The strongest testimony to the value of our education is the success of our alumni. From founding HOK—one of the largest architectural firms in the world—to exhibiting work at major museums and galleries throughout the world, to teaching at top colleges and universities, our graduates are making a tremendous impact in a diverse range of fields.
Our recent Awards for Distinction recipients exemplify this level of excellence and breadth of expertise.
- Rajeev Kathpalia, MArch84/MUD84, is a partner at Vāstu Shilpā Consultants, the multidisciplinary practice founded in 1955 by Pritzker Prize Laureate Balkrishna Doshi. His work integrates fiscally and environmentally responsible strategies to create inclusive habitats for people. Renowned for his institutional designs, he has won many national and international competitions, including the Prime Minister’s Award for Innovative Urban Design. His net-zero approach to campus design, which integrates architecture, landscape, ecology, energy generation, and management—both human and mechanical—while creating an equitable and inclusive social milieu, has set new benchmarks for sustainability and innovation.
- Peter Tao, BA79, is a principal of TAO + LEE Associates, the firm he founded with his wife, Helen Lee. His interests have always been centered on community, multiculturalism, and global awareness. Tao is an avid volunteer and serves as a mentor, public arts supporter, community organizer, policy critic, and advocate for diversity and inclusion. In addition to numerous design awards, TAO + LEE has received awards from the City of St. Louis and the Asian American Chamber of Commerce of St. Louis. Tao's leadership has been recognized with awards from Who's Who Diversity In Color, the St. Louis Business Journal, and the St. Louis Rams.
- Lauren Rebecca Weinstein, BFA97, is a cartoonist and artist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Bookforum, Nautilus, and The Guardian, among many other outlets. For the past twenty years, her funny, beautiful, and bizarre comics and graphic novels have addressed universal human issues such as mortality, time, and most recently, motherhood. Her acclaimed comic Normel Person was the last weekly comic strip to run in The Village Voice. This year, her work Being an Artist and a Mother won the Slate Cartooning Studio Prize for Best Web Comic, and it will be published in Best American Comics 2019. She has received two Ignatz Awards and was awarded the Gold Medal from The Society of Illustrators.
- Paula Jane Wilson, BFA98, creates extravagant paintings, prints, and videos that are simultaneously realistic and unworldly. Her multifaceted work explores myth, race, and the dimensions of femininity. Her most recent solo exhibitions include shows at the Denny Dimin Gallery, Smack Mellon, Emerson Dorsch Gallery, and the Bemis Center. She is a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Artist Grant, an Island Press Contemporary Print Editions and Artist Projects invitation in St. Louis, and the Bob and Happy Doran Fellowship at Yale University. She lives in Carrizozo, a high-desert railroad town in south-central New Mexico, where she co-founded the artist organization MoMAZoZo.
- Daniel DuGoff, BA10, is a menswear designer based in New York. After working in the fashion industry for designers like Patrik Ervell and Marc Jacobs he launched his first brand, DDUGOFF, in 2013. The collection offers "unbasic basics"—everyday menswear essentials that are somehow missing from your closet. In early 2018, he launched HOMOCO, a print-focused swim brand committed to supporting sustainability, ocean conservation, and queer rights around the globe. He was selected for the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s 2016 Fashion Incubator program and was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in Art & Style.
- Vita Eruhimovitz, MFA15, was born in Ukraine, grew up in Israel, and currently lives and works in New York. Her background in computer science and bioinformatics inspire and inform her work. Vita works across genres, and her practice encompasses painting, sculpture, and digital media. Her work has been exhbited at national and international venues, including the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Brattleboro Museum + Art Center, San Diego Art Institute, Chashama Art Space, Black and White gallery, Denise Bibro Fine Art, the Sheldon Art Galleries, the Governors Island Art Fair, and the Design Museum Holon.