UA Architecture Dean Changes Course

Jeff Shannon, dean of the University of Arkansas’ Fay Jones School of Architecture, is resigning effective May 15.

The news was announced via a UA news release Tuesday morning, barely three months after an announcement Shannon had agreed to a five-year appointment. He has been dean since 2000.

“I am proud of the accomplishments made by the Fay Jones School of Architecture during my tenure as dean,” Shannon said in Tuesday’s release. “I have been fortunate to have been surrounded by talented and dedicated colleagues. The school, with the new building addition and renovation, is poised to reach even greater heights in the future.”

Shannon, who will teach a seminar course in the fall and return to full-time teaching in 2014, issued a similar statement when his new appointment was announced in December.

“As we return to a renovated Vol Walker Hall and the new Anderson Design Center next August, we have a unique opportunity to enhance the excellent education we offer our students,” Shannon said in the release. “I am particularly excited about all three of our departments being in the same facility, which will allow our faculty to create innovative approaches to developing more synergistic collaborative relationships between the three programs and their respective faculties and students.

“I also look forward to generating the additional resources for our faculty, staff and students that will allow them to build on the national respect we have been able to garner over the last several years.”

In addition to returning to full-time teaching duties, Shannon also will continue to serve as the executive editor of the collaborative publishing venture between the school and the University of Arkansas Press.

Shannon earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture at the UA, and then added a master’s degree from Rice University before working at several firms, including that of Fay Jones. Shannon co-founded Polk Shannon Stanley in Little Rock in 1977, but returned to the UA as a professor in 1979.

“One of the main motivations for this decision was my missing teaching,” Shannon said in Tuesday’s release. “I always promised myself that I would end my career teaching. It’s my first love and the reason I came to the university in the first place.”

An interim dean will be named soon, according to the release.