Meet our Staff: Eric Bellin, PhD, MArch

What is your name and title?

Eric Bellin, Assistant Professor.

In which department do you work?

Architecture.

Briefly describe what you do here at Jefferson:

Teaching, research, and service.

How long have you been at Jefferson?

Just a few days!

What is the best part of your job?

I’m only just beginning, but I think it is safe to assume the best part of my job will be teaching and mentoring my students. I’m very passionate about teaching, and I do all I can to help my students excel as they follow the path toward becoming architects. Interacting daily with young, enthusiastic people full of new ideas and dreams for the future makes teaching a constant joy.

What’s one piece of advice you give your students?

Architecture is an amazing discipline, requiring a perfect blend of technical skill and creativity. It is a rigorous professional pursuit, but also one that benefits from joyful imagination. And it impacts our daily lives in profound ways. Because of these things, the discipline tends to attract people with active, curious minds, a passion for making things, and the will to make the world better. What I have always enjoyed most about this, is the community of people it gathers and the culture they collectively form. In architectural education, we often speak of “studio culture,” the sense of a cohort of students as a community and the ethos of collaboration, collectivity, and collegiality it can inspire. My advice to students is to embrace “studio culture”: be present, work in the studio, talk to your colleagues about their work and yours, attend lectures, and above all be an active participant in the community. Doing so will not only enrich your own educational experience but will also contribute to making CABE the best and most vibrant place it can be for us all.

What’s something people would be surprised to find out about you?

I’ll offer two things—one is a serious endeavor that’s contributed to who am as a teacher and scholar, and the other is a guilty pleasure. I practiced Tae Kwon Do for 15 years (from the ages of 5 to 20), earned a 2nd Dan Black Belt, and was Florida State sparring champion at my age and weight 9 times. I won a US National Championship at 12. Practicing martial arts instilled me with discipline and the tendency to approach all things with intensity, dedication, and rigor. These things have, in no small way, have helped define who I am as a person. My guilty pleasure—I love football, and I’m a lifelong and diehard Miami Dolphins fan.