On June 18, 2011 Professor Harry Van Oudenallen slipped peacefully away at home, after a short battle with cancer, surrounded by his family. Harry was an extraordinary teacher, friend, and colleague. He joined the faculty at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UWM in 1979, and from the very start excelled as a teacher. There are hundreds of students who have been profoundly influenced and mentored by Harry. Among the awards he won in his career, perhaps the ones he was most proud of were, the UWM Undergraduate Teaching Award and the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award. He was, this year, elected by his peers at the ACSA to serve as the Vice Chancellor of this distinguished group of scholars and teachers. Harry was a contagiously likable person and will be remembered for his enormous smile, and rich laughter.

Associate Professor Jim Wasley is now Chair of Architecture, taking over from Professor Emeritus Kevin Forseth, who retired in May.

SARUP welcomes Karl Wallick to the architecture faculty. Wallick’s research utilizes the tectonic fragment as a constructive, organizational, and narrative device to investigate topics related to building technics, detailing, and drawing. Publications include essays for The International Journal of Art and Design Education, a chapter in The Green Braid edited by Kim Tanzer, numerous conference proceedings, and most recently the fall 2011 publication of his new book: Inquiry, a 270 page monograph on the work of KieranTimbelake. In practice with Drawing Dept and now MW architecture, Wallick’s design work has received awards from the AIA and CORA.

SARUP’s AIAS chapter has been awarded the 2011 AIAS Special Accomplishment Honor Award, for their organization of SUPERjury. Under the guidance of Associate Prof. Mo Zell, AIAS coordinated a two-day school wide, public studio review process, which served as the backdrop for discussions among invited guests about curriculum, pedagogy, representation, and design process.

Alumnus and Adjunct Professor Nicolas Cascarano, principal at Arquitectura, Inc., won the national competition sponsored by United States Fallen Heroes Foundation, to design a “living memorial” that will honor servicemen and women of all branches of the United States military who have given their lives in Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Adjunct Prof. Christine Scott Thomson and Assistant Prof. Gregory Thomson (Institute for Ecological Design) were invited to join a team that participated in the “Kaiser Permanente Small Hospital, Big Idea Competition”. The project proposal, which was developed under the leadership of TBL Architects (http://www.tbl.is/), with John Cooper Architecture (http://johncooperarchitecture.com/ ), and HCP, was among the top nine finalists selected.

Professor Manu P. Sobti’s research proposal, “Escaping Flatland: (Re)Writing the Histories, Geographies and Borderland Ecologies of Water”, written in collaboration with Timothy J. Ehlinger (Biology) and Ryan B. Holifield (Geography) has been awarded funding under C21’s TRANSDISCIPLINARY CHALLENGES FOR 21ST CENTURY STUDIES RFP 2011. The $280,000 funding shall support research for two years that examines borderland ecologies at the global scale, including detailed studies of the Mississippi Basin, the Danube Delta, the Oxus River (Amu Darya) and Aral Sea region, and the Ganges Delta. This is the first-ever venture that allows the humanities to converse with the sciences at UWM and make lasting change.

SARUP was well-represented at The 2011 Burnham Prize Competition: McCormick Place REDUX. The firm bauenstudio, co-founded by Associate Professor Mo Zell and Adjunct Professor Marc Roehrle, with the assistance of Keith Hayes (MArch 2012), and the team of Andrew Peters (CDS-MArch) and Jason Fisher (BSAS 2009, Krueck and Sexton), were both recognized with Honorable Mentions. The competition, co-sponsored by the Chicago, Architectural Club, the Chicago chapter of the AIA and Landmarks Illinois, examined the controversial origins and questionable future of the McCormick Place East Building, the 1971 modernist convention hall designed by Gene Summers of C.F. Murphy Associates and sited along the lakefront in Burnham Park, Chicago.

Linda Keane, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Director of www.NEXT.cc, and Professor Mark Keane, President of www.NEXT.cc recently received a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board to continue expansion of the K-12 design education website.  This follows the international award given to www.NEXT.cc by the United International Architects for 2nd place in audio/visual category at the UIA conference in Tokyo, Japan 10/2011. NEXT was the sole American award winner among 37 countries. NEXT also developed the curriculum for the nation’s first design based Middle School, the LaCrosse Design Institute, LaCrosse Wisconsin. See the curriculum at www.NEXT.cc.