LAUP News & Events

New Hires

Sammy "Kent" Anderson joined the Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning Department in the spring 2008. Anderson is an Executive Associate Professor in the Master of Science in Land Development program

Kent received his Bachelors degree in Industrial Engineering and his Masters degree in Industrial Education from Sam Houston State University. He received his Doctorate of Philosophy in Urban and Regional Sciences from Texas A&M University.

Dr. Anderson's scholarly interests include Land Development, Site Analysis and Infrastructure and Residential Land Development.

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Bruce Dvorak joined the Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning Department fall 2007 from Chicago, where he was previously employed in private practice working on sustainable design projects across the country.

Bruce is a registered landscape architect in Illinois. As a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Dvorak served on the society's Green Roof Task Force, which guided the selections of firms to design and construct a green roof pilot project on the ASLA's National headquarters building in Washington, D.C.

He received his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Minnesota and a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Illinois. His areas of interest include green roof technology, sustainable site design and sustainable planning and construction.

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Zhifang Wang joined the Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning Department in fall of 2008. Dr. Wang is an Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture program.

Dr. Wang is Assistant Professor in Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning. Her areas of interest are ecological planning and design, landscape ecology, ecological aesthetics and landscape perception. She works to advance the applications of various ecological theories in planning and design while highlighting the concern of public acceptance of environmentally beneficial landscape. Her teaching emphasizes the ecological and cultural basis of sustainable development in both undergraduate and graduate courses. Information technology (GIS, spatial modeling and analysis, etc.) facilitates her research and teaching.

She received her Bachelor in Science in Urban and Regional Planning (1998) and Masters of Science in Landscape Planning (2001) from Beijing University. Dr. Wang received her Master of Landscape Architecture (2008) and Doctorate of Philosophy in Landscape Architecture (2008) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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Yu Xiao joined the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2008. She is interested in urban economic development, disaster management,and public finance. Her research examines short-to long-run economic impacts of natural disasters, business interruption, and process of community economic recovery after disasters. She also studies the fiscal impacts of municipal land annexation.

Dr. Xiao received Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2008, M.U.P. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004, and B.S. and B.M. from Peking University in China in 2002.

News

Wenger returns to NSF, leaves indelible legacy at Texas A&M

Last August, after almost 19 years of distinguished service to Texas A&M University, Dennis E. Wenger retired from his faculty post and returned to the National Science Foundation where he serves as director of two program within the Directorate of Engineering's Division of Civil, Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovations (ENG/CMMI) - the Infrastructure Systems Management and Hazard Response Program and the Information Technology and Infrastructures System Program.

Previously a professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning since 1989, Wenger was the founding director of the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M's College of Architecture.

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Brody, colleagues earn JAPA "Best Paper" Award

A professor and three PhD students in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University recently earned the Journal of the American Planning Association's 2007 Best Article/Best paper Award for an article the co-authored examining the financial impact of flooding Flordia.

The JAPA 2007 Best Paper Award went to Co-Authors Samuel Brody, associate professor of urban planning; Sammy Zahran, a sociologist on the Colorado State University faculty, Praveen Maghelal, a 2007 graduate of Texas A&M's Urban and Regional Science PhD program; and two current students in the program, Himanshu Grover and Wesley E. Highfield.

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Publication edited by Jon Rodiek cited as top science journal

Landscape and Urban Planning , an international peer-reviewed journal edited by Jon Rodiek, professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at Texas A&M's College of Architecture, is ranked as a top science journal for 2006 by ISI web of Knowledge, a comprehensive online research platform.

The ratings are compiled by Journal Citation Reports, which ranks thousands of journals in the sciences in categories by the number of times their articles are cited in other scholarly journals.

Landscape and Urban Planning was rated highly in a number of categories. It was the most-cited journal in the urban studies category, No. 3 in environmental studies, No. 7 in physical geography, No. 6 in geography and No. 44 in ecology.

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Michael Murphy among nation's "25 Most Admired Educators"

Michael Murphy, associate professor of Landscape Architecture and Texas A&M's College of Architecture, was named among the 2008 Most Respected and Admired Educators, in the 9th Annual 2008 Education Survey and Rankings published in the November/December 2007 Design Intelligence.

DesignIntelligence asked professional practice firms presidents and managing directors to nominate the most admired and respected educators based on their recent experiences with colleges and universities. The elite group of 25 were chosen from disciplines of interior design, interior architecture, architecture, design, architectural engineering, industrial design and landscape architecture.

The top five reasons cited for the nominations were: balance practice, theory and technology; inspirational and engaging; innovative and visionary; leadership that attracts and retains top talent, and agents of change.