Tiger Giving Day 2023 Funds CADC’s Shoe Design Outreach Program

Thanks to your support on Tiger Giving Day last week, the College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC) has raised $7500 to support its Shoe Design Outreach Program that teaches design basics to high school students across the state of Alabama. Since its inception, more than 200 students who may not normally have access to a design classroom have completed the Shoe Design Workshop.

Katherine Buck Chastain, CADC’s Administrator of Recruitment, has partnered with Industrial Design Associate Professor Ben Bush to create and present this innovative workshop. Chastain and Bush visit with high school students studying design-related fields like graphic design, engineering design and computer science and guide them in the creation of an original shoe design that includes decisions about color, material, finish and tread patterns. The students begin by sketching their initial ideas on paper templates. Your gifts this Tiger Giving Day will allow 38 students to transfer their design ideas to the canvas of actual shoes using sharpies, acrylic paint and leather via an industrial sewing machine. By the end of the experience, each participant will have created a custom pair of sneakers they can keep and wear.

Chastain and Bush hope to continue to grow their outreach program to provide design studio experiences to more high school students across the state. “It’s a dream of mine to give back to the public schools that had such a major impact on my early life,” Bush stated. “I believe there is incredible design talent in this state. Most students just don’t know what design is yet, and I want to be the one who tells them about it!”