TULANE TALK
May 12, 2008
Dear Colleagues:
Our national search for a new School of Architecture dean has ended in resounding success. Kenneth Schwartz, a professor of architecture at the University of Virginia (UVA), will become the new dean of Tulane’s School of Architecture effective July 1.
A graduate of Cornell University, Ken’s academic focus is architectural design, urbanism and professional ethics. He began his academic career at Cornell in 1974. He arrived at UVA in 1984 after teaching for several years at Cornell and Syracuse University, including a year with the latter’s architecture program in Florence, Italy. He also served as a visiting professor at Princeton University from 1986 to 1987.
At the University of Virginia, Ken held several administrative positions including graduate program director, department chair and associate dean. From 2005-2008, he served as a leader of the university’s Faculty Senate, including a year as chair and committee member on the Board of Visitors, the university’s governing body. In 2003, Ken was awarded UVA’s Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award, the school’s highest university-wide teaching honor. He was elected to the fellowship of the American Institute of Architects in 2001.
Ken has also gained renown as an architect and urban designer. His work with Schwartz-Kinnard, Architects, a company he formed with his wife Judith Kinnard, who will also join Tulane’s faculty, won four national design competitions focusing on the constructive contribution of strategic urbanism and contextual innovation in rebuilding cities. In 2005, Ken and Judith opened Community Planning and Design (CP+D), and they subsequently included UVA colleague Maurice Cox as a partner with the firm.
Ken also founded the Design Resources Center, a not-for-profit organization serving lower income neighborhoods in Charlottesville, Va. Ken has completed numerous planning and design projects for communities throughout the Eastern seaboard including his collaboration on the master plan for Crozet, Va., which won a Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Ken was president of the National Architectural Accrediting Board from 2001 to 2002. He is currently chair of the National Intern Development Program Committee of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards and chair of the state licensing board for architecture in Virginia. He recently served as the southeast regional director on the Board of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.
Please join me in welcoming Ken and Judith to Tulane and in thanking our friend and colleague Scott Bernhard, a faculty member of Tulane’s School of Architecture for more than 15 years, for serving as interim dean of the school since May 2007. I also would like to thank Provost Michael Bernstein and the School of Architecture Search Committee, led by professor John Klingman, for the excellent job of recruiting Ken and Judith to Tulane.
