Professor Kingston Heath, director of the Historic Preservation Program, has been awarded the 2014 Excellence Award for Directors of Graduate Studies by the UO Graduate School. The honor will be formally presented during the Director of Graduate Studies spring meeting at approximately 4:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 28, in the Knight Library Browsing Room.

“I am humbled by the recognition and truly appreciative,” Heath said. “Mentoring students along their journey as professionals is the most fulfilling aspect of my role as a program director.”

The City of Eugene and the University of Oregon welcome the 2014 Neighborhoods USA (NUSA) conference to Eugene this evening, Wednesday, May 21. A&AA Dean Frances Bronet will give opening remarks at 6 p.m. at the Ford Alumni Center. Nearly 600 attendees have registered from as far away as the Netherlands and Japan to learn about building and strengthening neighborhood organizations.

A team of UO landscape architects has won second place in an international competition to raise awareness of the true flood risk to people living in landscapes where the vulnerability may not be obvious.

Professor Kenneth Helphand, Associate Professor Liska Chan, and graduate students Shannon Arms, Emilie Froh, Carol Stafford, and Pieter Van Remoortere won second place in The “Watermarks” competition for their entry, “PDX Marks.”

Two Eugene-area television stations broadcast stories recently about the first house built by UO and LCC students in an unusual partnership with two Lane County agencies. The students, in an architecture studio called OregonBILDS, are wrapping up construction on the three-bedroom, two-bath home that will be sold to a local family.

Daniel Toole will be paid $4,000 to backpack through Finland, Sweden, and Norway this summer. Baha Sadreddin’s travels through Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark this summer will also be covered by a $4,000 check. When they finish their independent three-week trips, they’ll each travel—expenses paid—to New York or San Francisco, where salaried, eight-week fellowships await them (plus a housing subsidy) at a firm specializing in planning, architecture, and landscape architecture.

Associate Professor Nico Larco has coauthored Site Design for Multifamily Housing: Creating Livable, Connected Neighborhoods, published in April by Island Press.

Aimed at architects, planners, and developers, the book provides design and code guidance for walkability and connectivity in multifamily site design. Larco’s coauthors are UO graduates Kristin Kelsey, ‘MArch ’12, MIArch, ‘12, and Amanda Stocker West, MPA ‘09.

Bill Eggert wasn’t even halfway through his two-term capstone course in public administration when he realized the literal payoff of the curriculum’s intense schedule: Midway through spring term, he was offered a job with the California State Auditor’s office.

When Jason Stenson drove up to a barn in Damascus, Oregon, four years ago, he knew what he hoped to find inside, but he never imagined it would become known as The Pickle Box.

A&AA Dean Frances Bronet will host a conversation with Susan S. Szenasy, longtime editor in chief and new publisher of Metropolis magazine, in Portland on May 22 as part of a series of national conversations exploring issues of design advocacy and ethics. The gathering will also celebrate the publication of Szenasy, Design Advocate, a new title by Metropolis Books. It will live tweeted at @johnhenrytweets.

Szenasy is publisher and editor in chief of Metropolis, the award-winning New York City-based magazine of architecture, design, and culture.

For only three hours in May, two floors of a UO campus building will showcase creative explorations by dozens of emerging artists working in media ranging from ceramics to digital arts and more. The event is a rare peek inside what students in their senior year have accomplished, and it provides an opportunity for the public to interact with the artists—and in some cases, with the art itself.