Southeastern Conference’s highest faculty honor goes to UA’s Blackwell

The Southeastern Conference (SEC) on Monday (April 20) named Fayetteville architect Marlon Blackwell the 2020 Professor of the Year.

Blackwell is a distinguished professor, E. Fay Jones chair and department head of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, where has taught since 1992. His professional practice, Marlon Blackwell Architects, is also based in Fayetteville and has been widely recognized with more than 120 national and 14 international design awards.

Blackwell is the first UA faculty member to receive the SEC’s highest honor for faculty, according to a UA news release. The award is given annually to one SEC faculty member whose record of teaching and research places him or her among the elite in higher education, according to the release. Winners are selected by the SEC Provosts from among the 14 SEC Faculty Achievement Award recipients.

The award comes with a $20,000 honorarium from the SEC.

A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Blackwell also received the 2020 AIA Gold Medal — the institute’s highest honor — recognizing architects with enduring impacts on theory and practice.

“Across every area in which a faculty member can contribute to our mission — teaching, research, service — Marlon sets the standard and exceeds expectations,” UA Chancellor Joe Steinmetz said in a statement. “His contributions to the field of architecture, dedication to students and service to the campus and community are truly extraordinary. He has received the highest honor in his field as a professional architect while providing life-changing opportunities for students through architectural education.”

Earlier this month, Blackwell received the 2020 SEC Faculty Achievement Award for the University of Arkansas, recognizing his record of extraordinary teaching, particularly at the undergraduate level, as well as a record of research that is recognized nationally and internationally.

Blackwell received the 2012 American Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Prize, was selected as a U.S. Artists Ford Fellow in 2014, and was inducted into the National Academy of Design in 2018.

For nearly three decades, Blackwell said, he’s worked to be a liaison between the academy and the profession, while representing the value of the creative arts and their influence and relevance to larger society and to the larger community of academics.

“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 in the release. “To represent the University of Arkansas in this consideration of all the professors at these other incredible institutions that make up the SEC, and then to be selected as an exemplar in some way on behalf of the conference — it’s a huge honor and was really unexpected.”

Blackwell has served as visiting professor at Cornell University, the University of Florida, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Texas at Austin, among others. He was the 2018-2019 William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. He also regularly serves on design award juries and as a visiting critic around the United States.

Blackwell received a Master of Architecture II from Syracuse University in Florence, Italy, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Auburn University.