Friends, colleagues and former students of three retiring architecture professors, John Only Greer, Roger S. Ulrich and David G. Woodcock, gathered May 10 at the University Club to celebrate the trio’s combined 110 years of teaching, research and service at Texas A&M University. Greer, holder of the Wallie E. Scott Endowed Professorship of Architectural Practice and Management and a distinguished alumnus of the Texas A&M College of Architecture, has served on the faculty since 1962. Ulrich, who is internationally renowned for research informing modern health facility design, is a professor in the departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and holder of the Julie and Craig Beale Endowed Professorship in Health Facilities Design. He has served on Texas A&M’s faculty since 1988. Woodcock, who joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1962, is the director emeritus of the Center for Heritage Conservation, which he established in 1991 as the Historic Resources Imaging Laboratory.

Researchers from Texas A&M’s Center for Heritage Conservation visited Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay June 6-11, 2011 where they employed sophisticated surveying equipment to collect data that will be used to create detailed 2- and 3-D models of the island and its historic structures for documentation purposes. With the help of students from Chico State University and the National Park Service, Professors Bob Warden and Julie Rogers, CHC director and associate director, used a total station, a tool that employs a laser distance meter to scan and record imaging data that, when entered into computer-aided design software like AutoCAD, yields accurate, highly detailed structural models. Warden said the project was undertaken at the request of the NPS to demonstrate the types of historic imaging services performed by the CHC, how it could benefit their agency, and as a precursor to possible future collaborations.