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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Ron Kemnitzer is the immediate past Chairman of the Board of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). He served as President from 2004-2006. He was elected to the IDSA Academy of Fellows in August 2003.
He is also a Professor of Industrial Design at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia and serves as Chair of that program. His graduates occupy positions of responsibility and accomplishment in virtually every product segment of industrial design. He is also President of DMC Villa Tosca USA, a design management centre devoted to the development of new design research and practice methodologies for a worldwide network of design colleagues.
He is the founder of Kemnitzer Design, Inc., a consulting practice located in Kansas City, Missouri that successfully operated for over twenty years and is now owned and operated by his son, Jonathon Kemnitzer, IDSA and is now named KEM Studio, a design laboratory that fuses architecture and industrial design.
Mr. Kemnitzer holds 18 USA and international patents for his work, which has also been recognized in many design competitions. Kemnitzer Design received the ‘Gold Good Design Award’ from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design in 2001 and 1997.
The firm also received a Gold Award in the 1993 ‘Plant Engineering’ magazine ‘Product of the Year’ competition and a Bronze Award in the 1992 Industrial Design Excellence Awards sponsored by ‘Business Week’ magazine and the Industrial Designers Society of America. In 1988, Ron designed the best selling ‘Bola’ chair for Fixtures Furniture Company for which he was awarded an Institute of Business Design (IBD) Gold Award.
He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Cincinnati and a Master of Arts degree from Northern Illinois University. Prior to establishing his own office in 1981, he held positions at Black & Decker Manufacturing Company and the Sunbeam Appliance Company.
Ron served as the Nierenberg Distinguished Visiting Professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University during the 2003-4 academic year. He has also taught industrial design full-time at the University of Kansas, the Kansas City Art Institute and Michigan State University.
Industrial Design has a long and distinguished history at Georgia Tech, offering ID courses since 1940. The College of Architecture offers the Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Design in which 127 students are presently enrolled. The Program began a Master in Industrial Design degree program in Fall 2003 in which 37 students are currently enrolled.
The Chair will be a tenured or tenure-track faculty member who will head the School of Industrial Design and oversee the graduate program, as well as have other administrative, teaching, research, and outreach responsibilities. The successful candidate should have an advanced degree, academic experience and a demonstrated ability to lead. The Chair will have the opportunity to provide vision and leadership in furthering the linkages of Industrial Design to the new strategic directions of the College and the Institute.
The Chair will also have the opportunity in further expanding the multi-disciplinary relationships with sister programs in the College (Architecture, Building Construction, City and Regional Planning, Music, the Undergraduate and Graduate Divisions) and the College’s seven research centers, as well as with other units across campus, particularly the School of Mechanical Engineering, the College of Management, the College of Computing and its Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center, the Ivan College of Liberal Arts, and the Manufacturing Research Center, its Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing Institute.
