What started as a part-time job for Juan Andrés Rujana (BS ‘20, Product Design) turned into an opportunity to grow, experiment, and make an impact supporting refugees as Epimonía’s design director. Juan Rujana talks about his work with Epimonía, a refugee-founded fashion label, and how his experiences in the Product Design program have impacted his career thus far in our latest alumni spotlight.
On June 8, 2020, the College of Design named Jennifer Yoos, FAIA, as the new head of the School of Architecture. Her career in architecture is driven by a lifelong love for art, buildings, and design in general as well as childhood summers spent with her artist aunt in Chicago. In our interview, Yoos shares her visions for the school, the new semester, and the future of the profession.
Sarah Klecker (BS ’17, Apparel Design) is putting her design degree to work creating functional apparel for athletes of all kinds.
Professor Tasoulla Hadjiyanni’s (Interior Design) latest release, The Right to Home: Exploring How Space, Culture, and Identity Intersect with Disparities, studies interior design’s role in addressing health, income, and educational inequities.
In addition to welcoming our new students this fall, the College of Design (CDes) is pleased to welcome our new dean, Carol Strohecker. She brings a wealth of experience to our college and has worked to advance interdisciplinary research, education, and creative work in academic, corporate, government, and “hybrid” settings. In this interview, Strohecker talks about her passion for the design fields, her experiences across the design disciplines, and gives some advice to our incoming students.
When the decision was made to shift classes to remote learning, faculty, students, and staff undertook one of the biggest teaching and learning challenges to date. As the semester wraps up, our interior design instructors share how they adapted their spring classes to remote learning, the challenges they faced in the process, and what they learned through the experience.
Led by Professor Tasoulla Hadjiyanni (Interior Design), the Culturally Enriched Communities (CEC) Initiative champions healthy and connected communities in which everyone can thrive.
When Molly Sanford accepted the position as fabrication director for the College of Design’s Fabrication Shops in March 2020, her most urgent problem was a dust collector on the fritz. Two weeks and one global pandemic later, Sanford began working to reframe the crisis as an opportunity for open-hearted collaboration, creative resourcefulness, and new beginnings.
After almost a decade of practice in urban design, Anna Claussen (MLA ’07) broke out of traditional practice to explore how sociopolitical issues relate to surrounding landscapes.
At the time of her graduation, Susan Hegland Blumentals (B.Arch ’59) was one of only two female students in her class at the School of Architecture. Her husband, Janis Blumentals (B.Arch ’59), was born in Riga, Latvia and immigrated to the United States after World War II in 1950.
