Alumnus Gift Supports 'Design Futures' for Fay Jones Students

Photo by Bert Magh

David Fitts.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – University of Arkansas alumnus David Fitts, originally from Fort Smith and now living in Houston, never dreamed his degree in architecture would lead to a career at NASA. However, that experience, as well as his appreciation for design thinking, has inspired him to make a planned gift to the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.

His gift will be used to create an endowment to fund curricular initiatives in “design futures” and was counted in Campaign Arkansas, the university’s capital campaign that raised nearly $1.45 billion to advance academic opportunity.

Fitts’ gift will establish an endowment in support of curricular initiatives across the school intended to inspire, engage and educate students interested in growing, stretching and expanding their individual design skills and experiences into new creative territories and toward new “design futures.”

This approach to design will be collaborative and interdisciplinary, with a human-centered emphasis on improving and enhancing quality of life, while also incorporating multiple initiatives that include social justice and racial equality. The new program will provide funding for an annual visiting professorship, student scholarships, seminars, studios and lectures.

“David Fitts has had a remarkable life and career,” said Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School. “His accomplishments at NASA, over three decades of creative service to the nation, were founded in part on his architectural education at the university, but moreover on his fundamental belief in the transformative power of design – collaborative, interdisciplinary, human-centered design – to change lives, realize new potentials, and alter futures for humanity. David and I share this belief in design and in the necessity of encouraging new ‘design futures’ for all Fay Jones School students. His inspirational gift validates the ongoing mission of the school and affords faculty and students a radically expanded set of opportunities in their careers and lives – new ‘design futures’ for us all. On behalf of the school, I am deeply grateful to David for his vision and generosity.”

Fitts wasn’t sure what he wanted to pursue after high school, so he gave engineering a try. However, a lifelong interest in architecture and a 1973 one-on-one meeting with Fay Jones inspired a new direction for him, and he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences in 1976. He then completed the full five-year Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1980. During his time at the school, Fitts witnessed the transition of the architecture curriculum from the Fulbright College to its own School of Architecture, later to be named the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.

In the early 1980s, Fitts began to study computers and programming and enrolled in graduate level courses in electrical engineering. In 1985, his brother, Richard – already a civil servant employee of NASA and graduate of the U of A – approached him about the possibility of working for the space agency. David was accepted to first work as a contractor at the Johnson Space Center, but after two years was invited to become a full civil service NASA employee, a move that ultimately resulted in a 27-year career with the organization.

At NASA, Fitts quickly saw how skills he learned in the School of Architecture were applicable to many design-build, program management and problem-solving scenarios.

In his role at NASA, Fitts was chief of the Johnson Space Center’s Habitability and Human Factors Branch and also served as associate chief for Human Systems Integration. Both areas used design thinking to make spaceships more habitable for long-duration human experience. Fitts eventually helped rewrite core agency documents such as the NASA Systems Engineering Handbook to help future generations of engineers and managers design hardware and software solutions that optimize human capabilities and compensate for human limitations.

To this day, Fitts feels that architecture and design education provides training applicable to a wide variety of career opportunities in design, management, engineering and the arts.

“That’s why I’m interested in making this gift,” Fitts said. “I want to help students think outside the box. One can do amazing things with an architecture degree. The training and perspective it gives you is unique – it combines technical skills, artistry and history.”

Fitts believes the most important skill learned as an architecture and design student is the ability to solve problems from a perspective that treats hardware, software and humans as co-investors and to approach the design process systematically.

“I think design thinking partnered with human-centered fields is applicable to many, many real-world problems,” Fitts said. “And it’s important to help students realize this opportunity.”

“My relationship with the U of A goes back a long way,” Fitts added. “I came away with great relationships and memories.”

In 1998, Fitts returned to the U of A campus to give a lecture in the then-School of Architecture about issues of habitability in space. In 1999, Fitts collaborated with the school’s professors in a semester-long workshop in which fourth-year architecture students created infrastructure for a long-term space station, designing for a zero gravity environment. Final documentation of the students’ work was shared with NASA officials.

Fitts is a member of the Arkansas Alumni Association and is counted as a Thoroughred for his consecutive years of giving to the university.

About Campaign Arkansas: Campaign Arkansas is the recently concluded capital campaign for the University of Arkansas that raised a record $1.449 billion to support the university’s academic mission and other key priorities, including academic and need-based scholarships, technology enhancements, new and renovated facilities, undergraduate, graduate and faculty research, study abroad opportunities and other innovative programs. The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in a wide spectrum of disciplines as it works to fulfill its public land-grant mission to serve Arkansas and beyond as a partner, resource and catalyst.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among fewer than 3% of colleges and universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.