Athens, Ga. – Daniel J. Nadenicek, chair of the department of planning and landscape architecture at Clemson University, will be the new dean of the University of Georgia College of Environment and Design, effective Aug. 15.
Arnett C. Mace Jr., UGA’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, announced today that Nadenicek will succeed John F. Crowley, who stepped down as dean in 2006. Scott Weinberg has served as interim dean since September 2006.
A widely published scholar in the areas of historic preservation, landscape architecture and urban design, Nadenicek is also director of Healthy Communities and Historic Preservation in Clemson’s Restoration Institute. He joined Clemson in 2002 after working 11 years at Pennsylvania State University where he was on the landscape architecture faculty and director of the Center for Studies in Landscape History.
He will assume leadership of a college with one of the nation’s oldest and highest-ranked landscape architecture programs and the first environmental ethics certificate program in the country.
“Dan Nadenicek possesses excellent experience as an administrator, teacher, scholar and practitioner,” said UGA President Michael F. Adams. “He has the skills and knowledge to lead an already-outstanding college to even higher levels of achievement and success, and I’m delighted that he is joining UGA.”
In addition to his administrative duties at Clemson, Nadenicek has taught graduate and undergraduate courses and directed the doctoral program in environmental design and planning, and the master’s degree program in historic preservation. At Penn State, he coordinated both the bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in landscape architecture.
His publications include more than 90 articles, reviews, reports and proceedings. He is writing a book about the conservation work of 19th century American businessman Frederick Billings, and he has written several book chapters.
Nadenicek has presented more than 75 lectures, papers and panel presentations, including presentations in Germany, France and Canada. He has helped organize several major national conferences and symposiums including international conferences dealing with the topics of sprawl and linear parks.
“Dan is very skillful in applying the lessons of historic preservation and landscape architecture to real-life issues in land management, urbanization and environmental protection,” Mace said. “That ability, along with his strong record in academic leadership, administration and fund raising, make him an ideal person to guide and strengthen the College of Environment and Design.”
Since 1991, Nadenicek has collaborated with fellow faculty members and colleagues to obtain about $2.4 million in grants for various purposes including research, conferences, publications and course development. In 2005, he helped secure a $2 million matching grant from the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education and the State Lottery Endowed Chair Fund to create an endowed chair in urban ecology at Clemson. He also helped obtain a $160,000 Getty Foundation Campus Heritage Grant for a heritage and preservation study at Clemson.
He served as president of the Sigma Lambda Alpha honor society and was on the Executive Council of the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation. He has been a consultant on historic forests for the National Park Service and helped design the Campus Peace Garden at Penn State. He received an award from the South Carolina American Planning Association for his work on a master plan for cemeteries in Greenville, SC.
Nadenicek earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history at Mankato State University in Minnesota and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in landscape architecture at the University of Minnesota.
UGA’s College of Environment and Design, with 29 full-time faculty and about 355 students, was formed in 2001 when the School of Environmental Design and the Institute of Ecology were brought together. Last year the ecology institute withdrew to become a stand-alone School of Ecology.
The School of Environmental Design, which was created in 1969, includes an undergraduate program in landscape architecture that dates to 1928 and a graduate program that began in 1954. The graduate program is ranked third nationally and the undergraduate program is ranked fourth by Design Intelligence, the most widely used reference in ranking landscape architecture programs.
The college also includes a historic preservation program that was the first in Georgia when it began in 1973, and a Certificate of Environmental Ethics that was the first of its kind in the country when it was started in 1983.
