April 27th, 2015
J.R. Campbell
Professor and Director
The Fashion School College of the Arts
Kent State University
PO Box 5190
515 Hilltop Drive,
226C Rockwell Hall
Kent, OH 44242-0001 USA

Dear Director Campbell,

I had the pleasure of observing Linda Ohrn-McDaniel’s Design Studio II class on April 2nd, 2015. The Design Studio II course is a junior level FDM core course with an average enrollment of 18 students. The Design Studio class is a team taught six studio credit course integrating conceptual design, illustration, patternmaking, and construction. Linda is team teaching the course with Noel Palomo-Lovinski with Linda focusing on teaching students the pattern making and construction portions of the course.

The day I was observing Linda’s class, her students were working on a project where each student had to create patterns and a muslin prototype from one of their classmates’ flat drawings. My understanding of this project is that it was first created by Linda to encourage students to critically analyze and review somebody else’s design and then be able to develop patterns from a flat drawing that is not their own. I believe Linda created this project to challenge her students with an experience that exposes them to a real-life scenario that often happens in the fashion industry.

The day I was observing her class, Linda walked around the classroom consulting each individual student on their progress with this project. I was impressed how Linda was giving positive and constructive feedback to each student without discouraging their effort or ideas. What I found especially interesting was that when students would ask her questions, she didn’t always give them direct answers but rather encouraged them to reflect on their ideas and think critically on their own. This seems to be an excellent teaching style since this was a junior level course where students weren’t there to simply learn new skills. Rather, I believe she was encouraging students to think independently throughout the fashion design process from conception to production.

In the future, some of the FDM design course structure will change into a lecture and lab format. For this reason, Linda has been recording draping demonstration videos that will be used for the lecture portion. I was fortunate to also able to observe Linda’s lecture by watching a video clip of her draping demonstration. Her video demonstration of the draping lecture was seamless. She showed a clear, step by step process of how to drape muslin with circle patterns. She explained each step with the reasoning behind it and made the draping process easy to understand.

Having observed Linda’ class in the past, I have known that she is an excellent teacher. However, once again I was extremely impressed with both, her ability to encourage students to employ a critical design thinking process in a positive manner as well as the attention to detail she gives to her studio demonstrations. Linda is a great, open-minded and passionate teacher who does everything possible to motivate her students to want to do better.

Sincerely,

Kim Hahn, Ph.D.
Associate Professor & Associate Director
The Fashion School
College of the Arts
Kent State University