Honors

Posters and 10-minute oral presentations detailing a wide range of research findings by Texas A&M College of Architecture students were among the top submissions at the university’s 2017 Student Research Week.

For exhibiting the highest standards of excellence in teaching and service, two faculty and one staff member of the Texas A&M College of Architecture are among 24 recipients of 2017 Distinguished Achievement Awards, presented annually by the university and The Association of Former Students.

Texas A&M’s standing as an elite video game design school is reflected in new rankings published by The Princeton Review, a leading test preparation and college admission services company.

“Polynesian Panic,” a video game that pits a player against rising South Pacific floodwaters, earned its developers, four undergraduate Texas A&M visualization students, first place in a game development contest at Kansas State University.

One current Texas A&M visualization student and 15 Aggie Viz Lab veterans helped two major U.S. animation studios garner 2017 Oscars. This year's best animated feature was Disney Animation Studio's "Zootopia," and the best animated short film was Pixar Animation Studio's "Piper."

The late Jim Smith, who elevated construction education at Texas A&M as an administrator and professor after a stellar industry career, was honored with a posthumous lifetime achievement award in 2017 by the American Council for Construction Education.

The American Institute of Architects has elevated former Texas A&M students, Debra Dockery ’75 and Luis Jauregui ’76, to its prestigious College of Fellows for achieving a standard of excellence in the architecture profession .

A conceptual design for a Houston museum skinned with sheet metal refuse from automotive manufacturing and conceived to enhance public awareness on the environmental impact of waste, earned Yingzhe Duan first-place honors in a fall 2016 contest.

For orchestrating transformational educational experiences that facilitate student collaboration with peers and professionals from other disciplines, Ahmed K. Ali, assistant professor of architecture, was chosen to receive the J. Thomas Regan Interdisciplinary Prize.

For significant contributions through service to the American Institute of Architects, including his "uncanny ability to recruit, mentor, and involve others in projects and causes," Ron Skaggs ’65, chairman emeritus of HKS Inc. was honored with the group's 2016 Edward C. Kemper Award.

Nominations for the 2017 College of Architecture Outstanding Alumni Awards are due by March 1, 2017. “This award recognizes the exemplary leadership, relentless pursuit of excellence, exceptional talents and numerous accomplishments of the recipients,” said Jorge Vanegas, dean of the Texas A&M University College of Architecture. “We strongly encourage those who know a former student deserving of this prestigious honor to nominate him or her.”

Former Aggie corpsman William Merriweather Peña '42, who led a heavy weapons platoon through dense, snow-covered European forests in the Battle of the Bulge, was presented with one of Belgium's highest honors at a Dec. 7, 2016 Rudder Theatre ceremony.

The unveiling of Starbucks’ 2016 holiday cups, an event eagerly anticipated by coffee fans throughout the world, included a cup featuring intricately-drawn poinsettias created by Christina Anderson, an senior landscape architecture student at Texas A&M.

Twenty former students from the Texas A&M College of Architecture lead 14 companies in the 2016 Aggie 100, a list of the fastest-growing firms owned or led by Aggie graduates compiled annually for the Mays Business School’s Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship.

Arsalan Gharaveis, a Texas A&M architecture Ph.D. student, is investigating the impact of physician-nurse interactions on emergency room patient care with help from a $7,500 Academy of Architecture for Health Foundation Legacy Fellowship.