In July 2020, Trustee Kathryn Chenault, together with her husband Kenneth, announced their commitment of $1 million to establish scholarships to support diversity in the School of Architecture. The inaugural Chenault Scholarships were awarded to three incoming high-achieving undergraduate students: Fatoumata Diallo, Ariana Dillon, and Rylee Ferguson. With their first year behind them, Fatoumata, Ariana, and Rylee shared their experiences thus far on the School of Architecture site.
The Daily Hub
A roundup of ideas and projects from around the Institute
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Michaela Chavelis Arroyo, BFA Fashion Design ’18, was featured in Jamaica Plain News for a feature that explores her career trajectory. “A lot of people see it [crochet] as such an old craft,” Arroyo said. “I wanted to bring that into the modern world in a different way.”
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The Pratt Center for Community Development shared a success story from their EnergyFit program, which equips small 1-4 family homes in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in Brooklyn—typically underserved by climate policy efforts—with energy-efficient upgrades such as insulation, air sealing and weather stripping, and high-efficiency appliances for free.
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Sooleen Kim, BFA Communications Design ’24, has received the Red Dot Junior Award 2025: Brand & Communication Design for her senior thesis project, “Wallog,” a social media platform that enriches in-person interactions for a genuine friendship. Red Dot is one of the world’s most prestigious design awards.
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David Burney, visiting associate professor in the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, and Marium Naveed, MS Urban and Community Planning ’23, write about bus stop design, including Naveed’s final thesis for Pratt, in Common Edge. “[Naveed’s] research found that some stations naturally supported public life, while others did not. The difference was in the surrounding built environment: public life thrived where there was room for people to linger, where there was traffic calming in place, and where there was clustering of small everyday activities nearby. When these three elements came together, station areas felt like part of a neighborhood.”
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Pratt Trustee and alumnus Derrick Adams will be participating in the 2025 Untitled Art fair in Miami Beach this December. “Comprising over 100 galleries, the presentations feature a diverse array of artistic voices and spaces from 29 countries and territories.”
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Alyse Dees, MS Urban and Community Planning ’27, received the 2025 American Planning Association (APA) Foundation Diversity Scholarship. Dees is “interested in the intersection of architecture and urbanism because she views it as an opportunity to fuse creative storytelling with community engagement to build towards an equitable future,” School of Architecture News notes.
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Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor in School of Information Chris Alen Sula and Chair of Research and Collection Development and Visiting Assistant Professor Amy Ballmer have published a paper with alum Radhika Phansalkar, MSIXD ’25, titled “OER Among the Creative Disciplines: A Survey of Faculty Attitudes Toward OER at a Special-Focus Institution” in the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education.
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Pratt Trustee Mickalene Thomas, BFA Fine Arts ’00, is the first African-American artist to have a major solo exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. Her retrospective exhibition All About Love “invites audiences to enter a universe of love, leisure, and liberation, spaces where beauty, intimacy, and self-possession reshape the art historical gaze.”
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Alumni stepped up to leadership roles at the Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York. Stephanie Neel, MSLIS ’15, is now the president, Herbert Durán, MSLIS ’21, is the director of education, and Elizabeth Kobert, MSLIS ’19, is the director of publications. Faculty and staff are leaders as well: Visiting Assistant Professor Cara Dellatte is the director of membership, and DPOE-N Program Manager Kirk Mudle is the director of advocacy.
More Pratt Institute News
Repair. Rest. Repeat.
Mending Circle, one of Pratt’s newest student clubs, sets aside time for care and community.
Designing Digital Interfaces for Real-World Clients
From Pratt Institute News
Graduate student Shreesa Shrestha, MSIXD ’26, is making the most of every opportunity at Pratt as she balances client projects, community-building initiatives, and a prestigious Product Design Fellowship at The Museum of Modern Art.
Open Studios, Endless Possibilities
From Pratt Institute News
Pratt’s annual MFA Open Studios were complemented by the first-ever Open Fields artist resource fair, making for an electric day of events celebrating artistic practice and the resources that sustain it.