At the February 2022 Faculty Meeting the Faculty voted to endorse the following motion. The context and a rubric for departments which were also presented at that meeting follow the motion:
Motion
The faculty endorse a policy requiring each degree-granting department to introduce one required SEI tagged upper-level course to all undergraduate majors, through the following process.
Prospective SEI-Tagged courses must:
1. Be approved by the corresponding Divisional SEI Tagging Review Committee (Division of Fine Arts or the Division of Architecture and Design)
• The committee, consisting of 3 faculty members from the corresponding division, will be appointed by the SEI Steering Committee in consultation with the AP of SEI and Divisional Deans
• The charge of this committee is to review courses meant to be designated as SEI-Tagged courses in order to confirm that such proposed SEI courses meet the threshold set by the SEI Rubric.
• These committees will count as institutional committee responsibilities
2. Be approved by the Curriculum Committee
3. Receive an SEI-course tag by the Registrar, upon approval of the above mentioned committees These courses shall be tagged before the publication of the AY 2024-2025 RISD course catalogue.
This SEI tagging motion is the collective outcome of 15 months of diligent work and outreach by two faculty committees charged to identify curricular pathways to advance RISD’s commitment to make SEI coursework integral to the curricula of all majors. The charge before this group of faculty reflects a public commitment made by the institution to the entire RISD community on August 26, 2020: “… [the provost] will charge a sub-committee [of the instruction Committee] to develop a proposal that includes a provision that each student complete at least one SEI-coded course prior to graduation. The SEI Steering committee will be creating a rubric for the course content. This proposal will be brought to the full-time faculty for debate and vote." RISD’s commitment to advancing SEI curricula and the work of the faculty committee is a response to the needs of our students expressed recently in risdARC demands and other forums of activism such as Not Your Token, The Room of Silence, and BAAD’s The Waiting Room, and to feedback from BIPOC students over many years, dating back to the 1960’s. The majority of documented departmental responses to risdARC demands from 2020 stated intentions for SEI-related curricular development; this motion provides a structure and timeline for that development to occur.
Through our efforts and work as a committee, we found that a single SEI-required course within each undergraduate major is a limited and prudent way to effectively cultivate SEI curricular development at RISD. The establishment of required disciplinary SEI courses builds on existing changes many departments have already made, and continue to make within their respective curricula. Moreover, this clearly demonstrates RISD's commitment to SEI as a cornerstone of its art and design excellence. The Tagging and SEI Rubrics groups have jointly presented their work to many faculty cohorts throughout the school, and this motion indeed reflects an urgent fulfillment of individual, departmental, and divisional feedback and needs. Providing a multi-year timeline along with an assortment of tagging options allows faculty to develop courses that are a customized extension of the ethos of their department in a staged manner; this proposal provides a structure for faculty-led development.
The proposed SEI Tagging Review Committees (one housed in the Division of Fine Arts and one in the Division of Architecture and Design, each comprising faculty from those Divisions) will review courses from within their respective Divisions for SEI tagging and provide feedback to departments. While the duties of the SEI Tagging Review Committees bear some similarity to the charge of the Curriculum Committee, these committees will not have the ability or desire to review courses outside of their purview. So as to ensure the review process is robust and substantive, the members that compose each SEI Tagging Review Committee must be selected by those who have expertise in the areas of Decoloniality and Social Equity and Inclusion. For this reason, SEI Tagging Review Committee members should be selected by the faculty-run SEI Steering Committee in consultation with the Associate Provost of SEI and Deans. This selection process remains faculty-centered while maintaining the academic integrity of this important initiative.
We understand that the development of even one unique, required course within each department demands both time and resources to manage logistically. To that end, the Provost has pledged material support in the form of TU’s for departments that express a compelling need for such support. We propose that the class of 2026/27 be the first graduating class for whom an SEI course is required.
SEI-Tagged Course Outcomes and Rubric
Outcomes of the upper-level SEI course
To challenge canonical and dominant histories and presents of the discipline.
This can take place in many ways:
• It can challenge the methods and canon of the discipline and re-present artists and designers whose work and methods have been erased, appropriated, or overlooked by the canon
• It can challenge normative techniques and modes of evolution in the discipline
• It can expand the range of material to include examples from historically marginalized cultures
• It can include discussions of the racial and economic dimensions of the work
• It can cultivate an understanding of how certain forms of knowledge and experience are normalized, while others are silenced and marginalized.
• It can examine the ways research works in the discipline, so as to examine and cultivate an understanding of its implicit power dynamics and ethics.
Rubric
• Course must introduce alternate ways of making, learning and knowing outside of the canonical/hegemonic frame of the discipline.
• Course must decenter the canon
• Course must center on issues of power and their relationship to the discipline.
• 75% of the course (materials, content, processes, techniques) must meaningfully engage the work, practice, making, and/or scholarship of artists, designers and/or scholars from Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and communities of color.
(NOTE: A focus on Black, Indigenous and people of color artists / designers / scholars does not equate to the exclusion of various other intersecting issues including: class, gender, sexuality, ableism etc… Virtually all current BIPoC artists / designers / scholars are working at the intersections of myriad issues while also remaining attentive to the ways in which race/racialization, indigeneity, colonialism etc. shape the lived experiences, bodies of knowledge and work they address.)