Honors

Jeff Potter ‘78, is focusing on making the AIA more meaningful to emerging members of the profession and advancing the value of design during his one-year tenure as president of the 76,000-member American Institute of Architects.

For playing a vital, hands-on role, teaching woodcraft to Texas A&M College of Architecture students and motivating them to realize their creative potential, college woodshop supervisor Jim Titus received the 2012 Linda Todd Outstanding Support Staff Achievement Award.

After two decades focused on improving the quality of life for residents of the impoverished, relatively undeveloped villages, or “colonias,” clumped near population centers on the U.S. side of the Texas-Mexico border, the Texas A&M University Colonias Program is celebrating its achievements.

Newly minted Aggie constructors received their personalized Texas A&M hard hats at the Department of Construction Science's Nov. 30 honors ceremony. The highly coveted, customized headwear is presented to all department graduates at the end of each semester.

A student’s design for a stationary exercise wheel that fits underneath office desks, turned in as extra credit in the fall 2011 Design Process class at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, was a winning entry in a national invention competition.

Nominations for the 2012 College of Architecture Outstanding Alumni Awards, which annually recognize former students of exceptional accomplishment, are being accepted through Feb. 10. Since its inception in 1997, less than one percent of the college’s former students have received the award, the college’s highest honor.

Raymond Gomez ‘64, an outstanding alumnus of Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, won first-place honors for his painting “Night City.” Gomez’ piece was chosen as the best work in a New York art guild’s “Home Away From Home” exhibit, on display at the Manhasset Public Library through March 29, 2012.

Liliana Beltrán, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M, is part of a global effort to lead renewable energy technology education, development and implementation as a new board member of the International Solar Energy Society.

Future winners of a prestigious honor bestowed by the Engineering and Construction Contracting Association will receive a trophy designed by accomplished sculptor, welder and woodcarver Rodney Hill, professor of architecture at Texas A&M.

Rodney Hill, a Texas A&M professor of architecture, has been named one of 2012’s “25 Most Admired Educators” by the Design Futures Council, another teaching honor for his already bulging trophy case.

“Arlecchino,” the colorful, floral-patterned architectural installation adorning the wall and floor of the College of Architecture’s Azimuth Cafe, has helped earn its designer, Los Angeles artist Elena Manferdini, a $50,000 United States Artists Fellowship.

Shelley Potter ’78, a Texas A&M’s College of Architecture Outstanding Alumna, received the 2011 Women’s Legacy Award from the Texas A&M Women Former Students’ Network at a Nov. 4 luncheon. A past chairwoman of The Association of Former Students, she is president of POTTER, a Dallas design firm.

Graduate engineering students at Texas A&M advised by Ken Joh, assistant professor of urban planning, earned first place and $10,000 in scholarship money in a sustainable transportation planning contest sponsored by the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority.

Anat Geva, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M is the 2011 recipient of the J. Thomas Regan Interdisciplinary Faculty Prize, an award recognizing faculty who are committed to interdisciplinary work in the built environment disciplines.

The Council of Landscape Architecture Educators has recognized Forster Ndubisi, head of Texas A&M’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, characterizing his administrative leadership as “incontestably beyond the expectations of a department head.”