Our Awards

CAPLA Assistant Professor of Planning and Sustainable Built Environments Ladd Keith and ASU Associate Professor Sara Meerow have been honored with the Western Planner 2022 Sheldon D. Gerber Merit Award for Excellence in Environmental Planning and 2022 APA Arizona Open Category (Applied Research) Award for their Planning for Urban Heat Resilience.

Last spring, Master of Science in Urban Planning students in Associate Professor Kristina Curran's capstone course published the report Thriving Transit Corridors: Driving Transit-Oriented Development Along Tucson’s Broadway Corridor, which has been awarded the 2022 Student Project Award by the Arizona chapter of the American Planning Association.

CAPLA Director of Information and Technology Lucas Guthrie has been awarded CAPLA's highest honor: the Dean's Award for Exceptional Service. “There is so much about Lucas that makes him an extraordinary member of our community—an individual to admire,” says Dean Nancy Pollock-Ellwand.

Kenneth J. Kokroko and Mackenzie Waller, assistant professors of landscape architecture who joined CAPLA last year, have been selected for the second cohort of the Dean’s Equity and Inclusion Initiative Fellowship Program. They will join 15 other early career faculty from leading design and built environment institutions across the country.

Senior Lecturer in Architecture Damon Leverett and Senior Data and Financial Analyst Jeff Guba have been awarded CAPLA’s highest annual honor for employees: the Darryl D. Dobras Award for Excellence, awarded by Dean Nancy Pollock-Ellwand.

Recent Master of Landscape Architecture student Irene Pineda has won first place in the graduate/professional student category of the UArizona 2022 Data Visualization Challenge for her map Plant Trees in Pomona for a Sustainable Future. Her map identifies where trees should be planted to provide more shading in the rapidly industrializing Southern California city.

Professor Jonathan Bean and the Solar Decathlon Design Challenge Multifamily Building team of fourth-year B.Arch students Andrew Norris, Jonah Cummins-Mikkalson, Alex Kolodziej and Nhan Vo not only took first place in their division, but also was selected as the 2022 Design Challenge Grand Winner for Commercial Divisions—a first for CAPLA and UArizona.

“Winners of the 2nd Annual Universal Design Awards reveal how the next generation of designers are rethinking accessible architecture,” says Architizer in a March 2022 article that highlights work produced by third-year B.Arch students in a studio sponsored by Ascension Wheelchair Lifts.

Ana Astiazaran ’22 B.Arch, who received a national COTE Top Ten for Students Award for Sustainable Design Excellence from the AIA in 2021, recently served as one of nine national judges for the AIA 2022 Architecture Awards. She was the only student jury member in the esteemed competition.

Built environment innovation. Water consciousness. These are the principles fourth-year B.Arch students in the ARC 401 studio considered when crafting designs for a research center at the base of Sentinel Peak, along Tucson’s Santa Cruz River, for the Fall 2021 Richärd Kennedy Fourth-Year Studio Prize.

Ally Kwan ’23 B.Arch has been awarded the 2021 Chapter Leader Honor Award from the national American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) organization, while the UArizona AIAS student organization has been honored with a 2021 AIAS Chapter Honor Award Honorable Mention.

This fall, third-year Bachelor of Architecture students in studios led by Teresa Rosano, Dulce Arambula, Eduardo Guerrero, Siri Trumble and Beth Weinstein participated in a universal design awards program generated from a partnership between AGM/Ascension Wheelchair Lifts and CAPLA. Meet the winners.