Though registering to take courses at the Rhode Island School of Design can prove to be a complicated process for Brown students, several interviewed by The Herald said they have been able to enroll in RISD courses without much difficulty. Still, students said they have encountered several problems, including differences between the two schools' schedules, space limitations for RISD courses and some trouble viewing RISD's offerings online.
The cooperative arrangement between the University and RISD allows students to take courses at RISD only after obtaining written permission from the RISD professor and the registrars at both schools. The longstanding cooperative arrangement is intended to provide Brown students with "access to classes we can't offer or don't offer," said Lisa Mather, associate registrar for registration services at Brown.
Students must pick up a cross-registration form from the Office of the Registrar, select a course from the RISD course catalogue and then select a grade option. After attending the first class meeting, students must get written permission from the RISD instructor and the registrar at RISD before returning to the registrar's office at Brown. Students then must consult a registrar's office employee to determine if the course requires a petition to the Committee on Academic Standing in order to ensure that credit will be granted.
Because of RISD's winter session - which began on Jan. 2 this year and lasted into February - registration calendars at Brown and RISD do not coincide for second semester. The second semester at RISD begins one month after Brown's second semester. The incongruent academic calendars cause cross-registration numbers to drop for the spring semester, according to Steve Bailey, a recorder in RISD's registrar's office.
Joanna Benitez '08, a visual art concentrator, said she knew about Brown-RISD cross-registration before coming to Brown and "assumed the schools would relate to each other more than they do."
Still, "The notion that it's impossible to take classes at RISD as a Brown student is a myth. You just need to go figure it out," said Benitez, who took a painting course in RISD's Department of Illustration last spring. She said many visual art concentrators at Brown look into taking RISD courses at sometime during their Brown career.
But Benitez said it is more beneficial to meet with a department head or faculty member to discuss course registration plans rather than blindly navigating the administrative system.
Herald Contributing Writer Lydia Gidwitz '07 said she looked into taking courses at RISD because there were not a lot of art history seminar options at Brown this semester. Gidwitz said the cross-registration process involves "a lot of back-and-forth" between RISD and Brown, though she has been happy with her overall experience.
Gidwitz, a history of art and architecture concentrator who is currently taking a course on art historiography at RISD, said she faced difficulty contacting RISD professors and students for course suggestions during RISD's winter session. Also, she found navigating RISD's course Web site difficult and opted to instead use the paper version of course listings in RISD's registrar's office.
Unlike Gidwitz, Ji-Hee Shin '09, who took a RISD course last semester, found the registration process straightforward. She searched RISD schedules and courses on the school's registration Web site, contacted the professors of the courses she was considering taking and then visited several classes before settling on a course examining the history of dress.
RISD courses often have space limitations, so it may be difficult for students looking to get into a particular class to register without help from a faculty member, said Gracie Devito '07, who has taken a RISD painting course.
Offerings at Brown and RISD
The RISD course offerings are "more or less standard," Benitez said, but there are "unsurprisingly more options than at Brown." She explained that RISD courses are divided into ones that are "traditional and structured and general, such as stock drawing or any standard painting class" and ones that are "very specific and sometimes eccentric electives" - what Gidwitz referred to as "niche classes."
Benitez did offer some criticism of this organization, saying, "I wonder if they could carve out a more open middle ground."
Benitez thought a RISD painting course would be more instructive than one of Brown's, providing her with more practice and "painting from life."
In RISD's painting courses, students are asked to paint a model or a still life, whereas at Brown, students are usually given a prompt - typically a vague idea - and are expected to use it as a starting point, Devito said.
Devito echoed Benitez's view that RISD courses are more involved and structured. In RISD's painting courses, students are required to "work all day but then are also assigned homework and critiques," Devito said.
Once enrolled, Shin said she faced some difficulty using RISD's facilities, particularly when she had to apply for temporary identification to access RISD's library. Shin had to ask for an extension on her first paper because she did not have access to the necessary resources in library.
"It would not have been a problem had I known about it prior to registration," she said, adding that she was able to use the library for the five subsequent research papers assigned in the class.
