Thanks to a $225,000 grant from the Surdna Foundation, a philanthropic group founded in 1917 by New York Rep. John Emory Andrus, RISD will embark on a three-year partnership with local high schools that aims to bring the arts to minority students.
High school students participating in the RISD-affiliated programs will be exposed to studio art, digital media and interior design and will have the opportunity to work with RISD undergraduate mentors. The mentors will help the high school students develop art portfolios and the other materials necessary to apply to art school.
The grant is "comprehensive" because it provides high school students with a creative outlet and practical guidance in applying to college, said Ellen Rudolph, program director for arts at the Surdna Foundation.
The grant will allow RISD to unite several of its pre-existing community outreach programs under one umbrella. The RISD departments involved in the initiative include the Department of Art and Design Education, which runs after-school programs at Hope High School in Providence; the Office of Multicultural Affairs, which runs Catalyst Arts, a program affiliated with the Pawtucket public schools; RISD Continuing Education, which administers scholarships to RISD's Pre-College Program; and the museum education program.
Previously, RISD instructors and undergraduate interns would eventually lose track of the high school students with whom they had come into contact through the Pre-College Program, Catalyst Arts or the after-school programs at Hope High School, said Lew Shena, the director of continuing education.
The new mentorship program will allow RISD to "develop a history of a relationship between high school students and RISD students" and to keep track of the students who go through the various programs, said Paul Sproll, coordinator of the initiative and director of the arts education department.
Mentors will encourage high school students participating in all of RISD's programs to apply to the Pre-College Program, a six-week summer program at RISD that introduces high school students to college-level art and design courses. A stepping stone to undergraduate art school, the Pre-College Program previously offered 12 minority student scholarships donated by the LG Balfour Foundation; this year, thanks to the Surdna grant and other donations, the program will offer 34 minority scholarships.
After an initial grant issued by the Surdna Foundation expired in 2001, RISD administrators "sat down to figure out the next step," Shena said. "We thought it was time to organize the varying parts to work together to have the biggest impact possible," she said.
The initiative is still in its beginning stages, but there will be opportunities for RISD students to participate, Sproll said. Many of the pre-existing programs in the initiative rely heavily on student participation - the after-school programs at Hope High School are taught by graduate students in training to become art teachers, Catalyst Arts in Pawtucket depends entirely on student volunteers and the Pre-College Program draws many of its teaching assistants from the RISD work study office. Furthermore, RISD students will most likely take part in the mentorship program, particularly students of color who can "provide a unique perspective on what it's like to go to arts school," Sproll said.
The Surdna Foundation emphasizes the need for sustainable community outreach that will "create extensive art and design programming opportunities for students who would not otherwise have them," Rudolph said. The foundation hopes the initial productivity of the RISD grant will attract other donors and guarantee the long-term success of the initiative.
