Professor Steve Belletire

This fund is being established by Steve Belletire, a Professional Industrial Designer and Emeritus Faculty member of the SIU Carbondale School of Art & Design Department.

Professor Belletire began his design career in Chicago in 1971 after earning a BFA in Industrial Design from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He worked in trade show exhibit design and electronic consumer products. Professor Belletire joined Joss Design Group and enjoyed a 20 + year career specializing in new product development and packaging design. During his product design career he helped develop over 400 products for commercial, industrial and consumer markets, and he was awarded 12 patents. Professor Belletire was the Vice-President of Product Development when he left Joss in 1997 to join the Art & Design faculty at SIU.

During his career at SIU, he developed a research agenda focused on ecological design and developed many research consulting partnerships with major corporations. Professor Belletire retired from SI U in 2015, but continues to work with various companies to help them integrate ecological design methodologies.

Professor Belletire established this scholarship to support Design students who have demonstrated creativity, innovation, and a command of design process tools, and commitment to the profession of Design.

This fund will award two $500 scholarships annually; to one full-time student from the School of Art and Design earning a BFA with a concentration in Communication Design and to one full-time student earning a BFA with a concentration in Industrial Design. Award monies will be directly applied to each selected student’s bursar’s bill for the semester following the award. Awards will be determined by Design faculty consensus using overall student performance.