Iowa State architecture professor receives national teaching honor

AMES, Iowa -- An Iowa State University architecture professor is one of three in the nation to receive the New Faculty Teaching Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).

Assistant professor Mitchell Squire was recognized for excellence in teaching performance. Squire's teaching focuses on the primacy and meaning of aesthetics in design. Inspired by the idea that beauty is the starting place for education, his studios and seminar courses offer a variety of projects and texts that help students learn the cultural importance of beauty and why it is a necessary parameter for making architecture.

Squire received the bachelor and master of architecture degrees from Iowa State. He joined the faculty in 2001, after serving as Cass Gilbert Visiting Professor of Architecture at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

The award will be presented in March at the ACSA annual meeting in Chicago. The New Faculty Teaching Award is co-sponsored by the American Institute of Architecture Students.

The ACSA is a nonprofit, membership association founded in 1912 to advance the quality of architectural education. More than 250 schools are members, representing more than 5,300 faculty.