On April 7, the Rhode Island School of Design announced that it had received a $20 million gift from the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation — the largest outright gift in the institution’s history — to establish new full tuition scholarships and faculty positions.
Starting in the 2027-28 school year, the Maxwell Scholarship Fund will provide eight full tuition scholarships for undergraduate students. The Maxwell Global Perspectives Faculty Fund will endow two new faculty positions, as well as one rotating visiting residency position, according to the press release.
RISD and the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation worked together “to make the gift meaningful and in alignment with our current strategic goals,” which are focused on student access and experience, said RISD Vice President of Institutional Advancement Amanda MacMullan. “This will directly impact both students and faculty in the full community into perpetuity.”
Delle Maxwell, the co-founder of the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation and a member of RISD’s class of 1974, said in a statement sent to The Herald that the scholarship reflects the Foundation’s belief that “investments in talented, innovative people can transform not only their individual explorations, one field, or one institution, but the ways we connect people, places and ideas.”
The undergraduate scholarships will be need-based, allowing “students who otherwise may not have access to RISD to engage with its rigorous cross-disciplinary curriculum of studio-based learning and liberal arts study,” according to a statement from the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation.
When the scholarship is introduced in the 2027-28 year, RISD applicants will not need to submit additional materials to be considered for it, Vice President of Enrollment Jaime O’Hara wrote in a statement to The Herald.
The statement sent to The Herald from the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation explained that the new faculty positions and residency “will bring a wider range of perspectives, histories and creative practices into RISD’s curriculum at a time when we seek to better understand various points of view and lived experiences.”
To choose the individuals who will hold the faculty and resident positions funded by the gift, RISD will review applications “according to the core principle of the gift, which is to encourage us to elevate essential questions related to the amplification of varied perspectives in art and design and the delineation of craft as a mode of making and as a series of intellectual explorations,” RISD Provost Touba Ghadessi wrote in a statement to The Herald.
The gift from the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, which was founded in 2018 by Maxwell and her husband Pat Hanrahan, reflects the impact RISD had on Maxwell.
“As I look back, I realize how much RISD influenced my worldview, encouraged me to take creative chances, and learn from people with varied backgrounds and perspectives,” Maxwell said. “I’ve carried both design principles and these approaches from RISD with me throughout my career.”
Izabella Piatkowski is a senior staff writer covering the Rhode Island School of Design.
