Class Acts

One former and one current student from Texas A&M’s College of Architecture were roommates for a week in Leogane, Haiti in November, part of a Habitat for Humanity effort to build homes in the city ravaged by a 2010 earthquake and hurricane.

Four businesses headed by former college students Shan Jenkins ’88, Richard Garza ’88, Phillip Wales, ’78, ’79 and Ryan Pape ’01 are on a list of the 100 fastest-growing Aggie-owned or Aggie-led businesses in the world compiled by the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship at Mays Business School.

Texas A&M environmental design graduate Shawn Evans ’93 is overseeing the preservation of Ohkay Owingeha, a 600 year-old Native American settlement in New Mexico as the director of preservation and cultural projects at Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, a Philadelphia design firm.

A single Navajo mother and her 10-year old son are living in The Windcatcher House, a sustainable home in southwest Colorado co-designed by Mark Olsen ’07, a former Texas A&M environmental design student completing his graduate work in the University of Colorado at Denver.

Preston Bolton ’41, an outstanding alumnus of Texas A&M’s College of Architecture and a member of the American Institute of Architects’ College of Fellows, passed away Nov. 2 in Houston. Funeral services are scheduled at 1:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 7 at First Presbyterian Church, 5300 Main Street, in Houston.

The American Bureau of Shipping’s latest quarterly publication includes an article about a centuries-old Portuguese shipwreck brought back to life in an immersive, 3-D model created by former Texas A&M Master of Visualization Sciences student Audrey Wells ’08.

Former Texas A&M environmental design student Brian Goeken ‘87 is overseeing the nation’s largest, most successful and most cost-effective community revitalization program as the new chief of the National Park Service’s Technical Preservation Services Office.

Recent Master of Architecture grad Erin Peavey will discuss how nursing units can be designed to aid staff communication, a vital component of effective hospital care, at a healthcare design conference in Nashville.

Anthony Schirripa ’73, an outstanding alumnus of Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, recalled the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in a first-person account published in the New York Times Sept. 12, 2011.

Competitors on sports fields in an El Paso public park will be inspired by “Rivals,” two new sculptures by Lars Stanley, an outstanding alumnus of the college. The hand-made forged steel sculptures depict arachnids found in El Paso’s desert environment.

Children enjoying birthday parties in the Houston area could find themselves underneath an H-E-B sponsored-tent with illustrations designed by former Texas A&M environmental design student Giancarlo Perossa ’01.

Former Texas A&M environmental design student Dan Darr ’93 explores untold stories, dreams and the difference between the ways we remember things and the way they really were in a series of paintings at the Arlington Museum of Art at an exhibit on display through Sept. 30.

Igor Kraguljac ’08, a former Master of Science in Visualization student at Texas A&M, won first prize in a national photography contest sponsored by Rangerfinder magazine with “Angel,” an image from his chiaroschuro series exploring the Renaissance-era artistic technique.

Internet users can explore the disconnect between the burst housing bubble in Florida and the foreclosed homes it left behind in “Open House,” an online installation partly developed by Patrick LeMieux ’07, a Bachelor of Environmental Design graduate from Texas A&M.

As a young Conoco executive in the late 1960s, Franz Ehrhardt, now a professional fellow at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, came up with the idea of merging the gas station and the convenience store. Through Ehrhardt’s fellowship, students are learning about this and other innovations he has developed.