Crystal Williams will be RISD’s 18th president. Photo by Jo Sittenfeld

University News

Crystal Williams Leaving BU to Become President of Rhode Island School of Design

University’s leader of diversity, equity, inclusion, and community-building will be RISD’s 18th president

Crystal Williams, University administrator, scholar, teacher, poet, and advocate who helped advance Boston University’s movement toward greater diversity, equity, and inclusion, is leaving BU for Providence, where she will become the 18th president of the Rhode Island School of Design.

As vice president and associate provost for community and inclusion, Williams, who came to BU in 2017 from Bates College, has been an important leader on issues of race at a time when the nation began a reckoning on the subject, still ongoing, with protests against police violence toward Black people. Williams organized BU’s Day of Collective Engagement in summer 2020, when more than 5,000 students, faculty, and staff joined a series of webinars to talk about the national protests over a number of high-profile police killings of Black people nationwide, several of which were caught on cell phone cameras and sparked outrage across social media.

“Crystal’s creativity and her talent for helping manage complex and challenging situations related to race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic differences have been invaluable in moving BU forward,” says Jean Morrison, BU provost and chief academic officer, in announcing the news. “She has consistently produced programming that not only answers the issues facing us, but also helps to initiate structural change.”

Rhode Island School of Design, or RISD (pronounced RIZ-dee), is one of the leading arts colleges in the country. Founded in 1877, the school has 2,500 students from 68 countries studying in 44 full-time bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. The urban campus sits in a neighborhood known as College Hill in the heart of downtown Providence, a city that has experienced an urban renaissance in the last two decades, thanks in part to explosive development around the Providence River, which winds through the capital city.

“When we began the search for RISD’s 18th president, we sought candidates with not just the experience, education, and wisdom that the job requires, but also receptivity, an aesthetic sensibility, the skill to communicate in a community that trades in images and materials, and something even more intangible: a deep, abiding empathy that can bind us all together,” says  Michael Spalter, RISD Board of Trustees chair. “We found all of that and more in Crystal Williams. Crystal shares our strong conviction in the critical role art and design play in shaping our world, and she has the expertise and qualities of leadership needed to meet the urgency of this moment and take RISD into the future. We are thrilled that she has accepted our invitation to be our next president.”

Williams will succeed Rosanne Somerson, who retired at the end of June 2021 and is RISD’s first president emerita. Dave Proulx, the school’s senior vice president of finance and administration, has been serving as interim president since Somerson’s retirement.

Williams, who grew up in Detroit and Madrid, Spain, is herself an accomplished artist. Her poems and essays have been lauded nationally. She’s published four collections of poems and received multiple artistic fellowships, grants, and honors, including a fellowship from MacDowell, an appointment as the Distinguished Visiting Professor of University Writing at DePauw University, a “Master Poet” residency at Indiana University, the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize, and others. She holds degrees from New York University and Cornell University. 

At BU, Williams was the inaugural associate provost for diversity and inclusion before moving into her broader role as vice president and associate provost for community and inclusion. She oversaw a number of programs and initiatives, including the BU Provost’s Arts Initiative, the Newbury Center, which supports first-generation students, the LGBTQIA+ Faculty/Staff Center, and BU Diversity & Inclusion. 

Of her appointment to helm RISD, Williams says it was driven by her belief that art and design can “elevate and amplify” the human experience and “narrate who we have been and who we can become. 

“Art, education, and equity and justice are the three foundational foci of my life and everything about me—who I am as a teacher, a writer, a leader, friend, daughter, and human,” Williams says. “Having the opportunity to serve as RISD’s president, to sustain and build on RISD’s core strengths and work on behalf of its extraordinary students, faculty, staff, and alumni is a profound honor.”

Morrison says Williams leaves BU in a better place. “As Crystal prepares to take on a new leadership role at RISD,” she says, “the University she leaves is stronger, more diverse, and more inclusive for her efforts.”