2025 SWMF Essay Scholarship

The Susan Wohlitz Memorial Fund was founded in 2005 to honor our Past-President Susan Wohlitz. Her dedication to mentorship and the development of young professionals inspired us to create a way to award students pursuing interior design degrees in the state of Wisconsin. The Susan Wohlitz Memorial awards over $10,000 in scholarships every year to student members of IIDA WI. To learn more about Susan and the SWMF Fund visit our website: IIDA-WI - Scholarships (iidawi.org)

 

Scholarship Details:

This scholarship opportunity is focused on the ability to convey design ideas through the written word.  

Please provide the following elements in an essay of 500 words or less to be considered for the $1000 scholarship: 

• Executive summary articulating the use of design principles to solve the problem below. 

• Images or inspiration board to reinforce the concepts described in your essay.

 

2025 Challenge: 

Watson is a large software development company based in Wisconsin since the 1990s that is currently focusing on developing AI technologies for businesses. We are looking to remodel our current facility to respond to the evolving workplace demands for equity, inclusion, hybrid work and the need to build and maintain connections with colleagues.  We would like to build a new workplace that better meets our employees’ needs, reinforces our corporate culture of extraordinary client service and problem solving, and provides an environment of ideation and creativity.  We believe implementing a relationship-based workplace will help better foster wellbeing, connections, and support change. We would like to see a mix of individual, group and community workspace solutions throughout our new workplace. We also want to ensure our colleagues can remain connected no matter if they are in person or working outside of the office, so technological integration throughout will be very important.   

We would like to explore the inclusion of amenities that create community spaces which bring our employees together and address challenges of life work balance.  We would like your firm to help us explore different options of spaces we can add to our workplace that may help attraction and retention.      

Providing environmentally responsible building attributes and healthy living options while at work is a must.  We are interested in exploring LEED & WELL or Fitwel certification to show our commitment to doing what is right.  We would like to explore ways we can decrease our carbon footprint as well.  Please provide strategies we can consider to achieve our sustainability goals.    

Watson is accepting proposals from design firms to provide ideas and strategies that will support our outlined goals and desired outcomes.  Proposals shall include:   

A.       A strategy for creating a relationship-based workplace for 100 employees. We do support hybrid work, so exploring alternate solutions for individual workspace is desired.  Please provide a selection of individual and group workspace types that our staff would be able to choose from when working in the office.   

B.       Options for workplace amenities that can be added to our space to help reinforce our corporate culture and encourage attraction and retention of staff. 

C.       Strategies for sustainable design and support of healthy living initiatives. 

 

Judging Criteria: 

1. Are all components included with the submission?

a. Executive summary

b. Image and inspiration board

2. How clearly does the executive summary articulate the strategies to solve the design problems?

3. Did the executive summary create a mental image of the solution proposed?

4. Were all the design problems and requirements addressed in the summary?

5. Were the graphics and presentation of the executive summary clear and supportive of the design strategies?  Did the layout and presentation of the executive summary and inspiration board support the design solutions? 

Please note: IIDA WI reserves the right to use submissions for future marketing materials.