NJIT's interior design program has new opportunities for students to learn career, leadership and life skills from alumni mentors, as its graduate population that started with the original class of 2012 expands, enters higher levels of their field and looks to give back.

The idea evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic from alumnae Alma Villalba and Pamela Ospina, who in their current jobs observed colleagues from other universities serving as mentors and saw the potential for their own alma mater.

Undergrads Suzanne Hlinka ’21 and Nada Boules ‘21 have been applying the skills in game development and interior design that they’ve picked up at NJIT, and Mother Earth is thanking them for it. This past year, the pair of students began artistic projects promoting a more sustainable planet, and now, their creative talents have been recognized with the “Jim Wise Scholarship for Theatre: Communicating the Environment Through Art.” 

Thirty-seven students from the College of Architecture and Design had their work shown in the double-curated Faculty Submitted Student Work Exhibit at SIGGRAPH 2018, an annual conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques convened by the Association of Computing Machinery, in Vancouver, Aug. 12 -16.

Michael Chiappa ’18, a graduate architecture student in the College of Architecture and Design, has been elected to serve as northeast quad director on the 2018-2019 National Board of the American Institute of Architecture Students, becoming the first student from NJIT to do so in the organization’s 62-year history.