Faculty Mentorship and Expertise

Distinguished and Dedicated

At the Tyler School of Art and Architecture we are incredibly proud of our deeply connected community of boundary-breaking creators that starts with our distinguished faculty of innovators.

Working at the peak of their powers, your Tyler professors are practicing artists, architects, designers, planners and scholars who create boundary-breaking work and teach to mentor new generations of creative thinkers and makers. Not only are they dedicated to what they do, but also to helping you find your “voice” through supportive instruction and critique.

Small classes, intimate studios and labs, a cross disciplinary ethos and hours spent together bringing projects to life connects us in profound ways. Over time, your professors will come to understand your strengths and challenges but also the message, changes and insights you want to bring to the world.

Meet Tyler Faculty

Design for Community

As part of a 2024 elective design studio, Tyler architecture students and faculty worked together to build prototype structures for vendor stalls at the Southeast Asian Market in South Philadelphia’s FDR Park.

Jeff Richards

Assistant Professor of Instruction

“My interest as an instructor,” explains Assistant Professor of Instruction Jeff Richards, “is to think about the capacity of architecture to empower people, especially those who haven’t had access to it in the past, and for the students to engage with communities in Philadelphia to understand the impact we can make through design.”

Faculty and Student Spotlights

Tyler Faculty and Student Expand an Industry

Doug Bucci, head of the Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM program, and then Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM MFA student Ellen Sisti (MFA ’21) worked together to establish a first-of-its-kind digital dental lab with the capacity to create 3D-printed crowns, bridges and surgical casts at the Temple Kornberg School of Dentistry.

Ellen Sisti

Laboratory Lead at Young Dental Lab

“The work I do here at Temple Dental uses technology to help the community of North Philly, which is so deserving of good care and dignity,” Sisti says of translating jewelry design skills to dentistry. “For me, it’s a very egalitarian tool.” Sisti is now the Laboratory Lead at Young Dental Lab in Philadelphia.

There’s an App for That

As a Graphic and Interactive Design student at Tyler, Alexandra Dodge, BFA ’21, built an app to help people avoid panic attacks in a UI/UX branding course taught by Associate Professor of Design and Illustration Abby Guido. The class required her to create the product end-to-end.

Alexandra Dodge

Multidisciplinary Graphic Designer for the Digital Advertising Agency, AMP

“I really like the way Abby pushes her students to do research,” Dodge says. “The research helped me know what is and isn’t going to work. Understanding research will help me with future projects, whether I go into user interface design or book design.”

From Fulbright to Guggenheim

Visual artist Rachelle Anayansi Mozman Solano (MFA ‘98), a graduate of Tyler’s Photography program, received her first major award in 1998 at the end of her degree program at Tyler. Since then, she’s accumulated nearly two dozen other major awards and residencies, exhibited throughout the world and taught and lectured at various institutions. She now serves as Professor of the Practice in the Photography department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts.

Her most recent award, a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship, will give her time to work on a project like Venas Abiertas (Open Veins), a series of photographs and collages that speaks to the painful outcomes of U.S. policies in Central America, on the border and toward Latinx people. She was mentored in her early grant-writing endeavors by a Tyler faculty member.

Rachelle Anayansi Mozman Solano holding a hand to her head and looking away from the camera.

Rachelle Anayansi Mozman Solano (MFA ’98)

Visual Artist

“I had a very important professor who helped me greatly in my (1998) Fulbright application, which I won upon graduating. I learned from this professor the importance of supporting students who are learning the hard process of writing difficult grant and fellowship applications and navigating an art career.” 

Why I Love Teaching at Tyler

“One of the best parts of my job as an art history professor is nurturing the unique aspirations of my students by helping them find and follow their own creative paths to success.”

Tyler School of Art & Architecture