Charles L. Owen
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Charles L. Owen is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Design IIT based in Chicago.
Professor Charles L. Owen originally went to the Institute of Design as an undergraduate student in 1951. At that time, ID was located at what is now the Excalibur nightclub, and was in a period of change: Maholy had left many years before, and Chermayeff, who took over the school from Maholy, had also recently left the school to teach at Harvard. In high school, Chuck excelled at Chemistry and the arts, and looked to a respected Chemistry teacher to help him find a college program that blended science and art. Based on his teacher's recommendation, Professor Owen attended a student show and quickly decided that this was the right place for him.
Once he started at ID, however, he realized that the curriculum was not as balanced as he had hoped. Also, Professor Owen notes, "like always, the school was short of students and money..." He decided that he needed a better grounding in science before he could pursue the more art and design based curriculum, so he went to study engineering at Purdue. Upon his arrival at Purdue, he was informed that the general engineering program he wanted to take was eliminated. Instead, he studied chemistry, but also took many classes in set design, philosophy, and social science.
After Purdue, he signed up for the Navy. Due to his background, he was asked to teach at a school in Maryland that prepared candidates for the Naval Academy. He taught math and science to the candidates and, according to him, "there is no better way to learn something than to teach it." After three years and achieving the rank of company commander, Professor Owen decided to spend one more year in the Navy. He explained his choice with the following question: "How do you tell people you spent three years in the Navy and never made it on a ship?"
He spent a year on a Destroyer in the Pacific, which was part of a fast carrier task force. He took this opportunity to improve the operations of the ship, primarily through optimizing and rationalizing the propulsion systems. He notes that "to go into a propulsion room on a destroyer of that era is to see complexity in its boldest form." The stories from this tour of duty are too numerous to mention here, but Professor Owen recalls that leading a fleet (this was his destroyer's position) at night with no lights, at full speed, while launching airplanes from a carrier, is quite a memorable experience.
While Professor Owen was in the Navy, Jay Doblin took over ID and began to make changes in the curriculum. After the Navy, Professor Owen went back to ID to see what changes had been made, and potentially get an undergraduate degree, since he was still in interested in design.
On his return to the school, Jay told him that he could get a Master's degree. Chuck immediately signed up and began to take classes in the new curriculum.
