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Former students helped take “Cars 2” all the way from Radiator Springs to Japan and Europe for a visual adventure that Lightning McQueen and Mater will never forget. The sequel was produced by Pixar and distributed by Walt Disney Studios.

Researchers from the Center for Heritage Conservation visited Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay June 6-11, 2011 where they used sophisticated surveying equipment to collect data to create detailed 2- and 3-D models of the island and its historic structures for documentation purposes.

Hans Schneider, a doctoral student studying urban and regional science at Texas A&M, has received a Fulbright grant funding a 10-month project aimed at developing a comprehensive regional plan for preserving eight historically significant wooden churches and other historic sites in western Ukraine.

Environmental design students worked alongside residents of Las Lomas, a South Texas colonia, on projects aimed at improving the quality of life in the border community. Colonias leaders asked students to create after-school activities and identify ways to raise funds for community center staffing.

Graduate visualization students won scholarships for their makers funded by major animation studios and former student animators. Former students at Pixar, DreamWorks Animation and Industrial Light and Magic made lists of the videos they deemed the best.

An architectural preservationist, a creative director, scholars, educators, an urban planner and noted architects — including the designer of the world’s tallest building — are among the eight former students of the Texas A&M College of Architecture to be honored this year as Outstanding Alumni.

The college's Azimuth coffee shop has gained a bold, new look from a permanent installation designed by Elena Manferdini, principal of a Los Angeles firm specializing in computer-aided design of exotic forms. The structure was fabricated by students at the college's Digital Fabrication Facility.

June 4 was an evening of celebration as former students, colleagues and friends toasted retiring architecture professor John Only Greer '55. Greer, a former department head, interim dean, executive associate dean and mentor to generations of Aggie architects, retired in May after 49 years on the Aggie faculty.

Students developed housing prototypes with designers from two acclaimed firms — Wonnie Ickx and Carlos Bedoya, founding members of Mexico City-based PRODUCTORA, and Tom Wiscombe, principal of the L. A. firm EMERGENT — in the inaugural Mitchell Lab Visiting Designer Program.

Students in a Texas A&M architecture-for-health design studio collaborated with the university's Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture to develop design concepts for Rehab Nova, a new multipurpose health training and agriculture facility to be located in Africa's newest country, South Sudan.

Texas A&M students studying abroad in Bonn, Germany during the fall 2010 semester impressed the city’s mayor and staff with their presentations of a master plan for a 10-kilometer redevelopment along the Rhine River. A published portfolio of the students' work can be viewed online in PDF format.

Students studying abroad in South Africa are designing a starter campus for the university and developing a business plan for a nonprofit utility company while working on a groundbreaking real estate development located on the coast of the the country’s Eastern Cape.

Michael Murphy and Donald Sweeney, two retiring educators from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning who helped mold generations of landscape architects and urban planners during more than 80 years of combined service, were honored at a May 15, 2011 reception.

Texas A&M University at Qatar’s new ceremonial mace, designed by Rodney Hill, professor of architecture, debuted at commencement in Qatar May 5, 2011. “As far as I can tell from the design research I did, this is the most elaborate university mace in the world,” said Hill, who also carved mace's wood.

A team from Texas A&M reached the semifinal round of a worldwide competition seeking university students' ideas to solve social and environmental problems. Their idea involved kids trading points they’d earned playing video games for donations to charitable causes.