ACSA College of Distinguished Professors

The College of Distinguished Professors, founded in 2010, is composed of ACSA members who receive the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award or the ACSA/AIA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education. College membership is one of the highest honors the ACSA can bestow upon an educator.

As the incoming Chancellor of the ACSA College of Distinguished Professors, I want to thank our outgoing Past-Chanceller, Marleen Davis, for her years of service in leadership positions in the College, as well as to thank my immediate predecessor, Marilys Nepomechie, for her tireless efforts as our Chancellor last year. I also want to recognize our new Vice-Chancellor, Renee Cheng, for the insightful contributions that she has made to the College this past year and to welcome Joanna Lombard to the Executive Committee as the new Secretary of the College.

Last year, under Marilys’s leadership, we relaunched the New Administrator’s Workshop to help academic leaders build their capacity in these especially challenging times for higher education, and we launched a new mid-career Mentorship for Leadership initiative to build interest in and capacity for leadership among ACSA members. We will continue to develop those initiatives this coming year.

Marilys also represented the College on the ACSA Awards Task Force, which revised the Call for Nominations for the 2026 Distinguished Professors to encourage a more inclusive pool of candidates, with the jury now able to recommend up to ten new awardees each year to the Board for confirmation. As part of this, we also established “De-Mystifying DP” advisory clinics to guide and support of future candidates for the Distinguished Professor Award, the applications for which are due on October 8.

And speaking of deadlines, the submission of papers or special focus sessions to the 2026 ACSA Annual Meeting is September 17. The theme of the meeting, which will take place in Chicago from March 26-28, 2026, is “Convergence/Divergence: Designing Futures in Architecture and Education.” We need reviewers for the peer-review of papers, so the Call for Reviewers for the Annual Meeting is on the ACSA website.

This year, we will launch a new Faculty Mentorship Program. The program seeks to connect mentees with mentors outside of their home institution and provide whatever level of interaction makes sense for all parties. We see this as a way to tap the many years of experience among the Distinguished Professors and to empower faculty members at any rank to have mentors able to help support them at all stages of their careers. The application period will occur in October, with matches made in November, and we encourage everyone interested in the program to apply.

That program is part of our goal this year to engage as many members of the College as possible in ACSA events and in the issues facing architectural education and higher education more broadly. We recognize that you, our members, are at different points in your careers and your lives and we want to honor those differences, but there are also various ways to participate, from submitting to conferences and attending meetings to reviewing papers and taking part in the mentoring program.

All of us on the Executive Committee look forward to working with you and hearing from you in the months ahead. These are challenging times, and your knowledge and experience have never been more needed than now.

All my best,

Tom Fisher, DPACSA
Chancellor, ACSA College of Distinguished Professors

Please visit the ACSA Awards webpage for detailed information on nominations for the ACSA/AIA Topaz Medal Laureate and the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award.

The ACSA/AIA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education is awarded jointly by ACSA and the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The Topaz Medallion is the highest award given to architectural educators. It honors an individual who has made outstanding contributions to architectural education, whose teaching has influenced a broad range of students, and who has helped shape the minds of students who will shape our environment.

The ACSA Distinguished Professor Award recognizes sustained creative achievement in the advancement of architectural education through teaching, design, scholarship, research, or service.