Teaching + Learning in Art + Design (TLAD) offers graduate students a progressive and dynamic center of inquiry and practice that directly links academic study to engagement with communities beyond campus. TLAD students both explore and contribute to the development of new practices in art and design teaching across an arts learning continuum spanning from kindergarten to college and beyond.
Degree programs
- MAT / MA
- 1-year Teaching / 1-year Art + Design Education graduate programs
In (and out of) the classroom
In both the MAT and MA programs, practice-based studies with RISD professors and visiting professionals are enriched through ever-evolving partnerships with the RISD Museum, Brown University, community-based youth arts organizations and public and independent schools.
Farah Altaweel | MA 2017
My research in TLAD’s MA program focused on how to use design thinking to create learning opportunities for children within informal contexts, something that really enhances my current work at the Children’s Museum Project in Qatar. TLAD allowed me to explore design education through multiple lenses, from teaching and curation to visual communication and storytelling. Now as a visual designer and interpreter, I share the creative process I explored at RISD with children in ways that respond to their different interests and developmental needs.
Paul Sproll | department head
“It’s so essential for art educators to be engaged in an art and design community like RISD’s – and also to be working off campus in the field. Beyond gaining solid footing in the theoretical context of art education, students here welcome the many opportunities we offer to work with young people in meaningful ways.”
After RISD, TLAD alumni go on to work as art educators and advocates in a broad range of contexts. Recent alumni now hold rewarding positions at organizations as diverse as the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Mattress Factory, the College Board and the Hive Archive. Alumni are at work helping to preserve American Indian culture, promote Portuguese art and culture, and help young Tibetan refugees express themselves through film. And of course, countless alumni are bringing their energy and commitment to teaching and mentoring young people at public and private schools throughout the country and the world.
Alumni at work
Tamara Kaplan MA/MAT 00 | arts leader
Tamara Kaplan built on her BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University by turning to arts education, simultaneously pursuing double master's degrees in teaching at RISD. In 2000 she began working with Providence's New Urban Arts (NUA), a nonprofit organization that offers a safe environment for low-income high school students to make art and develop caring relationships with adult mentors. In 2013 she earned the RISD Alumni Association's Art and Education Award for her groundbreaking work at NUA.
Jeffrey Seaberg MAT 09 | artist/educator
After teaching for several years at Bolivia Elementary School in Wilmington, NC, Jeffrey Seaberg followed his dream of working abroad and is now in London teaching at TASIS The American School in England. He builds on his studio work with students by maintaining the art department's blog and leading service learning trips to Romania. Seaberg also continues to pursue his own art work and to show around the world.
