Union Alumna named Dean of Architecture & Science School

Dr. Carla Jackson Bell

Union Institute & University alumna Carla Jackson Bell (Ph.D. 2009) has accepted the position of dean of the Robert R. Taylor School of Architecture and Construction Science School at Tuskegee University, a school whose mission is to sustain the legacy of Booker T. Washington and the strategy of “educating the hand and the mind together.”

Her impressive resume includes recognition as one of only 12 tenured African American women architecture faculty in the United States and the first to receive a doctoral degree specializing in architecture education. She is also one of two African American women to be named dean of an architecture program and the first to lead a construction science program.

Prior to accepting this position, she served as a faculty member and the director of Multicultural Affairs in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC) at Auburn University where her students won first place for three consecutive years in the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) student design competition.

Dr. Bell has earned the prestigious John and Janet Stone Lectureship for Multicultural Understanding, Equality and Justice, and the Minority Achievement Award for recruitment and retention at Auburn University. In addition, she is the chair of the Higher Education Task Force in the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and was also named to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Diversity Council in 2013. In 2014, she released her first book, Space Unveiled: Invisible Cultures in the Design Studio (2014), which examines issues of race, culture, gender, and space in design studios and construction seminar courses.