Pictured: Jack Davis: Legacy of Laughter exhibition. Photo by Julia Sankar.

With each commencement season, we naturally look back on the year that preceded it. For better or worse, the last nine months have generated their share of memories and milestones.

Even the least hyperbolic among us would characterize the 2024-2025 school year as “unprecedented.” The 96-year history of the Ringling College of Art and Design has never before witnessed a natural disaster like the storms that wrought havoc on the Sarasota-Bradenton area last summer and fall. But during and after that destruction and disruption, our students have demonstrated inspiring resilience, alongside the characteristic talent and ingenuity we see from them year after year.

Just two weeks before the school year began in August, Hurricane Debby caused widespread flooding locally and set the tone for a heartbreaking two months in Sarasota-Manatee. Students had been in class for less than a month when preparations for Helene began in September, followed almost immediately by Milton, which came ashore directly over the Ringling College campus as a category 3 hurricane.

While the College was fortunate to be spared any serious physical damage, multiple evacuations, extended power outages and extensive debris cleanup took an emotional toll on our whole community—and especially the students, many of whom come from other parts of the world and have never experienced extreme tropical weather.

It would have been fair to expect some decline, even just temporarily, in their focus and work ethic. Instead, our students returned to campus in October and rallied, redoubling their academic efforts and embracing and enhancing the Ringling College culture with renewed energy.

This year also marked the debut of our new Environmental Studies minor. How about that for timing? With this line of study, we aim to provide our students with a thorough understanding of contemporary environmental issues that affect our present as well as our future.

So many artists leverage their visual communication skills to help disseminate valuable climate information and facilitate real-world solutions. Our passionate students have already taken advantage of the opportunity to incorporate Environmental Studies classes into their liberal arts curriculum. With this new minor, many upcoming Ringling College graduates will enter the workforce not only with a well-honed artistic skill set, but with a foundation in environmental science that will allow them to become future leaders in some of the world’s most important 21st-century issues.

Additionally, in the spring semester, we launched our Author/Illustrator certificate program. This program of study combines creative writing and illustration skills that are so relevant to today’s publishing industry. For decades, so many of our students have discovered and nurtured their artistic passions through comic books and graphic novels; likewise, many have gone on to create award-winning children’s books. With this certificate, our students will be even more prepared to hone their stories and pitch their projects.

Another highlight of this year came entirely from students from another area of study, the Business of Art and Design. These students fully organized not one but two incredible, simultaneous, on-campus exhibitions: Jack Davis: Legacy of Laughter, featuring works by the Mad magazine cartoonist; and Nothing New: Archives of Affection, a multi-sensory, multimedia exhibition centered on more than 300 daguerreotypes of male couples from the 1800s.

Both of these complex public events involved collaborative teams of students working to design, plan, curate, and market thought-provoking and evocative, emotional artwork. And the resulting experiences enlightened and enriched everyone who came to see them.

These are just a few of the countless triumphs that our students have achieved this year. For example, there were nonprofit partnerships and award-winning films that received national recognition for their student filmmakers’ talents and benevolence. Between these headlines are thousands of as-yet-untold Ringling College victories that these incredible young people achieve and conquer day in and day out.

Every year, I learn new ways to be astounded by our students’ capacity to embrace some circumstances and challenge others; to absorb the beauty and trauma of the world and translate it into power and compassion; to push well beyond our current challenges and buoy themselves, and those of us around them, with new joys.

I’m always proud of our students for their brilliance, their creativity, and their steadfast determination to learn and achieve. This year, I’m in awe of them.

Pictured: Jack Davis: Legacy of Laughter exhibition. Photo by Julia Sankar.