The Gallatin School of Individualized Study has received a $2.5 million gift from the Guess Foundation to establish the Guess Distinguished Visiting Professorship in Fashion and Fashion Business. The professorship, which commences in the fall 2012 semester, will be awarded to a leader in the field—a distinguished practitioner with expertise in fashion, design, or fashion business or a scholar with expertise in the history of fashion or the fashion business.
The first Guess Visiting Professor will be named this spring.
The Guess Visiting Professor will teach a course at the Gallatin School and make at least one public presentation during his or her tenure. This may include giving a lecture, hosting a workshop, or leading symposia on how to connect creativity, design, and business. The purpose of the professorship and of the gift is to teach students to link the creative side and the business side of fashion. The course will aim to link these two crucial features of leadership and success in fashion.
“As an interdisciplinary school, which includes some students who work actively in both the design and the merchandizing aspects of the fashion business, Gallatin provides a unique space in which to fulfill this vision,” said Gallatin Dean Susanne Wofford, adding that students interested in fashion incorporate many fields into their studies, including economics, marketing, art history, design, music, history, and environmental studies, among other areas. “Students at Gallatin interested in fashion can study marketing and design as well as art and the history of art at different schools within and outside NYU, but up until now they have not had an intensive course that challenges them to combine these different interests directly.”
Over the past two years, Gallatin School students have won eight scholarships from the Fashion Scholarship Fund. Gallatin students have also taken the lead in designing annual fashion shows with student-designed clothes displayed by NYU student models.
“Gallatin has long explored ways to combine practice with classroom education, and a class taught by the Guess Visiting Professor will be an innovative experiment that will give NYU students exciting and unusual opportunities for learning,” Wofford added.
Editor’s Note:
Gallatin is an experimental liberal arts college of 1,400 undergraduate students and 200 masters students within New York University. Its innovative B.A. and M.A. programs in individualized study encourage students to develop an integrated, interdisciplinary program of study that combines courses taken in the various schools of NYU with independent studies, internships, and Gallatin’s own interdisciplinary seminars, proseminars, writing courses, and arts workshops. The school emphasizes excellent teaching, intensive student advising and mentoring, and a unique combination of program flexibility and academic rigor.
For more, go to: http://www.gallatin.nyu.edu/.