Arizona State University

Ron McCoy’s fifth-year architecture students can see firsthand the efforts of their professor’s professional practice. As ASU university architect and School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) professor, his students are a few minutes walk from many of McCoy’s most pressing projects. McCoy has been known in the College of Design as director of SALA, interim dean of the college and as one of the lucky few rolling around campus on a Segway. But McCoy’s ceaseless pace of overseeing the variety of large and small projects on behalf of the university has drawn more attention – specifically from the esteemed publication The Chronicle of HIgher Education’s “Chronicle Review.”

In the March 7, 2008 issue, Chronicle reporter Lawrence Biemiller recounts following McCoy around a typical day, full of the challenges of meeting and exceeding the pace of development around the “new American university” that ASU faculty, staff and students know well. The unflappable McCoy is focused on making a contribution to the quality of life for everyone on the ASU campus.

Biemiller notes that “He’s the one person at Arizona State who can look at all the puzzle pieces — the hodgepodge of existing structures and spaces, the flashy new buildings by different architecture firms, the lush new landscapes by various designers—and try to make sure they all come together into places that look and feel and work like campuses.”

McCoy was elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects in May 2007. He was one of 76 architects named to the college and joins an elite group of fewer than 2,600 of 81,000 members of the AIA have the distinction of being a fellow. The fellowship program was developed to elevate architects “who have made a significant contribution to architecture and society and who have achieved a standard of excellence in the profession.”

See the Chronicle website at http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i26/26b02201.htm to read the story.