April 27, 2006

President’s Professor: Paul Rothstein

Leaves legacy of design education innovation

Editor’s note: This is the last in a series of articles highlighting the recent President’s Professors and Regents’ Professors at ASU.

On March 8, 2005, just weeks before he was to earn the distinction of President’s Professor, Paul Rothstein, an ASU associate professor of industrial design, passed away unexpectedly. Ron Kemnitzer, president of the Industrial Designers Society of America, called Rothstein “one of our leading lights.”

“In losing Paul, we lost someone we could trust to move the profession forward in the long term – someone whose infectious spirit and drive and spark and sharp mind and vision all created a whole that pulled everyone up around him,” Kemnitzer says.

Regents' and President's Professors

This year ASU is honoring the first class of ASU President's Professors. This new prestigious award, is designed to reward enthusiasm and innovation in teaching, the ability to inspire original and creative work by students, mastery of subject matter and scholarly contributions.

Inaugural awardees are Randall Cerveny, professor of geography; Alice Christie, associate professor of technology and education; Ian Gould, professor of chemistry and biochemistry; and the late Paul Rothstein, associate professor of industrial design.

ASU selects inaugural President's Professors

Six ASU faculty members have been awarded Regents Professor appointments for 2006. Regents’ Professors are marked by excellence in teaching, exceptional achievements in research or other creative activities, and national and international distinction in their fields. Named by the Arizona Board of Regents, they serve as advisers to the university president and take on a broader role as consultants and teachers throughout the university.

The members of this year's Regents' Professor class are: Cordelia Candelaria, Chicana and Chicano Studies; Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Mathematics and Statistics Department; Douglas Montgomery, Industrial Engineering Department; George Poste, Biodesign Institute and School of Life Sciences; Edward Prescott, Economics Department, Rogier Windhorst, Physics and Astronomy Department.

Six outstanding faculty named ASU Regents’ Professors

The Regents' and President's Professors will all be inducted in a ceremony April 27.

While design professionals were counting on Rothstein to “move the profession forward,” his fellow educators were looking to him to continue moving design education forward – a task Rothstein cherished.

“He was building a very important body of knowledge in design that, fortunately, he published, so others could share his insights,” says former mentor Michael McCoy.

As a graduate student at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Rothstein studied “human-centered product design,” a relatively new approach, in which the needs, wants and desires of people take precedence over aesthetic concerns. In 1999, he came to ASU and began to integrate this principle into the industrial design program.

In the process, Rothstein helped build ASU’s program into one of the strongest and most progressive in the country. He also began attracting attention. According to associate professor Lauren McDermott, chair of the industrial design program, Rothstein “was, without a doubt, the most sought-after industrial design educator in the nation.”

Rothstein believed that design education has been slow to respond to the same global pressures that have forced the design profession to redefine itself. It was his aim to narrow the gap between practice and education by creating a collaborative, entrepreneurial and transdisciplinary environment in which students tackle real-world problems.

The result, InnovationSpace, is a university research and development lab that brings together students and faculty from industrial design, visual communication design, business and engineering, as well as outside corporations, consultants and investors.

The challenge for students is to create socially and environmentally responsive designs that succeed in the marketplace, as well as the business plans and marketing-communication strategies to speed the transfer of these ideas to the private sector.

In other words, InnovationSpace students are required to tackle real-world problems with a real-world methodology.

Rothstein’s approach to teaching revolved around mutual respect. He pushed his students hard – well beyond their comfort zones – because he had great faith in their capabilities.

“Paul liked to present the image of a skeptic, when in fact he was the ultimate optimist,” McCoy says.

As a result of his demanding classroom demeanor, his students pushed themselves to levels beyond what they thought possible.

“He instilled an amazing amount of drive in students, so that they demanded more of themselves – and a higher caliber of output,” says former graduate student Altay Sendil.

Former undergraduate Christopher Holman says he will always be indebted to Rothstein “for all his help in guiding me from being a ‘drawer’ to a ‘designer.’ ”

For five of his six years at ASU, the industrial design students honored Rothstein by electing him “Outstanding Professor.”

Rothstein was creating something unique at ASU, and he was having the time of his life doing it. Just weeks before he passed away, he told his wife, “I’ve never had so much fun teaching.”

His impact at ASU was considerable. In addition to his vision, commitment, and leadership, Rothstein was well known for his dry, sharp wit.

“Every time I think about Paul, I smile,” McDermott says.

Prasad Boradkar, an associate professor at ASU, and a close friend and colleague of Rothstein’s, says, “Paul enjoyed the most brilliant ideas and the most idiotic jokes with equal passion.”

Rothstein touched many lives at ASU.

“His companionship was transformative,” Boradkar says. “Anyone who came into contact with Paul likely would never be the same again. If he liked you, he would force himself into your life, make you thank him for doing so, and infect you for an eternity with his high-octane boisterousness.”

Peter Wolf
peter.wolf@asu.edu