Former UC Dean Jay Chatterjee Honored for Career Achievements

As dean of the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning from 1982-2001, Jay Chatterjee fulfilled his vision to bring the world’s very best architects to UC in order to

transform the campus

.

Indeed, The New York Times said of this effort: it has brought “distinction to the University of Cincinnati and indeed to the city itself. Jay Chatterjee…has earned himself a place in history as one of the century’s most enlightened patrons.”

For this and other career achievements, Chatterjee was honored Oct. 26 at a DAAP banquet attended by some of the very architects who helped recreate the UC campus for the next century, including Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Andrea Leers, Buzz Yudell, Thom Mayne, Eric Sueberkrop and Jane Weinzapfel. Master of Ceremonies at the event was former Ohio Senator Stanley Aronoff, for whom DAAP’s Aronoff Center for Design and Art is named.

The honorary banquet was part of a national conference,

Surface Conversations

, at DAAP, and it served as the launch of the “Jay Chatterjee Global Lecture Series.” The series will involve speakers from all over the world examining the role of art and design in the social and physical environment. Speakers will include writers, philosophers, economists, politicians, painters, sculptors, planners, designers and others.

The lecture series will further Chatterjee’s visionary and exhaustive efforts to help transform UC and Cincinnati into a Mecca for art and architecture enthusiasts globally.

Among the literally hundreds of major newspaper and magazine articles, books and studies, documentary and television specials about and recognition provided about these UC efforts are

• A prestigious grant awarded to UC by The Getty Foundation, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, for preservation planning in connection with UC’s signature collection of architecture. The Getty Foundation is well known for its architectural conservation grants to help preserve historically significant architecture, landscapes and sites, and the grant to UC makes the university one of the few campuses that has received this prestigious grant to plan for its modernist sites and structures.

• In 2010, Forbes magazine named UC among the world’s top 20 most beautiful college campuses. Others making that list were Oxford University, Princeton, Stanford, Yale and the University of Virginia. Of UC's campus, Forbes stated: "Architecture students at UC need only step outside the classroom to observe some of the more cunning modern architecture of their day.”

• The New York Times: “…Cincinnati is one of the most architecturally dynamic campuses in America today…”

• The Washington Post: “The university also appears to be setting an example of how to execute an admirable plan. The need for the buildings came first when the city school became part of the state-education system 17 years ago. Expansion became inevitable. But it could have come as more of the same. Instead, from President Joseph A. Steger to Jay Chatterjee, …the administration has made a long-term commitment to both architectural and environmental excellence.”

• The Los Angeles Times: “…the university [has] one of the most impressive collections of contemporary architecture on any American campus” and one that “Architecture students will be studying…30 years from now.”

• The Chicago Tribune: “The spectacular revamp is one of the most significant acts of campus planning since Thomas Jefferson laid out his ‘academic village’ at the University of Virginia…”

• In 2007, the Boston Globe ran the headline and seriously asked the question: “Lessons from Cincinnati: What Can Harvard Learn from the Midwestern University’s Bold Building Boom?” That article went on: “It was Jay Chatterjee, longtime dean of Cincinnati’s department of art and architecture, who proposed in the early 1980s that the way to put the university on the map was…to get creative… .”

Due to his recognized leadership and expertise in architecture and planning, Chatterjee has served as an expert consultant for campus planning throughout the nation, including Cleveland State University, Wright State University, as well as providing more than two decades of service to the Planning Accreditation Board’s site-visit team to judge the academic excellence of planning programs, including those at the University of Southern California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of British Columbia, University of Arizona and more.

He was founding member and member of the board of the Planning Accreditation Board. Chaired and coordinated national planning conferences where leading research and best practices were presented to advance the field. In fact, he led the 1980s effort to reorganize the ACSP and initiate its first independent conference.

For these efforts, Chatterjee received the Higher Education Leadership Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) in 2009. The ACSP Higher Education Leadership Award recognizes sustained contributions in academic administration by an urban/regional planning scholar/educator who has had a significant national or international impact on higher education.

This award is not the first recognition earned by Chatterjee. Earlier, he received the 2008 Visionary Award from the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center. In 1991, he received an ACSP award for outstanding contributions in city and regional planning, including distinguished service to ACSP and the establishment and inauguration of the Journal of Planning Education and Research (JPER) in Cincinnati. He served on its editorial board for several years along with service as founding co-editor and managing editor. He also served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Planning Association and the Journal of Urban Design. 

Not surprising that in 1998 the ACSP renamed this annual award for excellence as the "Jay Chatterjee Distinguished Service Award" in his honor.

Other contributions to the planning profession include service as past president and board member of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, past founding member of the Planning Accreditation Board, member of the American Planning Association’s Great Cities and Great Neighborhoods Task Force, APA Task Force on the Academy and Practitioners.

Other awards:

• He was a recipient of the 1996 Apple Award presented by the Architectural Foundation of Cincinnati, which honors those who have significantly established or influenced the quality of the built environment.

• In April 1999, Chatterjee was inducted as a Fellow of the American Institute of Community Planning.

• In November 1999, he won the Lifetime Achievement Post-Corbett Award in Cincinnati for his nationally recognized commitment to architecture and world-class design in the community and for his leadership at UC.

• In May 2000 the American Institute of Architects bestowed to him the Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture, which recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in the public sector.