Rachel Beth Egenhoefer
Rachel Beth Egenhoefer is an artist, designer, writer, and professor, whose work integrates technology, craft, and design. Her current focus is on sustainability, systems thinking and design for behavior change. Her work on sustainable design has been presented at AIGA, CCA, ASHEE, PALS, the Routledge Sustainability Hub, and other institutions. Egenhoefer is currently the chair of the Department of Art + Architecture and an Associate Professor in Design at the University of San Francisco.
Biography
Rachel Beth Egenhoefer is an artist, designer, writer, and professor, whose work integrates technology, craft, and design. Her current focus is on sustainability and systems thinking as related to behavior change.Egenhoefer is the editor of the Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design (2017) and a contributor to Routledge’s Sustainability Hub. Believing in the power of education to move sustainable action forward, she has been a part of ASHEE’s Sustainability Across the Curriculum Program, and presented her work on sustainable design education at the AIGA Design Educators Forum, PALS (Partnership for Academic Leadership), the School of Visual Arts in New York, San Francisco Art Institute, and others.
Egenhoefer is currently the Chair of the Department of Art + Architecture, Program Director of the Design Program, and an Associate Professor in Design at the University of San Francisco, where she has taught since 2009. At USF she is a part of the College of Arts & Sciences Sustainability Task Force, and the Center for Teaching Excellence. Her classes at USF combine the University's social justice mission with design thinking for the greater good.
Her artistic work has been included in major exhibitions such as the Boston Cyber Arts Festival, ISEA in Tallinn Estonia, La Noche en Blanco in Madrid, Art in Storefronts in San Francisco and at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, The Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) London, The Banff Centre for the Arts, and many others. She has been an artist in residence at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the University of Brighton in the UK, and other local organizations.
Rachel Beth received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego where she also was a graduate researcher at UCSD’s Center for Research and Computing in the Arts (CRCA).
Rachel Beth was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and currently lives in Oakland, California with her husband and 2 daughters.
Education
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MFA, University of San Diego
BFA, Maryland Institute College of Art
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Sustainable Design, Design Education, Design and Social Justice, Design for Good
Websites
Books
Articles
‘I’m Not Just Another Reusable…’ Sustainable Design Beyond the Tote Bag
Published: Dec 01, 2014 by Routledge Sustainability Hub
Authors: Rachel Beth Egenhoefer
Using the common characterization of the reusable tote bag, this thematic essay describes sustainable design through five metaphors drawn from the bag - design as visual, material, form, policy, and system.