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School of Design Awards

Joshua Mosley

The School of Design has awarded the 2006 G. Holmes Perkins Award for Distinguished Teaching to assistant professor of animation and digital media Dr.Joshua Mosley. A nationally recognized animation artist, Dr. Mosley’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and abroad. “He is considered an artist with a unique voice, breaking new ground in animation format and technique. While he largely works in film and video, he is equally at home as a visual artist and a sculptor. Indeed, his imaginative work often combines the three media, along with sound and narrative.” He has won many awards for his work, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and a Pew Fellowship. He has recently been awarded the Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize in Visual Arts and will focus on animation inspired by the depictions of animals in ancient forms of art.

Dr. Mosley is the anchor of the School of Design’s efforts in the Digital Media Design Program, a joint venture with SEAS and the Annenberg School. He has had a formative influence on his students, helping them master the techniques of animation. He spends quality time with his students and encourages them to take their work beyond the classroom by helping them to submit their projects to various festivals and competitions. Current students and alumni uniformly praise his dedication and commitment as a teacher, his role as a mentor, his enthusiasm and encouragement. As noted by one student, “Joshua raises the bar with art and technology, which only the best art schools in the country can claim the rights to.” Dr. Mosley has been promoted to associate professor with tenure, effective July 1, 2006.

Laurie Olin
The G. Holmes Perkins Award for Distinguished Teaching by a member of the practitioner faculty is awarded to practice professor of landscape architecture Laurie Olin. Mr. Olin has taught on the faculty of landscape architecture for the past 30 years, originally as an adjunct professor, and in the last ten years, as the School of Design’s first practice professor. It is rare for a practitioner of his caliber to devote himself to teaching. He is counted among the preeminent landscape architects of our time: he is a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architecture, recipient of the Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was inducted into the Academy this past year. He has been honored many times over for his writing and design work, which includes the current master plan for Penn, the redesign of Bryant Park in New York, and the landscape of the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Mr. Olin’s students clamor to get into his studios and lectures. He works individually and closely with his students, sharing the design process and his tremendous knowledge of ecology and landscapes. For the past several years he has taught at a design studio in Beijing where he is also helping Tsinghua University create China’s first Master of Landscape Architecture program. His experiences around the world, both in practice and in his understanding of places and cultural environments, give great depth to his teaching. He is unequalled in his combination of practitioner and theorist, and gives generously of his time and knowledge.

Richard Wesley

The Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Undergraduate Programs in the School of Design is awarded to Mr. Richard Wesley, adjunct associate professor of architecture. He served as interim chair of the department (1997-99), department head (1999-2003), and undergraduate chair from 1996 to the present. Under his leadership, the Design of the Environment program was refocused as an undergraduate major in Architecture. The major, and a new minor, have been attracting a growing number of students over the past few years.

Mr. Wesley, a respected architect, works tirelessly as a studio teacher, mentor, and advisor to students. He consistently encourages students and faculty to reach out to society through innovative programs and symposiums including the Forum on Women in Design, the ICUE/Martin Luther King Day Forum on Minorities in Architecture, the Asian Studies Program, and the design of the St. Barnabas Mission for the Homeless in West Philadelphia through a Community Design Assistance Program he established in 1998. This past semester, his students worked on a project to design low income housing for teenage mothers.

His style of teaching forces students to be clear in their expression and intent, elevating and improving the architectural process and products. With his patience and determination, he instills in his students hope, creativity, knowledge and confidence.

These awards, named in honor of G. Holmes Perkins, dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts (now School of Design), 1951-71, are given in recognition of distinguished teaching and innovation in the methods of instruction in the classroom, seminar or studio. Dean Perkins passed away in 2004 at the age of 99. The Perkins Award was established in 1993 by former dean and Paley Professor Patricia Conway. The undergraduate award was established by the school last year. The School acknowledged these teachers at its award ceremony on May 14.

 

 

 



 
  Almanac, Vol. 52, No. 34, May 23, 2006

ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS:

Tuesday,
May 23, 2006
Volume 52 Number 34
www.upenn.edu/almanac

 

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