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Letter from the President

 Jeffrey A. Milham
President

This is a special year for us in that we gave out more funding for lighting education than ever before. A total of $85,000 in grants and awards was given at our annual luncheon at LIGHTFAIR in Las Vegas on May 12th. Adding that amount to the funding given since our inception, The Nuckolls Fund has given a total of $695,000 to advance lighting education in North America. We are very proud of that accomplishment.

Last year, in celebration of our 20th anniversary, the Board decided to offer the possibility of an anniversary grant of up to $50,000. We took proposals for the $50,000 20th Anniversary Grant in February of this year and are very pleased to announce the recipient of that grant is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Kathy Ankerson, Associate Dean of the College of Architecture and Professor in the Interior Design Program, will be the primary investigator. She will develop and deliver a project called "Lighting Across the [Design] Curriculum" which is a series of teaching modules and methodologies from both teaching and learning perspectives that are purposeful in the development of curricula across the disciplines within the building industries at the University of Nebraska, Miami University, Kansas State University and the University of Texas at Austin. There will be seven interactive digital online modules developed and shared between the four educational institutions with the initial ability to affect more than 1600 students in lighting. We are very excited about this project as in the future, we hope to make these teaching modules available to an even broader audience.

This year, under the auspices of what we call our New Grant Option, we gave $25,000 to OTIS College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Linda Pollari, Chair of their Architecture/Landscape/Interiors department, will be the primary investigator for this project. She will develop and deliver a new lighting design certificate program at OTIS. This program will provide an intensive study in lighting design for individuals who are beginning a new career, making a career change, or seeking to enhance their existing design skills and education. The program intends to prepare students to enter and be competitive in the field of lighting design or to augment their current design practices and experience. This program has the enthusiastic support of many of the well known and well established lighting designers in the LA area.

This year, The Nuckolls Fund awarded the $5,000 Jonas Bellovin Scholar Achievement Award to Michael Royer who is presently a student at Penn State University. Michael was the top lighting student in Penn State's Class of 2008 and began work toward a Ph.D. in August of 2008. Michael intends to use his $5,000 to focus his efforts on his research, accelerating the progress of his Ph.D. dissertation bringing him one step closer to a career as a lighting educator and researcher."

The 2010 $5,000 Jules Horton International Student Achievement Award was awarded to Giang Nguyen who is a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Giang is Vietnamese and has a GPA of 3.733. She is a member of three different honor societies and also active in the student chapter of the Architectural Engineering Institute. Giang plans to use her award to help pay tuition for her senior year of study.

Our financial success is dependent upon annual donors. It is completely as a result of their generosity that we are able to announce significant progress in our support of lighting education. Among the major recent contributors to the Nuckolls Fund are the Jonas Bellovin Memorial Foundation; B-K Lighting and TEKA Illumination; the Designers Lighting Forum of New York; Enterprise Lighting Sales; Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design; Barbara Horton and Stephen Lees, the New York City Section of the Illuminating Engineering Society; and the New Jersey Section of the Illuminating Engineering Society. Of course, we are equally thankful for the many smaller donations received from firms, individuals, and organizations throughout the year. Less than 2% of our annual income is used for expenses so when you give a donation to The Nuckolls Fund, your dollars go directly to the support of our grant and award programs.

I want to thank Penny Herscovitch and Dan Gottleib from Art Center College of Design for being our speakers at our LIGHTFAIR annual luncheon this year. They gave a very exciting presentation on the work that they accomplished with The Nuckolls Fund $20,000 grant they received in 2007.

LIGHTFAIR is moving to Philadelphia in 2011 and I hope you can join us there on May 17, 2011 for the announcement of next year's grants and awards. Your continued financial support allows us to continue and expand our efforts to improve and secure the future of lighting design education.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey A. Milham


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