Georgina Jin receives Honorable Mention in this year’s Steelcase Student Design NEXT Competition
Congratulations to Georgina Jin for her Honorable Mention in this year’s 2017 Steelcase Student Design Competition – NEXT. The competition had more than 800 students and 65 programs participate in this year’s competition. The panel of judges independently reviewed entries over the course of a few weeks and spent a day together in Dallas to make their final decisions.
There was an anonymous judging process in which each professor submitted two submissions from their independently taught studio class via an external gmail account to a third party consultant in California. This consultant renames each entry using a random number/letter code (ie: 14N or 71SS) and then distributes submissions via Dropbox and ensures each judge receives a mix of programs to review. Judges score entries individually and then meet face to face to review. Each judge presents their pool of entries to the other judges and all judges vote after each review. This review process is inclusive of a full day of reviewing entries, voting/re-voting and debating amongst the judges to align on the five semi-finalist and five honorable mention projects against the program criteria. Once that process is complete and all judges are aligned on the final scoring, project identification codes are documented and only then are the names of the students and their corresponding programs revealed to everyone at the same time. Getting to the final selection is a tough process.
The semi-finalists will be flown to the Steelcase Headquarters in Grand Rapids, MI in February where they will present their projects to the panel of judges where an overall winner will be chosen. The winner will be announced on Friday, February 10th and the five finalists projects will be loaded onto the Steelcase website for viewing.
This year’s semi-finalists and honorable mentions:
Semi-finalists
- Wenhan Zhang | Columbia College Chicago; Professor: Elizabeth Wersells
- Caitlyn Cathcart | Southern Illinois University of Carbondale; Professor: Laura Morthland
- Mikaila Kopcho | University of Minnesota; Professor: Genell Ebbini
- Kimberly Bracht | University of North Carolina Greensboro; Professor: Travis Hicks
- Jessie Bean | Virginia Tech; Professor: Lisa Tucker
Honorable Mentions
- Xuelin (Georgina) Jin | California State University, Long Beach; Professor: Heather Barker
- Ian Preston | Columbia College Chicago; Professor: Elizabeth Wersells
- Hannah Hughes | Iowa State University; Professor: Michael Ford
- Lisa Ferguson | Marymount University; Professor: Moira Denson
- Reem Bukhamseen | Virginia Tech; Professor: Lisa Tucker
This year’s professional judges were:
- Professional Judges (2017)
- Ana Pinto-Alexander | HKS | Dallas
- Daily Wright | orcutt-winslow | Phoenix
- Grzeg Kosmal | IA | Washington D.C.
- Julia Melhauser | Steelcase | Miami
- Kristen Ruch | Steelcase | Denver
- Meg O'Neil | Steelcase | Grand Rapids
- Tom Marquardt | HOK | Chicago
The semifinalists will be flown to the Steelcase Headquarters in Grand Rapids, MI in February and they will present their projects to the panel of judges where an overall winner will be chosen. The winner will be announced on Friday, February 16th and all five of their projects will be loaded onto the Steelcase website after the announcement.
Other programs with finalists or honorable mentions during our first four years of this competition: Academy of Art University, Cornell University, George Washington University, Humber College, Kansas State University, Kendall College of Art and Design, Louisiana State University, Maryville University, Mississippi State University, Purdue University, Texas State University, University of Florida, University of Oklahoma, University of Manitoba, University of Texas at Arlington and Weber State University.
