Curated by William Drenttel and Julie Lasky


INTRODUCTION
Winterhouse Institute, the organization co-founded by William Drenttel, is hosting a symposium at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, August 14-16, 2010. This symposium will be an invitation-only gathering of thirty educators and interested parties to explore the teaching and practice of social design in undergraduate and graduate design education. The first Winterhouse Education Symposium was held in October 2011 at Winterhouse, and proceedings, case studies and participants are published on ChangeObserver.

This symposium will bring together leading educators at the intersection of design and social change from institutions throughout the United States as well as from abroad. The goal is to discuss strategies for teaching and practicing social design in the classroom and the field. This symposium also aims to foster collaborations among the participants and to build partnerships with the larger design community in effecting school-based solutions to social problems. Winterhouse Symposium is scheduled for Sunday evening, August 14, through Tuesday evening, August 16, 2011, with participants departing the following morning, August 17. Participants are responsible for their own airfare and costs of hotel accommodations. Participants will stay at one of two local inns (Falls Village Inn or Race Brook Lodge); special rates will be shared with all confirmed participants. Special dinners will occur at Hotchkiss, Winterhouse and one local restaurant.

This symposium is a part of a larger Winterhouse initiative around design and social innovation funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The symposium proceedings will be published on Change Observer, the Rockefeller Foundation–funded website devoted to design and social innovation. Change Observer is a channel of Design Observer, the critically acclaimed website focused on design and visual culture. Other symposia have been held in Aspen, Colorado and Bellagio, Italy.


PROGRAMMING
Winterhouse Symposium on Design Education and Social Change will foster direct, detailed exchanges on four themes: 

• Case studies of effective design projects for social change based in academic institutions
  
  
• Recommendations for transforming design school curricula to better accommodate such models
  
  
• Exploring the roles and opportunities for new centers of design research and practice housed within academic institutions
  
  
• Exploring the relationship between educators and outside partners and clients in facilitating social design projects

PARTICIPANTS
Confirmed Attendees (list in formation 05/04/11)

Mariana Amatullo, Vice President & CoFounder,
Designmatters Department, Art Center College of Design
Through Mariana Amatullo’s leadership, Art Center is the first design institution to be affiliated as a non-governmental organization with several United Nations agencies and development organizations. The award-winning and tangible outcomes of the Designmatters portfolio unite educational objectives with advocacy and social innovation outcomes that are disseminated globally by Designmatters partners. Amatullo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina; she holds an M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from the University of Southern California and a Licence en Lettres Degree from the Sorbonne University, Paris.

Scott Boylston, Professor, Sustainability and
Graphic Design, Savannah College of Art and Design
Scott is the author of three books, and has published fiction in respected literary journals. He is director and co-founder of Emergent Structures, a non-profit organization dedicated to the innovative reclamation of building materials through community collaboration. He is co-author of the masters in Design for Sustainability at SCAD, and holds a masters in Visual Communication from Pratt Institute. He is on the Georgia Board of Directors for US Green Building Council, the Committee for Healthy Savannah and the Chatham Environmental Forum.

Charlie Cannon, Associate Professor,
Industrial Design, RISD Director, Research and Design, LOCAL Architecture Research Design
Charlie Cannon co-founded the Innovation Studio at RISD to confront pressing issues of our day through interdisciplinary collaboration, social entrepreneurship and design research. The studio’s projects have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rhode Island Renewable Energy Fund, the RISD Research Foundation and the City of Denver. Cannon is also co-founder of LOCAL Architecture Research Design, a design firm in Providence, Rhode Island that focuses on projects that develop and sustain local communities.

Lee Davis, Co-Founder, NESsT
Social Enterprise Fellow, Yale School of Management
Lee Davis is a social entrepreneur and designer with over 20 years of experience in the international development, philanthropy and social enterprise fields, and co-author of several books on social enterprise and venture philanthropy. He is co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) and served for 15 years as co-CEO of NESsT, an international organization that has supported over 2500 social enterprises solving critical social problems across Eastern Europe and Latin America, and a 2004 winner of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Lee is a former Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) where he was a Professorial Lecturer in Social Change and Development, and is currently a Social Enterprise Fellow at the Yale School of Management.

William Drenttel, Editorial Director,
Design Observer and Winterhouse Institute
William Drenttel is a partner at Winterhouse, a design practice in Falls Village, Connecticut, focused on social innovation, online media, and educational institutions. He is also design director for Teach For All, an international education network. Through the Winterhouse Institute, he is leading a series of initiatives funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to develop models for design and social innovation. Drenttel is president emeritus of AIGA and a senior faculty fellow at the Yale School of Management. He is the editorial director of Design Observer, a leading website focused on design, social innovation, urbanism and cultural commentary.

Liz Gerber, Assistant Professor,
Segal Design Institute, Northwestern University
In 2008, Liz co-founded Design for America, a new and rapidly growing organization for college campuses that inspires students to use design to create local and social impact. In the process, students prepare to drive human centered innovation throughout their careers. Previously, Liz taught at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (aka the d.school). In 2008 she completed a PhD at the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization and a MS in Product Design at Stanford University. She researches how work practices and technology influences innovation.

Phil Hamlett, Graduate Director,
School of Graphic Design, Academy of Art University
Phil is the graduate director of the School of Graphic Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, the largest private art and design school in the country. Prior to the Academy, Phil was communications director at Turner & Associates, and director of creative services for EAI/Atlanta (now known as “Unboundary”). Phil also works at setting the agenda for sustainable business practice within the design community. He founded Compostmodern, a design conference devoted to sustainability, and is a co-author of the Living Principles for Design, a comprehensive framework to guide the development of sustainable design solutions. Phil also serves as a national board member for AIGA.

Cheryl Heller, Chair, Design for Social Innovation Masters Program, School of Visual Arts
Cheryl Heller is chair of the new masters program in Design for Social Innovation at the School of Visual Arts in New York, founder of Heller Communication Design, and board chair of PopTech, a thought leadership conference and social innovation accelerator. She is a pioneering communication designer and business strategist, who has led transformational initiatives for entrepreneurs, corporations and non-profits.

Terry Irwin, Professor and Head,
School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University
In the past year Terry led a series of faculty retreats to develop a new mission/vision for the school which places design for the society and the environment at the heart of the curriculum. Previously Terry was a founding partner of the international firm MetaDesign and adjunct faculty at California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco. In 2004 she completed an MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College in Devon, England where she later joined the faculty to teach design to biologists, ecologists, sociologists and activists. She is a PhD researcher in the Natural Design Group at Dundee University, Scotland.

Debera Johnson, Academic Director of Sustainability,
Pratt Institute
Debera Johnson founded the Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation, and the Center for Sustainable Design Studies. She is a graduate of Pratt’s Industrial Design program and currently serves as Pratt’s first Academic Director for Sustainability. Her aspiration is to provide opportunities for creative people to collaborate around socially responsible projects that get implemented. She teaches in the Industrial Design and Environmental Management programs at Pratt. Debera is also leading the Pratt Academic Leadership Summit on Sustainability (PALSS), a collaborative group of "fellows" appointed by the presidents of 35 independent art and design colleges throughout North America who will be focusing on the sustainability and future of are and design education.

Wendy Ju, Assistant Professor
Graduate Program in Design, California College of the Arts
Wendy is innovating curriculum in interaction design at California College of the Arts and Stanford University. She is the founder of Ambidextrous Magazine, which examines the broader social and ideological context of modern day design practice. Wendy was also the chief instigator of the Transformative Design course at the d.school at Stanford. She holds a doctorate from the Center for Design Research at Stanford University.

Jon Kolko, Executive Director, Thinktiv,
Director, Austin Center for Design
Jon Kolko is the Executive Director of Design Strategy at Thinktiv, a venture accelerator in Austin, Texas. Jon is also the Founder and Director of Austin Center for Design, an educational institution teaching interaction design and social entrepreneurship. Jon is the author of the book Thoughts on Interaction Design, published by Morgan Kaufmann, and Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner's Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis, published by Oxford University Press.

Julie Lasky, Editor, Design Observer
and Winterhouse Institute, New York
Julie Lasky is the editor of Change Observer, a web site that focuses on design for social innovation and is a channel of Design Observer. Prior to that position, she was editor-in-chief of I.D., the award-winning magazine of international design, and of Interiors magazine, which she led to several national honors. She was also managing editor of Print magazine. Lasky is a widely published writer and critic, and the author of two books on design, including Some People Can’t Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry. She recently joined the MFA design criticism faculty at New York’s School of Visual Arts.

Marcia Lausen, Principal, Studio/lab
Director, School of Art and Design,
University of Illinois at Chicago
Marcia Lausen is founder of the Chicago office of Studio/lab and Director of the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Marcia helped to initiate Design for Democracy, a strategic program of AIGA that seeks to improve the quality and clarity of government communications. Her book, Design for Democracy: Ballot + Election Design, was published in 2007 by the University of Chicago Press. Marcia received her MFA in graphic design from Yale University. She was named a FastCompany Master of Design in 2004.

Paul McKinley, Dean, Saybrook College, Yale University
Paul McKinley is a graduate of the Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism Program at the Yale School of Drama. He teaches courses in Yale's Theater Studies Program, and is currently working on a course on the aesthetics of everyday life. As the dean of Saybrook College, he serves as the primary adviser to 500 students pursuing a liberal-arts curriculum, often with a focus in the arts. He also serves a member of the review committee for the performing arts at Yale.

Heather McGowan, Assistant Provost, College of Design+Engineering+Commerce, Philadelphia University
Heather is the lead architect for newly formed college at Philadelphia University charged with strategic direction for a socially networked college integrating 18 existing programs. As an extension of this she created an immersive design thinking-based, business program on disruptive business model innovation. DEC launches in Fall 2011 and will address big, messy complex problems in our VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world such as access to water, energy, etc. Previously, Heather served as an advisor for Climate Smart, which offers proprietary software tools for tracking carbon emissions and as associate director of the Center for Design and Business at Rhode Island School of Design. Heather studied Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design and has an MBA from Babson College.

David Mohney, Dean Emeritus and Professor of Architecture, University of Kentucky College of Design
David Mohney is the co-author of three books: Seaside: Making a Town in America, The Houses of Philip Johnson, and The Louisville Architecture Guide; he is working on a book about contemporary design In Rotterdam. David has taught at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and SCI-Arc. He was educated at Cranbrook School, Harvard College and Princeton’s School of Architecture. David was the Founding Secretary of the Curry Stone Design Prize, a global award for design ideas that promote a better world, and he is presently forming a consortium of international design schools focused on Social Urbanism.

Caroline Payson, Director of Education
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
Caroline Payson, currently Director of Education at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, has an extensive background in arts education, and was formerly director of educational services at Maryland Public Television, where she oversaw a $10 million grant to create the “Thinkport” education super-site. She has also led education initiatives using web-based resources to improve reading instruction, distance learning courses and school curricula. A former chair of liberal studies at Parsons School of Design, Payson holds degrees from Johns Hopkins and Sarah Lawrence.

Natacha Poggio, Assistant Professor
Visual Communication Design, Hartford Art School,
University of Hartford
Since 2007, Natacha Poggio has been developing strategic design projects that promote sustainable development and awareness of global issues. Her research fosters interdisciplinary partnerships that bring positive social change at local, national, and international levels. She is the founder of Design Global Change, a collaborative of students and alumni helping local and international communities through service-learning projects. As the 2010 recipient of a Sappi Ideas that Matter grant, she spearheads a project promoting gender equality in India. A native of Buenos Aires, she holds an MFA in Design from the University of Texas at Austin.

Mark Randall, Principal, Worldstudio,
Chair, Impact! Design for Social Change,
School of Visual Arts
Mark Randall is a principal at Worldstudio, a New York City firm that adheres to the philosophy of “doing well by doing good.” Worldstudio has actively developed projects at the intersection of design, education and social change. Their landmark college scholarship program offers financial support to design/arts students that incorporate a social agenda into their work. In 2009, Worldstudio launched Design Ignites Change in collaboration with the Adobe Foundation. Mark is the co-founder of the graduate-level summer program Impact! Design for Social Change at the School of Visual Arts.

Arvi Raquel-Santos, Design Director
Weymouth Design
Arvi can be found in San Francisco working at Weymouth Design. He co-chairs and is the designer of Sappi’s Ideas that Matter program, the graphic design industry’s only grant program aimed at helping designers to contribute their talent to charitable causes. Arvi is also a board member of AIGA San Francisco and the chapter’s Social Impact Co-Chair. One of its lead initiatives is the "cause/affect" design show which celebrates the work of designers and organizations that positively impact our society.

Vera Sacchetti, Design Critic and Writer
Vera is a recent graduate from the School of Visual Art’s MFA in Design Criticism where, following a year of research, she developed “Design Crusades: A Critical Reflection on Social Design,” a masters thesis surveying the social design practice in the US. She hails from Lisbon, Portugal, where she currently heads international communications at the EXD’11/LISBOA design biennale. Vera is a consultant at Superscript in New York, and has written about design and architecture for Change Observer, Metropolis, Architect’s Newspaper, Proximo Futuro/Next Future and Arte Capital.

Jason Schupbach, Design Director
National Endowment for the Arts
Jason Schupbach is the Design Director for the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversees all design grantmaking and partnerships. Jason previously served as the Creative Economy and Information Technology Industry Director at the Massachusetts Department of Business Development, growing innovation industries in software, hardware, film, tv, digital media, videogames, design, advertising, music and publishing. He formerly was the director of ArtistLink, a Ford Foundation initiative to revitalize communities through the creation of innovative environments for creative entrepreneurs.

Cameron Tonkinwise, Associate Dean for Sustainability
Parsons The New School for Design
Previously the Co-Chair of the Tishman Environment and Design Center, which oversees the New School's Environmental Studies degree programs, Cameron came to the New School from Sydney, Australia where he was Director of Design Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Executive Director of Change Design, formerly known as the EcoDesign Foundation, a thinktank focused on design-enabled social change toward more sustainable futures. Cameron's current research concerns lowering societal materials intensity by decoupling use and ownership - in short, sharing.

Helen Walters, Editor, Doblin
Helen Walters is a writer, editor and researcher at innovation consultancy Doblin, part of the Monitor Group. A New York City-based journalist, with experience editing and publishing content across multiple platforms, Helen was formerly the editor of innovation and design at Bloomberg Businessweek. She is contributing editor at Creative Review magazine in the United Kingdom while she writes about creativity and design for numerous international publications, including Fast Company Design, Core77 and Design Observer. She regularly participates in discussions about the business of design at conferences around the world and curates the website, thoughtyoushouldseethis.com. She is the author of a number of design-related books. She tweets @helenwalters.

Mike Weikert, Director, Master of Arts in Social Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)
Mike is founder and director of the Center for Design Practice at MICA, a multi-disciplinary studio bringing students together with outside organizations to examine challenges facing our communities. This Fall, he launches MICA's newest graduate program, the Master of Arts in Social Design. Previously, he served as co-chair of undergraduate graphic design at MICA, partner/creative director at Atlanta-based Iconologic, and as a design consultant to the International Olympic Committee. In 2011, Mike was nominated for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum National Design Award.

Malcolm McKensie, Hotchkiss Headmaster
Kevin Hicks, Hotchkiss Dean of Faculty
Steve McKibben, Hotchkiss Summer Portals Director


BACKGROUND
Winterhouse Institute acts as catalyst, coordinator and champion of an initiative in the public sphere to develop collective action and collaboration for social impact across the design industry; it also creates communication platforms for conferences and gatherings, including an editorial website to monitor and report on developments. Funding for this work is through the Rockefeller Foundation. William Drenttel directs the Winterhouse Institute and is editorial director of Design Observer.


DIRECTIONS AND ACCOMODATIONS
The Hotchkiss School is located in the Northwest corner of Connecticut. See the school’s Directions page for detailed options.

Detailed information about local inns will be available here by May 2011. Hopefully enough participants will drive, rent cars, etc. that participants without cars can share rides between inns, Hotchkiss and meals; Winterhouse will facilitate this once attendees are confirmed. Local airports are Hartford, Albany and LaGuardia/Kennedy in New York City. Trains are available every two hours from Grand Central Station in New York City to a local train station in Wassaic, New York.


FURTHER INFORMATION

William Drenttel, Winterhouse Institute
william@winterhouse.com

Julie Lasky, Winterhouse Institute
julie@winterhouse.com