Schutte, Juette Receive 2017 Rowena Reed Kostellow Award

Dr. Thomas Schutte, President of Pratt Institute was awarded the Rowena Reed Kostellow Award. “President Schutte has been an advocate for our work ever since he came to Pratt in 1993!” declared Tucker Viemeister, Chair. “And he has been with us awarding most of the previous 20 winners!” And this year for the first time, a new Young Designer Award was be given to Cindy Juette, Chrysler interior designer.

Former Provost, Peter Barna presented the award with speech about how the Award recognizes Dr. Schutte’s exceptional energy, enthusiasm, and vision advancing the principles of design that Rowena Reed Kostellow taught. Decades before he came to Pratt, Dr. Schutte was a design campaigner as president of the Rhode Island School of Design, and before that, as president of the PCA (now University of the Arts). During Dr. Schutte’s 24-year tenure at Pratt, “Tom has accomplished extraordinary regrowth for Pratt. In so doing, he has become a dear friend of the Rowena Reed Kostellow Fund. He was instrumental in helping us restructure procedures to directly help and honor students in the Industrial Design Program. He has always been there to listen and share his thoughts,” stated Louis Nelson, Chair Emeritus.

Dr. Schutte joins 20 other champions of the Abstract Principles of Visual Relationships who have received the award, including: Gina Caspi, Ivan Rigby, Eva Zeisel, Gerald Gulotta, William Fogler, Eugene Grossman, Ralph Appelbaum, James Fulton, Louis Nelson, Judy Collins, Bruce Hannah, Ted Muehling, Lucia N. DeRespinis, Tom Patti, Leonard Bacich, Bill Katavolos, Charles Pollock, Ruth Shuman, RitaSue Siegel and Linda Celentano. These teachers, entrepreneurs and designers embody the mission of the fund inspired by Rowena’s teaching: to encourage and guide a systematic educational approach to all forms of visual expression.

Cindy Juette Accepts the First RRK Young Designer Award

Cindy Juette, completed her MA from Pratt in 2010, she then won a Fulbright scholarship for a second MA program in Automotive Design from Coventry University and also holds a degree from Art Center. Now she works as an interior designer at Chrysler. She says: “I do bring Pratt's 3-D education with me wherever I go. It is such a unique approach to form making and I feel so lucky to have been a part of that curriculum.”