Honors

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.

Anat Geva, associate professor of architecture, has been appointed president of the Southeast Society of Architectural Historians, which promotes scholarship on architecture and related subjects.

An innovative design for a downtown Austin, Texas senior urban housing facility created by Akshay Sangolli, a Master of Architecture student at Texas A&M, earned a merit award the American Institute of Architect’s New Urban Models For Aging competition.

Mardelle McCuskey Shepley, professor of architecture at Texas A&M and director of the Center for Health Systems and Design, has been elevated to membership in the American College of Healthcare Architects’ Council of Fellows for advancing the standards of architectural education, training and practice.

A revitalization plan for Sealy, Texas’ downtown district, created by Texas A&M Master of Urban Planning students, won the 2011 Student Planning Award from the Texas Chapter of the American Planning Association.

Texas A&M former students have established three new endowments for professorships honoring the stellar careers of three much admired Department of Architecture professors — John Only Greer, Rodney Hill and David Woodcock — who have all taught generations of aspiring Aggie architects.

Two Texas A&M urban planning professors have garnered a two-year, $313,000 National Science Foundation grant to research the effectiveness of using 100-year floodplains in predicting property damages from floods, and to develop improved criteria for assessing the risk of inundation in low-lying coastal areas.

College of Architecture faculty and staff members were recognized for exemplary achievements at the college's Aug. 26 administrative meeting kicking off the fall 2011 semester. Three faculty and three staff members were honored at the meeting, which took place in Geren Auditorium.

Texas A&M graduate visualization student Sarah Beth Eisinger’s work earned a $10,000 scholarship from Sony Pictures Imageworks, an Academy Award-winning, state-of-the-art visual effects and character animation company. She has previous experience at Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios and Google.

When the British metal band Tesseract was looking for a director to make a video of a song called “Eden,” bassist Amos Williams knew he wanted Ganesh Rao and Jonny Greenwald, Master of Visualization students at Texas A&M, whose talent he had spotted in their earlier work, “Empyrean.”

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.

Texas A&M’s Department of Construction Science honored its top spring 2011 graduates and faculty March 31, 2011, at its scholarship and awards banquet at the College Station Hilton.

The Rio Grande Guardian noted the graduation of a cadre of promotoras, community health workers trained by Texas A&M’s Center for Housing and Urban Development, in its Aug. 8 issue. The promotoras can now connect their fellow colonias residents with social services .

Francisco Farias and Paula Lorente, Ph.D. students at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, are completing the final phases of their scholarly research-oriented work as inaugural Office of Graduate Studies dissertation fellows.

Carol LaFayette, associate professor of visualization at Texas A&M, is heading a 3-year, $190,000 National Science Foundation-funded effort to form a pilot national network intended to become a focal point for innovation by bridging the gap between scientists, artists and engineers.