The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced a new leadership role for Megan Panzano (March ’10), who will now oversee the full portfolio of the school’s design certification programs while continuing to teach.
The appointment comes as part of a broader reorganization at the GSD, which is consolidating its Executive Education, Early Design Education, and Online Education offerings into a single, integrated unit. As Executive Director of Early Design, Online, and Executive Education, Panzano will provide strategic leadership and operational oversight for this new division, which spans programming for audiences ranging from high school and college students exploring design to established practitioners seeking advanced, practice-oriented knowledge.
The division’s mission is to make the value of design clearer and more accessible to other disciplines and professions. Plans are already underway for new design programming on focused topics that will strengthen connections between the GSD and other Harvard schools, as well as partners beyond the university. The unit, which is expected to be renamed to reflect its consolidated mission, is also intended to function as a fast-moving “R&D” arm for the school, where prototypes for new, experimental design curricula can be incubated with new partners and brought to a global audience.
“This new structure will support a cohesive approach to the school’s expanded design education programs,” wrote Sarah M. Whiting, Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture, in a message to the GSD community. “Working in alignment with our academic mission and priorities, Megan will help the school advance pedagogical innovation, global engagement, and sustainable revenue growth. She will serve as a critical hinge, linking the school’s faculty and staff with university and external partners, to expand our offerings, ensuring academic rigor and an excellent experience across in-person, hybrid, and online formats.”
Panzano has served for the past five years as senior director of the GSD’s Early Design Education, while also teaching as a lecturer in architecture. Her team has successfully run five design education programs offered in distinct formats—virtual, in-person and hybrid—with the aim of lowering the barrier to entry into design for a broader global public. Among these programs, the Design Discovery Virtual and In-person programs, now offered each summer as sequential three-week modules, have each seen a major increase in the diversity of our program participants, totaling over 300 in annual average, across factors of disciplinary background, age and professional experience, global geographic location. Additionally, the Harvard Undergraduate Architecture Studies program that Panzano oversees has evolved to include current GSD student Teaching Fellows as well as a GSD post-grad year-long Design Critic Teaching Fellowship. The introduction of this program structure has resulted in undergraduate design thesis projects that have consistently been awarded both departmental and Harvard-wide prizes.
