Louise Manfredi
Louise Manfredi, Ph.D., an assistant professor of industrial and interaction design in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ School of Design, received a faculty grant from VentureWell, an organization that fosters collaboration to advance innovation and entrepreneurship education.
VentureWell’s faculty grant program supports the creation or improvement of courses and programs that incorporate sustainability frameworks and principles and encourages the creation of novel sustainable designs and green technologies. Manfredi was one of 12 grant recipients chosen through a competitive national review process.
Manfredi will use the funding to develop a new minor that will facilitate in-depth learning of green design methodologies to catalyze sustainable, design-driven innovation and entrepreneurship. Multidisciplinary student teams will develop and pursue sustainable design innovations in consumer goods, services and interior environments. The minor will collaborate with Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars at Syracuse University Libraries to support students who want to pursue their ideas beyond the classroom. Newly developed courses for the minor that facilitate in-depth learning of various design for sustainability methodologies for faculty and students will launch in spring 2022.
“The team and I are really looking forward to connecting with other professors on campus to establish this interdisciplinary minor,” says Manfredi, whose co-principal investigators and collaborators are fellow School of Design faculty members Don Carr and Seyeon Lee. “Building a sustainable future relies on the input from so many fields of expertise, and we want to expose our students to as many perspectives as possible. There is a wealth of expertise in environmental sustainability at Syracuse University.”
For more information about the new minor, contact Manfredi at lrmanfre@syr.edu or Carr at dwcarr@syr.edu.
