Giusti honored for aiding Brazos Valley African-American museum

For her support of [Brazos Valley African-American Museum] (http://www.bvaam.org) projects, Cecilia Giusti, associate dean for outreach and diversity at the Texas A&M College of Architecture, was one of the honorees at a Jan. 24, 2014 appreciation banquet hosted by the museum.

She was lauded for helping launch and coordinate fall 2013 projects in which graduate architecture students [created models] (http://one.arch.tamu.edu/news/2013/12/4/museum-models/) , now on display at the museum, of two Brazos Valley African-American high schools that burned down in the 1960s and a project that saw undergraduate landscape architecture students create design concepts for the museum grounds.

Giusti served as a liaison between museum officials and four faculty members at the College of Architecture whose students created the models and design concepts.

The models were created with recollections of the high schools’ former students, because neither photos nor drawings of the buildings remain.

Without the former students’ remarkable recollections, these historically significant buildings would have otherwise been lost to history, said Mardelle Shepley, professor of architecture, whose students created the models.

At the banquet, Guisti and other honorees were presented with proclamations from the governor of Texas, the mayors of Bryan and College Station and the Brazos County judge, honoring her support of the museum.

As the head of the College of Architecture’s diversity council, Giusti, also an associate professor of urban planning, led the organizing and execution of the college’s 2012-2013 [Year of Diversity] (http://one.arch.tamu.edu/news/2012/10/24/year-of-diversity/) and recent events including the [Diversity Open Data Hackathon] (http://one.arch.tamu.edu/news/2012/10/24/year-of-diversity/) .