Longtime RIT instructor John Dodd receives outstanding teaching award

John Dodd, an instructor in RIT’s College of Art and Design for more than 40 years, is the sixth recipient of the Edline M. Chun Award for Outstanding Teaching and Service.

The award, named in honor of the late RIT adjunct professor Edline Chun, has been given annually since 2014 to a faculty member who exemplifies excellence and dedication in teaching to an affiliated school in the College of Art and Design. The honor was announced recently at a reception in University Gallery for the college’s adjunct faculty members.

“I’m both humbled and appreciative to receive this award in memory of Edline,” said Dodd, ’78 (woodworking and furniture design), who was nominated by peers and also received student support for the award. “My approach to teaching is to work with each student individually and independently as much as possible to ignite his or her passion for working in three dimensions.”

“This is the reward for working with students; watching them grow and develop the skills they will need as they move in their respective majors,” he added.

Dodd served as an adjunct faculty member in the furniture design program in RIT’s School for American Crafts (SAC) for three decades before becoming an instructor in the college’s 3D design foundations courses for the past 11 years.

“It has been an enlightening, challenging and rewarding experience, and a much different one from my years in the furniture program,” he said. “This first-year experience establishes the foundation for our students as they progress to upper levels and into their professional lives.”

“This is a responsibility that I take seriously,” he added, “and I make every effort to help each student become an independent thinker as well was both a creative and effective designer, craftsperson or artist.”

In addition to his RIT teaching positions, Dodd has maintained John Dodd Studio, a studio furniture design firm in the Finger Lakes region, for more than 40 years. His residential, commercial and ecclesiastical commissioned projects are balanced with speculative pieces, which are shown nationally in galleries and juried exhibitions.

Ms. Chun was a well-respected and beloved faculty member who taught in what was then RIT’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences for nearly two decades. Her colleagues in RIT’s School of Media Sciences described her as someone who “always went above and beyond to serve the students and the school with passion, integrity and the utmost class.”