Michael McClure has been named the new associate dean for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's College of the Arts.
Longtime faculty member McClure, a professor of architecture, earned the Distinguished Professor Award presented by the UL Lafayette Foundation in 2011.
As associate dean of the College of the Arts, McClure said supporting students and faculty will be one of his primary objectives.
"I will be working with the entire College of the Arts to promote and support all of the great work from Fine Arts, Performing Arts and Architecture and Design. We have an extremely talented and active faculty and our students are producing great work. A large part of my new position will be to get the word out about the energy of the College of the Arts and to provide administrative support so that the students and faculty can continue to make an impact in their disciplines and in our creative community," he said.
McClure received the prestigious Gorham P. Stevens Rome Prize for Architecture in 2008. Past recipients include John Russell Pope, who designed the Jefferson Memorial. The Rome Prize, created in 1894, enables 30 American scholars and artists from a variety of disciplines to live and work in Rome each year.
McClure's wife and business partner, Ursula Emery McClure, shared the honor with him. She is an associate professor of architecture at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Together, they are partners in the firm emerymcclure architecture.
"We were, and still are, fascinated by the culture, food, history, and landscapes of southern Louisiana," McClure said.
In 2006, McClure completed a design project called "NOkat: no category, no catastrophe." It featured designs for high density housing in New Orleans' 9th Ward to replace homes destroyed by post-Katrina flooding in 2005.
Gordon Brooks, dean of UL Lafayette's College of the Arts, said McClure is "a brilliant teacher and researcher" who will bring the same standards to his new role.
"We are indeed fortunate to have Michael McClure as our new associate dean. He has dedicated his career to higher education and the practice of architecture, and is internationally recognized for both his design work and his research on building techniques in the soggy soil of South Louisiana," Brooks said.
McClure joined the University faculty in 2001.