EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR
Danang City, Vietnam
Earl Mark, Ph.D.
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
As the 2009 Be Inspired Award Educator of the Year winner, Prof. Earl Mark, Ph. D.,
director of information technology and chief technology officer of the School of
Architecture at the University of Virginia, is in many ways the quintessential
academic. He holds advanced degrees from Harvard University and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lists multiple publications in peer-reviewed
journals, and boasts an impressive list of research and teaching positions.
For almost 25 years, Dr. Mark’s courses have attracted 100 to 150 students
annually, primarily from architectural disciplines, but also from landscape
architecture, architectural history, civil engineering, and other fields. He has
also continuously served as a student advisor and participated on Ph.D. and
master’s degree committees. A high percentage of Dr. Mark’s students have
gone on to professional practice or academic careers in architecture, and many
have won design competitions using techniques learned in his courses.
2009 BE INSPIRED AWARDS
But he expands upon his academic work by simultaneously pursuing private
architectural practice—he is currently affiliated with Johnson, Craven
Dr. Mark actively looks for projects to take on with the state-of-the-art
resources he develops for university use. “Research and innovation with CAD
and animation technology is core to my academic life and factors into most of
my work. I aspire to be a teacher who continually reinvents himself in order
to keep up with changing times, methods, attitudes, and aptitudes of each
passing generation of students,” said Dr. Mark. “Each teacher serves as one
link in the chain of knowledge that passes on the joys of learning from our
mentors to our students—one person at a time.”
