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New Faculty Spotlight:
Louise Majorey
The AEMM Department welcomes Louise Majorey, the newest full-time faculty member in the Fashion/Retail Management concentration. Majorey is new to Chicago, arriving in town one month ago, after spending six years in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “I really like teaching and being in a major metropolitan area like Chicago,” states Majorey. “I like the urban life style – the vitality and quick change. There is always a lot of stuff going on. There can’t be a better place for fashion. It’s quite an opportunity. I’m glad I’m here.”
Majorey comes to Columbia with strong experience in the fashion and retail industries, as well as a passionate career in teaching. With a BS in Textiles and Clothing, her undergraduate focus was on merchandising and design. Later, she pursued Textiles and Related Arts at the University of Rhode Island, focusing her Master’s thesis on 19th century New England textile designs. After college, she served as the Assistant Designer/Quality Control for Chico’s and worked in product development for the retail store of the Museum of Science in Boston, before focusing on a career based in education.
Majorey got her first taste of teaching while a graduate student, when she taught at Fisher College in Boston, a junior college focused on fashion. “Through this experience I learned that I enjoy the diversity of teaching, and it started me on a path toward a teaching career,” explains Majorey. She went on to teach fashion retail management at Radford University in Virginia, and served as Director of the new Fashion Merchandising program at Cazenovia College, a small, private, liberal arts college in New York. In both positions, Majorey placed an emphasis on mentorship and designed internship programs.
Majorey feels strongly about the mentorship aspect of teaching, allowing students to learn from real life experiences and from the experiences of professionals in the field. It is a passion that guided her, even when teaching outside of the collegiate world. In Santa Fe, she did programming for Big Brothers/Big Sisters, where she developed an art program that paired artists from the community with the children and adults from the program. “I was attracted to this position because of their strong mentorship program and felt that this could be expanded to the arts, because children respond strongly to art.”
At Columbia, Majorey will be teaching Merchandise Management and Introduction to Marketing the Arts – Fashion as well as assisting the student fashion organization and mentoring students in the Fashion/Retail Management concentration. It is the mentorship view of education that drew Majorey to Columbia, finding it a good fit with both her educational philosophy and her arts background. “I see myself as a mentor. Besides delivering information in the classroom and being a facilitator of knowledge, I can help point students in a direction that will benefit their careers.” |
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