Donna Coates Friedman

Donna Coates Friedman is an associate professor of Art and Design at Iowa State University. She joined the faculty in 1978 and teaches in the area of basic design foundations. For over ten years she coordinated the Foundations Program an assignment which required overseeing on a yearly basis 10 to 12 faculty and 6 graduate students who taught the 40 to 50 sections of three courses offered per academic year.

The Department of Art and Design has a large undergraduate student enrollment (over 1000 students in the 1980s) and all entering students take a required foundations sequence of courses with problem solving in two-dimensional design three-dimensional design and color theory. As many as 350 students (400 during peak years) matriculate through the preliminary courses per academic year. Additionally Donna Friedman teaches advanced courses such as Two-Dimensional Mixed Media Three-Dimensional Mixed Media and Papermaking.

She has provided outstanding service in curriculum development and in advancing the teaching skills of graduate students many of whom instruct an entry level foundations course as their assistantship assignment. During the marked growth of Art and Design undergraduate enrollment and expansion of the foundations curriculum the department outgrew its space in MacKay Hall and later in the College of Design Building; additional studio space for instruction was secured in the Old Botany Building (now Carrie Chapman Catt Hall) and Annex (demolished in the renovation). Professor Friedman loved the teaching space in Old Botany and requested to not only teach there but to be officed in this facility. She taught in this building from 1987-1994 and reluctantly moved back to the College of Design Building when the major renovation of Catt Hall was undertaken. It is fitting that she be honored for her significant teaching and service accomplishments at Iowa State University in the location on campus which was "home" and that she loved so well. Donna Friedman holds the MFA MA and BA degrees from the University of Iowa.

She was a faculty member at the University of Iowa and Indiana University at Fort Wayne prior to her appointment at Iowa State. She has an extensive exhibition record spanning her career and has completed commissions for the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics Des Moines' Methodist Hospital Cedar Rapids' Mercy Hospital and University of Iowa Credit Union among others. She frequently serves as a design consultant or workshop leader in the midwest. Donna conceived the idea and was responsible for developing the Lincoln Gallery within the space of the Iowa State Credit Union in Ames and she continues to coordinate the exhibitions and this gallery space.

12/20/94