Athens, Ga. – The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture awarded Pratt Cassity, director of public service and outreach at the Center for Community Design and Preservation at the University of Georgia, with the senior level Award for Excellence in Service-Learning at the 2013 annual conference in Austin, Texas.
Cassity has “done more than anyone else in CED to make significant progress with … community engagement and international engagement,” said Dan Nadenicek, dean of the College of Environment and Design.
Cassity was nominated by Nadenicek for his accomplishments at the international, national, state and local level, including being responsible for the development of the graduate and undergraduate service-learning course, Design Charrettes, which conducts community-based design interventions. The program has assisted more than 80 communities in Georgia. A charrette held in Suwanee, Ga., was highlighted in the nomination as an example of excellence in regional service-learning through the revitalization of a community.
Internationally, Cassity has conducted numerous innovative design endeavors, including a 10-year service-learning studio in Ghana, beginning in 2001, and civic engagement partnerships in Croatia, Tunisia and Thailand, as well as lecturing regularly in Slovakia.
Cassity has served since 1996 as director of the Center for Community Design and Preservation in the College of Environment and Design. He teaches graduate courses in historic preservation, landscape architecture and planning and also has taught a yearlong freshman service-learning seminar on global engagement for the past nine years. For 10 years he served as executive director of the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions and now his office houses the administrative offices of the alliance.
A native of Alabama, Cassity holds degrees from Mississippi State University in horticulture and landscape architecture and also a master’s degree in urban studies and historic preservation from Georgia State University, with a certificate in conservation from the University of York, England.
The Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture is composed of all the programs of higher learning in landscape architecture in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
