Timothy Copeland wins GlassLab Design Fellowship

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Elizabeth Lamark/RIT Production Services

Timothy Copeland, a graduate student in industrial design from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., is this year’s recipient of the GlassLab Design Fellowship sponsored by Corning Museum of Glass.

Timothy Copeland, a graduate student in industrial design from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., has been selected the recipient of this year’s GlassLab Design Fellowship, given annually to an outstanding student in the department.

Copeland was named the winner of the fellowship, sponsored annually by Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG), by a faculty panel from Rochester Institute of Technology’s industrial design program. He was honored not only for his exceptional design skills but “his incredible service to the department over the past year and a half.”

“The fellowship will go a long way in supporting Tim’s career goals,” said Josh Owen, professor and chair of the industrial design program in the School of Design at RIT’s College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. “We are all delighted by Tim’s many accomplishments and look forward to the great work he will accomplish.”

Since 2013, Owen has made the announcement of the fellowship winner a March tradition before a Vignelli Center for Design Studies series lecture. Former industrial design graduate students Bridget Sheehan and David Strauss won the fellowships in 2014 and 2013, respectively.

The GlassLab Design Fellowship provides either a graduating senior or a graduating grad student from RIT’s industrial design program with the opportunity to explore glass as a medium for the rapid prototyping of ideas and to participate in a two-day GlassLab session at CMoG each May. In addition to the CMoG session, the RIT student is eligible to receive transportation reimbursement; an overnight stay in a Corning, N.Y., hotel; a $500 honorarium; and recognition from both RIT and CMoG.

According to Owen, the student selected by a panel of RIT industrial design faculty must possess exceptional design skills, excellent communications skills across a wide range of mediums, a high degree of maturity, and a strong track record of meaningful contributions to the industrial design program at RIT.