AMES, Iowa -- A team of Iowa State University faculty, representing all four College of Design departments, has received a 2007-2008 Creative Achievement Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.
The award, which honors a specific creative achievement in teaching, design, scholarship, research or service that advances architectural education, was presented March 28 at the ACSA annual meeting in Houston.
Team members include Jason Alread and Thomas Leslie, architecture; James Miller and Carl Rogers, landscape architecture; Joe Muench, art and design; and Karen Jeske, formerly in the department of community and regional planning and now executive director of the Neighborhood Development Corporation in Des Moines.
The team was cited for development of Design Science, an experimental course created for the College of Design's Core Design Program for all freshman students.
Design Science introduces students to the fundamental relationship between science and design in their first year of college. The course combines linked lecture and laboratory sessions with a single, semester-long design project. It correlates design thinking and design process with scientific inquiry and cultivates the understanding of idea, material and context.
The course also introduces a set of research methods to strengthen students' conceptual and critical thinking skills, and encourage experimentation and discovery.
The Creative Achievement Award acknowledges not only the effectiveness of the Design Science class, but also its innovative delivery and collaborative process. The College of Design is looking at ways to incorporate the class permanently as a part of its Core Design Program.
Alread received the ACSA Faculty Design Award in 2004. He joined the Iowa State architecture faculty in 2002 after working as an associate at Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture in Des Moines and as a design consultant for Herman Miller Inc., Zeeland, Mich. He is also a principal with Substance Architecture in Des Moines.
Leslie received the ACSA/AIAS (American Institute of Architecture Students) New Faculty Teaching Award in 2003 and the ACSA Creative Achievement Award in 2004 and 2006. He joined the Iowa State architecture faculty in 2000 after working seven years as an architect for Sir Norman Foster and Partners, London and San Francisco.
Miller began a joint appointment with landscape architecture and the department of natural resource ecology and management at Iowa State in 2002. He previously served as a postdoctoral fellow in zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Rogers joined the Iowa State landscape architecture faculty as a lecturer in 2000 and accepted a tenure-track position in 2003. He previously had been a senior landscape architect with Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck Architecture in Des Moines since 1998 and founded hrstudio, lc, in Des Moines in 2001.
Muench joined the Iowa State art and design faculty in 2001, teaching all levels of jewelry and metalsmithing. He previously was an assistant professor of jewelry metals at East Carolina University School of Art, Greenville, N.C.
Jeske joined the Iowa State community and regional planning faculty in 1999, teaching a variety of courses and serving as a Fellow in the Urban Transformation, Poverty, Spatial Segregation and Social Exclusion seminar sponsored by the European Research and Training Network in 2005. She left Iowa State in 2007 to become the executive director of the Neighborhood Development Corporation in Des Moines.
ACSA is a nonprofit, membership association founded in 1912 to advance the quality of architectural education. More than 225 schools are members.