A college presidency can look, from the outside, like a string of speeches and ribbon cuttings, but most of it happens offstage: the donor lunches, the strategic plans, and the negotiation between ideals and budgets. Ringling College of Art and Design, which has spent the last quarter century reinventing itself in public, is preparing for another. 

The college announced on Friday, Jan. 23, that its Board of Trustees voted unanimously on Jan. 15 to appoint Davis Schneiderman, Ph.D., as Ringling’s next and seventh president. Schneiderman will assume office June 1, 2026, succeeding Larry Thompson, who has led the college since 1999 and announced his retirement in April 2025. To read his exit interview, click here.

Schneiderman comes to Ringling from Lake Forest College in Illinois, where he has spent the past 25 years. He joined the faculty there in 2001 and later served as chair of the English department, associate dean of the faculty and provost and dean of the faculty. Most recently, he was the founding executive director of the Krebs Center for the Humanities at the college. This public-facing cultural institution integrates museum collections with symposia, artist residencies and community programming. Schneiderman was also principal investigator of a $1.2 million Mellon Foundation initiative focused on artificial intelligence, artists, designers and humanists.

At today’s presentation, Schneiderman opened with an unmistakable difference between his old and new life. “My phone tells me it is 72 degrees and sunny,” he said. “In Chicago, where I have come from, it is negative 25 degrees with the wind chill.”

The appointment follows a search process, described as national and international, guided by a presidential selection committee composed of trustees, faculty and staff. The committee, chaired by board vice chair Ali Bahaj, held listening sessions with stakeholders, conducted multiple rounds of interviews and worked with executive search firm Russell Reynolds before making its recommendation.

Schneiderman steps into the job at the end of a long growth era under Thompson, who became president in 1999 when Ringling was smaller, more regional and operating on a much leaner scale. During the announcement, Board of Trustees Chair Dr. Joel Morganroth offered a snapshot of how dramatically the institution changed over Thompson’s 27-year tenure.

“Ringling in 1999 was a school, and now it’s a college with twice the enrollment,” Morganroth said. He added that the operating budget at the time was $15 million and is now “10 times that amount,” while the endowment, then under $4 million, is now “20 times that amount.” The college’s academic scope grew as well, he said, from six majors to 13.

Those numbers help quantify what observers have watched happen in real time: the evolution of Ringling from a small arts school into a nationally recognized institution that anchors a growing slice of Sarasota’s cultural infrastructure. In a 2019 Florida Trend profile, Thompson was credited with moving Ringling from “a nice little art school” to “one of the pre-eminent art and design colleges in the world.”

Thompson, speaking at the event after Schneiderman’s remarks, framed Ringling College as a place defined not only by talent but by intensity. “Ringling College is not just a place of education,” he said. “It’s a place of imagination, experimentation, where determination and courage are needed daily, and where boundless creativity thrives.”

He told the crowd he felt confident about the school’s next chapter and the leadership taking it there. “Davis, you’re inheriting a college with a proud, proud legacy,” Thompson said, “but also one that is constantly, constantly evolving and looking to the future.”

Schneiderman used his remarks to place Ringling’s next era in a larger conversation about technology and creative education, arguing that artists and designers should help shape how artificial intelligence changes creative work, not simply react to it. “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” he said, describing Ringling as an institution already positioned to influence the direction of the technology through a human-centered approach.

He also signaled an intention to listen before leading. “I promise to listen, to be curious, and to work every day for the success and thriving of this collective enterprise,” he said.

Thompson ended his remarks by emphasizing continuity and community support, calling leadership “a shared journey” and telling Schneiderman, “I am here to support you in any way that you may need.”

Schneiderman is a published novelist, writer and multimedia artist, and a frequent speaker on creativity, technology and higher education. He is married to Kelly Haramis, an actor, writer and former journalist for the Chicago Tribune, and they have two college-aged daughters.