Peel pledges $225,000 to college, Hill professorship, urges Hill's former students to contribute

Recognizing the profound and positive influence longtime architecture professor Rodney Hill had on his life and those of countless other Texas A&M students, Bill Peel ‘74 has contributed $25,000 to the Rodney Hill Professorship in Creativity and Design, and he is challenging Hill's former students to make contributions of their own.

“I’m pleased to be able to spearhead an effort encouraging others to join me in recognizing Rodney’s work,” said Peel, chief development officer for [Tellepsen] (http://www.tellepsen.com) , a Houston-based leader in commercial and industrial construction. “This professorship will help guarantee that creative leaders like Rodney will always have a place among the faculty.”

Peel, who has donated his time and expertise as a member of college advisory councils, also made provisions to provide an additional $200,000 in general support to Texas A&M’s College of Architecture.

“It’s been a dream of mine to make a contribution to the university,” said Peel, who earned a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree in 1974 and a Master of Architecture degree in 1975. “I have a passion for the educational experience I had at Texas A&M and want to make sure that future students have the opportunities that I did.”

Jorge Vanegas, dean of the college, views Peel, a member of the College of Architecture Development Advisory Council, as " an exemplar of 'walking the talk'"

“Since I met Bill, I have found him to be a person with not only a passion for creativity and innovation, but more importantly, a passion for the College of Architecture at Texas A&M, both exemplified through his thoughts and manifested through his actions," said Vanegas. "His generous philanthropic investment in our college is just one more example of how he brings together both passions seamlessly, clearly transcending his current active involvement and contribution to our advisory council."

Hill, who joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1969, is an award-winning architect, an expert in environmental psychology, an artist and a futurist whose lessons have prompted generations of Aggies to connect the dots and draw their own conclusions from emerging global conditions, innovations and imagined possibilities. His remarkable career in education, in which he has won a roomful of teaching awards, was [chronicled] (http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/e1e19b3d#/e1e19b3d/26) in the Fall 2010 issue of the Texas A&M foundation’s Spirit Magazine.

For more information on the campaign for the Rodney Hill Professorship in Creativity and Design, or to learn about the many ways you can make a gift to the college, contact Larry Zuber, Assistant Vice President for  Development/College of Architecture at l-zuber@tamu.edu or 979.845.0939.

Online gifts to the college may be made at [giving.tamu.edu] (http://giving.tamu.edu) .