Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University at Buffalo
Associate Professor, University at Buffalo
Project Director, Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDeA)
Beth Tauke is Associate Dean in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo – State University of New York, Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, and Project Director in the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA), the leading research center on universal design in the built environment in the U.S.
Professor Tauke is a founder and current editor of Universal Design Education Online, the primary website for UD education. Her publications include chapters in Lost in Space (Birkhauser), The Universal Design Handbook (McGraw Hill), Living for the Elderly (Birkhauser), and Universal Design: Seventeen Ways of Thinking and Teaching (Husbanken) and articles in Building Material, Design Issues, Utopian Studies, Representation, and Foundations in Art, Theory and Criticism. Tauke co-edited Universal Design: New York with Dr. G. Scott Danford, and is currently working on a textbook, Diversity and Design: Understanding the Hidden Consequences with Dr. Korydon Smith and Dr. Charles Davis, which will be published by Routledge in 2015.
Her research focuses on beginning design education and inclusive design’s relationship to the senses. Professor Tauke has served as principal investigator of the Universal Design Identity Program and Bridging the Gap: Increasing Access to Universal Design to Meet the Needs of African American Communities, both sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Professor Tauke’s awards include a National Institute for Architectural Education Award, the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture Robert R. Taylor Award, the Lily Endowment Teaching Fellowship, an NEA Universal Design Leadership Grant, an NEA Creation and Presentation Grant, the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the 2014 President Emeritus and Mrs. Meyerson Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Mentoring
Her primary professional goal is to encourage national and international universities to include courses in their general education or core programs that address the relationship between design and diversity issues. She sees this as an essential element of 21st century education.