The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman Scho​ol of Design recently announced that three members of the standing faculty have been awarded endowed professorships: Lisa Servon, Kevin and Erica Penn Presidential Professor; Ken Lum, Marilyn Jordan Taylor Presidential Professor; and Sean Burkholder, Andrew Gordon Assistant Professor.

Dr. Servon, professor and chair of city and regional planning, is the inaugural endowed Kevin and Erica Penn Presidential Professor. Dr. Servon conducts research in the areas of urban poverty, community development, economic development, and issues of gender and race. Specific areas of her expertise include economic insecurity, consumer financial services and financial justice. She is the author of Bridging the Digital Divide: Technology, Community, and Public Policy (Wiley, 2002), Bootstrap Capital: Microenterprises and the American Poor (Brookings Institution, 1999), Gender and Planning: A Reader (Rutgers, 2005) and The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Dr. Servon has contributed to The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal.

Ken Lum, professor and chair of fine arts, is the inaugural endowed Marilyn Jordan Taylor Presidential Professor. Mr. Lum is internationally known for his conceptual and representational art in a variety of media. His installations often deal with individual and social identity formation in the context of historical trauma and the complications of official and non-official memory. He is co-curator of Monument Lab: A Public Art and History Project, which began as a city-wide art public art exhibition in Philadelphia and has become a referent for other cities in dealing with the problems of controversial monuments and statues. This project led to a book edited with Paul M. Farber entitled Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia (Temple University Press, 2019).

Sean Burkholder, assistant professor of landscape architecture, is the inaugural endowed Andrew Gordon Assistant Professor. Mr. Burkholder’s research considers the way ecology influences the urban landscape. His work has largely focused on the Great Lakes region in collaboration with the Ohio EPA and the US Army Corps of Engineers. He co-directs the Healthy Port Futures project, which stresses the inherent value of landscape design research in the process of maritime infrastructure projects. Mr. Burkholder also serves as a design critic internationally and his work has been published widely in books and journals.