Athens, Ga. – Two UGA professors from the College of Environment and Design were honored at the 2010 conference of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture recently. At the conference, which took place in Maastricht, The Netherlands, Bruce Ferguson was made a CELA Fellow and Amitabh Verma was presented the award for Excellence in Research and Creative Works.
Over the course of his career, Ferguson has served as president of CELA and director of the UGA School of Environmental Design, which later became the CED. He is already a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and was recognized by DesignIntelligence magazine as one of the nation’s 25 most admired design professors in 2008.
Ferguson’s induction into CELA’s Academy of Fellows honors his “excellent endeavor sustained over an extended period of time that is truly inspiring and significant,” according to the academy’s description in the CELA Constitution.
Verma’s research award recognizes the international reach and rapid advancement of his research, especially on the complex problems facing large and fast-growing cities. The research highlighted in CED Dean Daniel Nadenicek’s nomination letter included work on living conditions, urban water management, and preservation of sacred historical sites.
His progress in research is especially noteworthy at such an early point in Verma’s career. As Dean Nadenicek noted, “Rarely do tenure-track professors make such great progress on their research agendas in such a short time-Professor Verma is only in his fourth year.”
This year’s CELA conference also accepted twice as many papers from CED as from any other institution, adding to UGA’s reputation for prestigious scholarship in the field of landscape architecture. This is the second year in a row that CED faculty members have presented the most papers at the conference. More information about the CED is available online at http://www.ced.uga.edu.
