I started my last year of graduate school on Wednesday, and the campus is a whirlwind of activity as we welcome a new provost, inaugurate a new president, and (next week) open a shiny new academic building. There is an optimistic energy around the school these days, and I am enjoying being a part of it, especially having experienced this place in its more cynical persona as well.

This Friday was the inauguration of John Maeda, the 16th president of the Rhode Island School of Design since its inception in 1877. It was held in the First Baptist Church in America (which is not just a dramatic name, it really is the first Baptist Church in America, founded by Roger Williams in 1638 after being expelled from Massachusetts for his crazy insistence on religious tolerance, separation of church and state, and fair treatment of Native Americans. That guy — what a nut!).

To get through to the upper balconies, I had to climb two flights of winding stairs, walk through the music director's office, and squeeze around the timpani drum before I could grab a pew. This office, by the way, could have come straight out of Professor Lupin's classroom at Hogwarts, complete with a small balcony, moldy piles of ancient manuscripts, and a thick rope that emerged from the ceiling, where I believe he could actually ring the church bells from his desk.

I will admit that I am a sucker for official ceremonies like this one, so imagine having one in a three hundred year old church, with an Easter-worthy combination of brass ensemble and pipe organ playing Haydn, the theme from the West Wing (for when the new president walks in, of course!), the Trumpet Voluntary, and all manner of other rousing music. It was all very moving and inspiring &mdash with a dash of scary every time a particularly low organ note would send the whole balcony structure into a noticeable shudder.

After the speeches (which you can read more about here and here), we all filed out into the pouring rain to attend a RISD Block Party. There was a photo booth, a silkscreening station where you could choose what word to have printed on your free "Start _______ Here" tshirt, and lots of food and music.

It was all so unusually pulled together for RISD, a place that regularly botches even the most routine plans. I saw them spirit a US senator out the back door of the ceremony and into a waiting motorcade without batting an eyelash. Hundreds of tshirts were distributed and screenprinted in the pouring rain with apparent ease. Its been happening all week, too. At an orientation lunch, I received a delicious sandwich, packed efficiently inside a canvas tote bag with a bottle of water, an apple, and a RISD caribeener (something I had been needing, actually!) without any sort of bottleneck. There are also these new television screens across campus that pull announcements and event images from online — these screens are properly installed, synced across every campus building, and actually look good.

Those of us who have been here a few years have been watching all this in bewilderment, wondering what happened to our funky, periodically bumbling institution that could have transformed it into a place where stuff actually works. It can't all be due to our new president, and perhaps its only temporary. But everyone agrees that there is a different, more charged energy in the air these days. It will be interesting to see where it leads us this year!