Weitzman School of Design faculty members Rudy Gerson, Leah Kahler, and Robert Pietrusko have been selected to receive G. Holmes Perkins Distinguished Teaching Awards for academic year 2024-2025. The awards are presented annually to three members of the Weitzman faculty, based on nominations by students, to recognize distinguished teaching and innovation.

Rudy Gerson (G. Holmes Perkins Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award) is a lecturer in fine arts and an artist who works across mediums of print, still and moving image, and performance in a practice, they said, “that intends to complicate expectations of testimony and deploy a devotional approach to desire under conditions of opacity and loss.” Based in New York City and Philadelphia, Mx. Gerson, MFA’23, teaches at Brooklyn College as well as at Penn.

“They encourage us to experiment with our camera and push ourselves outside of our comfort zone,” said one of Mx. Gerson’s students. Another observed, “I’ve seen [them] literally transform college students who took [their] video class just to fulfill a requirement into people with a sensitivity and sensibility for art, as well as all the tools they need to make it.”

Leah Kahler (G. Holmes Perkins Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award, Non-Standing Faculty) is a landscape designer and researcher who was the 2024-2025 McHarg Fellow. Her research explores the socioecological legacies of the plantation landscape, focusing on sites of labor, extraction, and production in the American south. Before coming to Penn, Ms. Kahler worked at Reed Hilderbrand in Boston and taught landscape architectural representation at Boston Architectural College.

“Leah has been an incredible resource for the students and her presence uplifts so much of our work and the design community,” one of Ms. Kahler’s students wrote. “Leah’s attentiveness to students and dedication to design education is truly inspiring.”

Robert Gerard Pietrusko (G. Holmes Perkins Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award for Standing Faculty) is an associate professor in landscape architecture and a principal at Warning Office. His research focuses on the history and speculative design potential of environmental media. He has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture, and Design; held research positions at Parsons and Columbia; and served as a designer at Diller Scofidio + Renfro in New York. He has exhibited his work at the Museum of Modern Art, Palais de Tokyo, and ZKM Center for Art & Media, among other leading venues, and has had his work featured in the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Of Mr. Pietrusko’s influence, one student reported, “Not only did I leave his course learning important skills and graphics that I could use in my portfolio, but I also felt more confident in myself as a student of landscape architecture.”