May 28, 2019

Faculty Accomplishments

Stuart Rome, Photography

Professor Stuart Rome has decided after a long, illustrious career at Drexel to retire. Stuart has been with the Photography program since its inception in 1985, and the students he has mentored have gone on to successful careers. In celebration of his career and many achievements, please join us on May 31st at 6pm in the URBN Annex Screening Room for a lecture by Stuart about his work from the past thirty-five years, followed by a reception. Stuart has exhibited extensively over the years in solo and group exhibitions - in galleries and museums. His most current project, “Oculus” was awarded the Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award in 2015 and his publications include: Maya, Treasures of an Ancient Civilization, Abrams, 1985;Forest, a monograph, Nazraeli Press, 2005; Signs and Wonders, The Southeast Museum of Photography, 2011. Professor Rome’s work is included in the public collections of the Los Angeles County Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and International Museum of Photography at The George Eastman House, Rochester.

Dr. Jichen Zhu, Associate Professor of Digital Media

Selected for the Provost Award for Outstanding Mid-Career Scholarly Achievement in Art, Science, & Industry—an award given to one faculty member in the university each year that recognizes excellence in research and leadership in the field. Dr. Zhu was recognized for her work in AI-based interactive systems for social good. Jichen is the first Westphal faculty to win this award.

Jen Blazina, Professor of Art & Art History

Awarded the Faculty Summer Research Award, funding a creation of a new body of glass artwork for a solo exhibition at Lyons College in Batesville, AK, running September 19th through November 20th. At the exhibition opening, Blazina will speak about her work and the role of the woman artist in the craft movement. Blazina will produce a series of glass objects inspired by the prototypical idea of ‘women’s work’ (irons, spools, aprons) as a means of examining past roles of women in the home.

Dr. Andrew Zitcer, Program Director for Master of Science in Urban Strategy

Awarded the Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity Award for his project exploring how artists thrive in cities undergoing economic change. Using focus groups and GIS, geographic information system, mapping workshops held in Philadelphia in 2017 and 2018, Dr. Zitcer will explore these dynamics in Baltimore and Richmond, VA to create a cross-city comparison of artists’ ability to maintain their practice amid conditions of gentrification, funding challenges, and demographic shifts.

Dee Nicholas, D.S Nicholas NCIDQ, AIA, NCARB, LEED, GA, Assistant Professor and Program Director for Masters of Science in Design Research

Awarded the Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity Award in support of an installation piece called Bio-design Substrates, a collaboration with Dr. Shivanthi Anandan, associate professor of Biology. Part of the Garden Fresh Home project, an in-home growing unit for urban families needing fresh food, the installation piece examines substrates, the surface or material on or from which an organism lives, grows, or obtains its nourishment, for bio cultures to support plant life.

Jackie Kilmartin, Assistant Teaching Professor of Fashion Design

Awarded the Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity Award in support of a project titled Knit Textile Fabric and Program Library, an effort to generate a textile library that introduces designers to the physical potential of weft knits and the programming language used to create such textiles.

Delia Solomons, Assistant Professor of Art & Art History

Awarded a Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity Award. She will use these funds to pay for image permissions for her forthcoming book Cold War in the White Cube: Latin American Art for U.S. Audiences (1959-68), to be published by Penn State University Press in 2021 as part of their Refiguring Modernism Series.

Student Accomplishments

Chelsea Myers, Digital Media PhD candidate

Selected as recipient of the 2019 Drexel Research Excellence Award – Post- Candidacy by Drexel’s Graduate College

Xiaohan Zhou, Fashion Design Graduate Student

Selected as a recipient of the 2019 Drexel Research Excellence Award – Most Original & Creative.

Marie Mastrobattista, Interior Architecture & Design Graduate Student

Selected as a recipient of the 2019 Teaching Assistant Excellence Award from the Drexel Graduate College.