UA’s Blackwell receives conference honor

FAYETTEVILLE — The latest honor for University of Arkansas professor and architect Marlon Blackwell comes with a $20,000 honorarium from the Southeastern Conference.

Blackwell on Monday became the first UA faculty member named SEC Professor of the Year, an award created in 2012.

“Seeing your name go across the SEC ESPN network at the bottom of a replay of a football game — it says ‘SEC News’ — that’s pretty cool,” Blackwell said. “My mother, she’s so happy about that.”

The top academic officers at SEC member schools decide on the award, choosing from each school’s winner of the SEC Faculty Achievement Award, which includes a $5,000 honorarium from the athletic conference. A total of about 14,000 full-time, tenured faculty members teach at 14 SEC schools, according to the conference.

The honor comes after Blackwell in December won a top prize in architecture, the 2020 Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects.

The covid-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of this year’s AIA conference in Los Angeles where Blackwell had been set to receive the award.

Any thoughts about missing out on the event are “way down the list” of concerns given the ongoing covid-19 outbreak, he said.

“I feel like the luckiest guy in the world right now,” said Blackwell, 63.

He’s taught at UA since 1992, and is a distinguished professor and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture.

“His contributions to the field of architecture, dedication to students and service to the campus and community are truly extraordinary,” UA Chancellor Joe Steinmetz said. “He has received the highest honor in his field as a professional architect while providing life-changing opportunities for students through architectural education.”

With the suspension of in-person classes this semester that means teaching via Zoom videoconferencing and hoping for a quick return to normal, Blackwell said.

“We’re making the best of it. We’re adapting,” Blackwell said of the approximately 15 students in an advanced design studio this spring making do without the typical in-studio feedback and model-making.

“I think the students have been great, trying to deal with it, as have the faculty. But it’s not how a university is set up,” Blackwell said.

Blackwell for six years led the architecture department at UA. He called the award “a huge honor” and “really unexpected.”

“I put a lot of work into the teaching and into trying to be a good colleague at the university in a variety of roles. So, to see the teaching and the creative research together recognized — that’s pretty rare for me. Usually it’s one or the other,” Blackwell said.

Peter MacKeith, dean of the UA Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, praised Blackwell as “the ideal architect-educator.”

Blackwell “has transformed an entire generation of Arkansas architects now practicing, teaching and serving communities across the nation,” MacKeith said. “The school is proud to have supported Marlon for nearly 30 years and is privileged by his presence.”