Design Students, Ballay Center Contribute to Coulter Welcome Center Updates
From a distance, a new installation in the David and Susan Coulter Welcome Center invites visitors to Carnegie Mellon University to “Join Us,” spelled out in Scots Rose.
Upon closer inspection, the letters are formed by individual blocks, each of which rotates to reveal the name of one of nearly 400 student organizations at the university.
Helen Zhang (CFA ‘25) and Hannah Lesser (CFA ‘24) assembled the 368 blocks on 23 pipes aligned together, adding washers and bearings in between the triangular blocks.
Updates to the Coulter Welcome Center on the first floor of the Tepper Building originated in a graduate design class with the goal of fostering a sense of belonging through active, engaging exhibits to showcase the university’s strengths beyond academics. The student-led effort is a collaboration among the Provost’s Office, the School of Design and the Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion in the College of Fine Arts, University Communications and Marketing, and Enrollment Marketing.
“We spent a good amount of time considering what prospective students and visitors could gain from interacting with the space,” said Zhang, a senior BXA student studying design and film/visual media studies. “We wanted to make a unique tactile experience you can’t get from a website, and a story that really does show what it’s like at CMU past the academic standing and prestige.”
Zhang, Lesser, and Felix Cooper, a senior also studying design, worked over the summer to refresh the Coulter Welcome Center.
“I believe that first impressions are lasting so creating a good first impression is important, and creating an authentic first impression makes it feel more rewarding,” said Lesser, who graduated with a bachelor's degree in design in the spring.
The team solicited many stakeholders’ input to capture Carnegie Mellon’s culture and spirit — something Lesser said it took time to understand fully.
“There are things that you only learn by going to Carnegie Mellon for four years: the experience of the culture of the place,” she said. “We have school spirit, and it just presents itself in a different way than other schools. Trying to prime prospective students earlier will set them up to better understand CMU.”