David Bogen has been named associate provost at Rhode Island School of Design. He will work with the provost, faculty and other members of the campus community to support RISD’s academic programs and provide leadership in areas of emerging practices in art and design education. Bogen comes to RISD after 15 years at Emerson College. He has a B.A. from Macalester College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Boston University.
PBN: What are some of your personal goals in your new job?
BOGEN: I am particularly excited about the work I will be doing with the Brown-RISD dual degree program, and our initiatives in public engagement, externally sponsored research, and international programs. These initiatives represents a key area of institutional collaboration that will enhance the experience of our students while making the tremendous academic and creative resources of RISD more available to current and prospective partners in the nonprofit, corporate and international sectors.
PBN: In 1996 you helped to pilot Emerson’s successful Digital Culture program. Can you talk about immersive living/learning environments and their impact?
BOGEN: The core insight behind the development of “immersive living/learning environments” is that, from a student perspective, the different spaces and places where they live and work – the classroom, the dormitory, the online environment – are highly continuous and connected, and yet the conventional approach to thinking about and planning for their education is to treat these different areas as if they are separate. …
When we started the Digital Culture program, digital media were just beginning to be recognized for their power to establish new kinds of communities. We began working with a concept of the “electronic (or online) studio” as a new kind of workspace that faculty and students would access 24/7. … It has been hugely successful for first-year students, and has provided a model for the integration of digital media into our teaching and for developing an approach to education that focuses more holistically on how and where learning takes place. •
