Roger Mandle stands in one of his many achievements during his 15 years as president of the Rhode Island School of Design: the Chace Center, a new $43-million campus center on North Main Street, in Providence.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

PROVIDENCE Two years ago, Roger Mandle got a telephone call that literally changed his life.

The call came from an executive search firm hired by the Getty Trust, the deep-pocketed private foundation that runs both the famed art museum the Getty Center in Los Angeles and its sister institution, the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif. The caller said the trust was looking for a new executive director and that Mandle’s name had popped up on a list of potential job candidates.

Would Mandle, the longtime president of the Rhode Island School of Design, be willing to come out to California for an interview?

“It was completely out of the blue,” Mandle says. “I didn’t ask to be on the list and I didn’t ask anyone to put me on the list. The idea that I might leave RISD to take another job had simply never entered my mind. I fully expected to stay here until it was time for me to retire.”

Still, Mandle was intrigued enough to sit through several interviews. And while the Getty job ultimately went to another Rhode Islander — James N. Wood, a former director of the Chicago Art Institute who had retired to Bristol — Mandle says the experience got him thinking.

“I started wondering if there was something else I might do in my life,” he says. “I was happy — very happy — at RISD, but suddenly I was confronted with other possibilities.”

Next month, the personal and professional changes triggered by that 2006 phone call will come to a surprising conclusion when Mandle officially steps down as RISD president. His replacement, John Maeda, a 41-year-old professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is due to take over as the school’s 16th president on June 2.

Mandle, meanwhile, already has a new job. In July, he will become the first executive director of the Qatar Museum Authority, a new administrative body that will oversee museums in the oil-rich Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar.

For Mandle, a boyish-looking 66-year-old who came to RISD after a stint as assistant director at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., the move means trading the tree-lined streets of College Hill for the much less familiar setting of the Middle East.

RISD, however, may be in for an even bigger shock.

In fact, during Mandle’s 15-year tenure — the longest of any RISD president since World War II — the school transformed itself from a mostly local, inward-looking institution into an international arts and academic powerhouse. Along the way, Mandle oversaw a sweeping overhaul of RISD’s academic curriculum, raised more money than any previous RISD president and masterminded the school’s historic expansion across the Providence River and into downtown.

“Frankly, I don’t think you can overstate the kind of impact he’s had,” says Bancorp Rhode Island president Merrill W. Sherman. “When you look at what he’s done in terms of raising RISD’s national and international profile, being a strong advocate for arts locally and nationally, and even his success as a fundraiser, it’s really phenomenal. He’s truly a Renaissance man.”

In particular, Sherman points to the success of “The Future by Design,” an ambitious eight-year capital campaign that netted more than $105 million. The money allowed RISD to simultaneously boost its endowment, increase student scholarships and pay for a flurry of new building projects, including a $43-million campus center (the Chace Center) on North Main Street and a library and dormitory complex (15 Westminster Street) in the Financial District.

(On Thursday, RISD will formally rename its 15 Westminster Street complex The Roger Mandle Building: The Rhode Island School of Design Living and Learning Center. The dedication ceremony is open to the public and will take place from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.)

Sherman, who chairs RISD’s board of trustees, says Mandle also affected the school in more subtle ways. Among them: redefining the role of a RISD president.

“When I first came to Rhode Island in the 1970s, nobody knew the name of the RISD president,” Sherman says. “You knew the name of the RISD Museum director. Maybe you knew some of the faculty. But you didn’t know the president’s name. Now everyone knows the president’s name, and I think that’s a testament both to Roger’s leadership and his personal charisma.”

For many Rhode Islanders, Mandle is simply The One Voice of the state’s arts community. In that capacity, he’s argued against cuts in local arts education programs, lobbied for increases in public financing for the arts and joined with Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline and other civic leaders in singing the praises of the so-called “creative economy.”

“He’s been incredibly effective,” says state Council on the Arts executive director Randy Rosenbaum. “Partly, that’s because he’s remarkably well-spoken and well-informed on arts issues. But it’s also a testament to the strength of his message — namely, that the arts aren’t just good for you in some abstract, feel-good way. They’re also good in more practical ways.”

Mandle has also backed up his words with actions.

Since 2003, for example, RISD has co-sponsored the Arts School at Hope, an innovative program that brings RISD students and faculty together with students from Providence’s Hope High School. RISD also sponsors a wide array of family-friendly arts classes and activities, including the popular Free-for-All-Saturday workshops at the RISD Museum.

Another Mandle legacy is the school’s march into downtown. Once a purely East Side institution, the RISD campus now resembles a kind of urban archipelago, with outposts on College Hill, North and South Main Streets, the Providence riverfront and downtown.

Many of the school’s downtown properties, including 15 Westminster Street (formerly the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Building) and the Mason and Fletcher buildings on Weybosset Street (now home to RISD’s digital arts program and the Center for Integrative Technologies, an arts/business partnership with Bryant University), were acquired during Mandle’s tenure.

Perhaps the most visible sign of the school’s urban expansion is the Chace Center, the campus center RISD is building on North Main Street. Designed by award-winning Spanish architect Rafael Moneo — and due to open in mid-September — the five-story building will house classrooms and studios, as well as two floors of new gallery space for the RISD Museum.

The building has raised the ire of some College Hill residents, who say its starkly minimalist style clashes with the area’s historic character. But Mandle remains unrepentant.

“Obviously, when you try to do something that’s genuinely new and different, it’s going to raise some eyebrows,” he says. “What’s the phrase — the shock of the new? But over time, I think [the Chace Center] will be recognized as a truly great building. As for the idea that we’re somehow threatening the character of College Hill, I think we’re actually enhancing it.”

Whatever the final verdict on the Chace Center, Mandle’s willingness to nudge RISD off its traditional perch on College Hill has won kudos from city officials.

“His voice, his passion, his leadership — they’ve all been enormously positive,” says Mayor David Cicilline. “I’ve worked with him on a number of projects — things like the Hope High arts academy and our recent series of waterfront planning charrettes — and he’s always been incredibly helpful and enthusiastic. I don’t think the ties between RISD and the city have ever been stronger.”

Not everyone is a Mandle fan, however.

Two years ago, a group of dissident faculty members issued a “no confidence” vote against Mandle and his administration. The vote came in the middle of contract negotiations between RISD and the union representing the school’s full-time faculty, but union leaders say the move also reflected larger concerns over Mandle’s management style and spending priorities.

“The contract negotiations were obviously the catalyst, but there were a lot of other issues,” says RISD union head Henry Ferreira. “For example, the school was raising a lot of money, but it wasn’t being used to hire more teachers or improve educational resources. Instead, it was being spent on things like the museum and the Chace Center.”

Mandle vehemently denies that the school has skimped on educational spending. “I don’t think any reasonable observer would come to that conclusion,” he says.

Meanwhile, the exact number of faculty members involved in the no-confidence vote remains in dispute. Ferreira says the group included a majority of the school’s department heads, but Mandle says only “a tiny number” of faculty actually cast votes.

Another view comes from longtime RISD Prof. Michael Fink. Fink, who’s taught English literature under four different RISD presidents, says Mandle has been “a wonderful leader and ambassador” for the school. He also praises Mandle and his wife, the painter and mixed media artist Gayle Wells Mandle, for reaching out to students and faculty.

“They’re wonderful together,” Fink says. “Compared to some of our past presidents, they’ve been absolutely marvelous and unfailingly gracious. They’re made an invitation to the RISD president’s mansion one of the sought-after status symbols in Providence.”

Despite criticism from some faculty members, Fink says Mandle has maintained better relations with the school’s full-  and part-time teaching staff than many previous RISD presidents. That includes Mandle’s two immediate predecessors — Lee Hall (1975-1983), who presided over a bitter faculty strike, and Thomas F. Schutte (1983-1992), who left after feuding with longtime RISD Museum director Franklin W. Robinson. (Robinson also left the school in 1992.)

But Fink agrees with Ferreira that the relative affluence of the Mandle era has been slow to trickle down to individual classrooms and departments.

“I think we’re all a little tired of the grand projects,” he says.

While local attention has focused mainly on RISD’s role within the state, the school itself has invested heavily in raising its national and international profile. That includes boosting the number of RISD alumni associations, which has grown from 5 in 1993 to a current high of 39. Of these, 10 are located in foreign countries, including Japan, Korea, Argentina, Australia, Italy, Taiwan and New Zealand. In 1993, there were only two RISD alumni groups active overseas.

Over the same period, the number of foreign students enrolled at RISD has nearly doubled, from 261 in 1993 to 404 last year. Overall, foreign-born students represent 17 percent of RISD’s current population of 2,337 graduate and undergraduate students.

The school has also signed cooperative agreements with two Chinese art schools — the China Academy of Art, in Hangzhou, and the Central Academy of Fine Art, in Beijing. RISD officials are looking into the possibility of adding a third school to that list: the Luxun Academy of Art, with campuses in the Chinese cities of Shenang and Dalian.

“It’s a big world out there,” says Mandle, who has traveled extensively as RISD president. “The same forces of globalization and technology that are transforming business, for example, are also transforming things like art, design and education. Though we’re still very much the Rhode Island School of Design, we’re increasingly being forced to think and act on a global scale.”

Asked to name his biggest achievement as RISD president, Mandle skips over the obvious choices: the new buildings, the move into downtown, the endowment that jumped by more than 500 percent, from $67 million in 1993 to $360 million at the end of last year. Instead, he cites a less tangible accomplishment: fostering a sense of community on the RISD campus.

“I’m a big believer in the power of community,” he says. “Granted, it may sound a little contradictory to talk about a community of artists. After all, artists tend to be highly independent and individualistic by nature. But to the extent that I’ve been able to foster a sense of shared purpose and community at RISD, I’d say that has to be my proudest achievement.”

Meanwhile, Mandle says he is most concerned about the ever-escalating cost of a RISD education. In 1993, the school’s undergraduate tuition bill was $15,900 a year. Next year, RISD students can expect to pay $33,118. With room and board, the total can easily reach as high as $43,000, putting RISD in the same price range as its Ivy League neighbor, Brown University ($45,900).

“As someone who fervently believes that a RISD education should be available to any deserving student, I’d say that’s my biggest concern. In our recent capital campaign, we made some progress toward increasing our scholarship capability. But we need to do more.”

Though he abstained from the search committee that picked his replacement, Mandle thinks the group picked a winner in Maeda, an academic wunderkind who’s also a respected artist and author, as well as director of the MIT Media Lab, a think tank for digital-age movers and shakers.

“I think he’s a terrific choice,” Mandle says. “In fact, I’m a little envious of how much he’s achieved at such a young age.”

Asked if he has any advice for Maeda, Mandle hesitates for a second. Then he says: “Love your job. That’s it. That’s the secret. Love your job.”

bvansicl@projo.com