building a better texas

The Center for Housing and Urban Development at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture is part of a new research, educational and engagement network focusing on providing sustainability science to South Texas policymakers and communities.

The Department of Visualization at the Texas A&M College of Architecture is offering a new, technology-infused Master of Fine Arts degree program that in fall 2011 will begin preparing students for careers in digital art education, fine arts, entertainment and media industries, as well as art as a vocation.

The renovation of Texas A&M’s historic YMCA building, overseen by Nancy McCoy ’81, FAIA, an outstanding alumna of the College of Architecture, is mostly complete. McCoy, a founding principal at Quimby McCoy Preservation Architecture, LLP, is an award-winning preservation architect.

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.”

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.

Walter Gillis Peacock, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M, is on a National Academy of Sciences committee hosting a two-day January public workshop in Houston to examine issues relating to sustainability and human-environment interactions in the Houston metropolitan area.

The 13th Annual Texas A&M College of Architecture Research Symposium: Built, Natural Virtual was held Monday, Oct. 24 at the Langford Architecture Center on the Texas A&M campus.

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.

Female faculty, students and staff from the architecture and construction science programs at Texas A&M recently joined volunteers building a home for a Bryan mother and her family as part of the Bryan/College Station Habitat for Humanity’s 2011 “Circle of Women Build.”

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.

City officials in Sealy, Texas are proceeding with steps to revitalize its historic downtown area, part of a comprehensive strategy aided by recommendations made during the fall 2009 semester by Master of Urban Planning students at Texas A&M.

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 .

In search of Texas locations needing children’s summer lunch programs, Catholic Charities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service turned to the Center for Housing and Urban Development for help.

A new book exploring critical planning issues facing Latino communities includes a chapter about a building technique in Texas colonias by Cecilia Giusti, assistant professor of urban planning at Texas A&M, and Miriam Olivares, an Urban and Regional Science doctoral student.

Residents of Brownwood, Texas had a chance last fall to shape their city’s future by participating in a survey developed by Master of Urban Planning students at Texas A&M, part of a collaboration with the city’s officials to update its master plan.