrive, using inclusive, culturally responsive, and accessible pedagogies to support critical engagement with art and design.
- Significant professional experience and an active illustration practice with an ongoing record of achievement characterized by a personal, distinctive artistic vision. Candidates’ expertise may diverge from traditional market areas, and a trajectory of involvement with emerging technologies and markets is desired. A critical and constructive perspective on artificial intelligences—cultivated alongside an active studio practice—is highly valued.
- At least 2 years of full-time or 8 semesters part-time experience teaching at the college-level.
- Compassionate and skillful educator, with demonstrated exceptional teaching ability and collegial spirit of collaboration.
- Insightful critical thinking and the ability to comfortably engage students in discourse on the complexities and challenges of contemporary illustration.
- Flexibility in teaching a range of studio courses, which may include required sophomore classes in Visual Thinking, Visual Strategies, Painting and/or Drawing, as well as advanced electives that relate to one or more illustration sub-genres.
- Ability and willingness to step into leadership roles as needed by the department and college, including service on college-wide committees and department service, when requested.
RISD/ Department Description
RISD is a nonprofit college and museum of art and design founded in 1877 in the city of Providence, RI. Today 2,606 students from 62 countries engage in more than 40 full-time bachelor’s and master’s degree programs, supported by a committed faculty and worldwide network of more than 33,000 alumni.
By cultivating expansive and elastic thinking, RISD equips artists, designers and scholars to generate and challenge the ideas that shape our world.
RISD has a critical review process, which is very similar to the tenure process at other institutions.
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.
Founded in 1944, Illustration is RISD’s largest department, with over 350 students and 62 faculty members. The Illustration Studies Building is located on the Providence canal in the heart of RISD’s campus, with facilities for traditional printmaking, RISOgraph, woodworking, 2-D and 3-D digital illustration, painting, and advanced experimental digital practice. Our faculty has broad expertise, covering nearly every area of practice associated with the field. Communication is the central goal of our program, with the conveyance of ideas and information serving as the most crucial element in an Illustrative statement. The program requires a solid commitment to principles of art, design and critical thinking. While the moniker “Visual Communication” generally aligns Illustration with Graphic Design in many art colleges, the Illustration department at RISD is organizationally situated within the Division of Fine Arts. This placement evidences our allegiance to the experimental and authorial instincts of independent artists, including illustrators. We have long established and significant overlaps with other fine arts departments, particularly Film, Animation + Video, Printmaking, Photography, and Painting. Our program begins in the sophomore year, with a two-semester immersion in drawing, painting, and visual communication concepts that are foundational to most fields of illustration. Beyond the foundational sophomore year, students are given access to over 86 unique advanced electives within the department as well as classes offered through the college in other majors. We challenge students to discover who they are as makers—without striving to align them with established professional categories—not out of a lack of enthusiasm for the illustration field as it is, but rather out of the very logical assumption that our students may very well work in new media or fields that don’t exist yet.
With the rapid development of newer technologies like AR, VR, and the increasing use of AI and machine learning in the production of imagery, the Illustration department has been actively investigating ways to prepare our students to learn and use these technologies with ethical and artistic integrity. RISD Illustration has made notable progress in reorganizing the department’s digital offerings, largely along industry-standard lines: 2D imagery, 3D imagery, motion, interactivity and artificial intelligences.
