College of Arts + Architecture

The multidisciplinary design firm LandDesign is sponsoring a class this semester in the Master of Urban Design program to study digital placemaking. Led by Professor Deb Ryan, students in “Dilemmas in Modern City Planning: Digital Technology and Urban Activation” will work with LandDesign team members to explore the impact of technology on the design of public space.

A group of architecture alumni have established a new scholarship endowment for the College of Arts + Architecture (CoA+A) in honor of founding dean Ken Lambla.

CoA+A Interim Dean Lee Gray and Jim Williams of Little Diversified Architectural Consulting joined 14 alumni to raise $60,000 for the Ken Lambla Scholarship Endowment.

Beginning in 2021, the endowment will fund an annual scholarship for an architecture major who enrolls in at least one course in the visual or performing arts.

Stacey Rose ’08 received the inaugural Bonnie and Terry Burman New Play Award, through a national contest at Barrington Stage Company in Massachusetts. Rose, whose play was chosen from nearly 500 submissions, will receive $25,000 and a production of her play at Barrington Stage.

Rose’s winning play, “America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise & Eventual Extinction of the American Negro,” is set on a day in the near future, in which a troupe of black actors reenact a revised history of the “once-thriving American Negro.”

Associate Professor of Theatre Robin Witt is directing a production of “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, one of the premier ensemble theatre companies in the United States.

A new “tiny park” near the corner of 10th Street and Jackson Avenue is the result of a community collaboration that brought students of the UNC Charlotte Master of Urban Design (MUD) program together with seventh-graders from Piedmont Open IB Middle School.

Deborah Ryan has been named the new director of the Master of Urban Design program.

Assistant Professor of Trombone Jeremy Marks will present a Faculty & Friends Concert on Tuesday, Jan. 15, in Rowe Recital Hall. Performing on tenor and bass trombones, Marks will be joined by pianist Nia Imani Williams Reyes; UNC Charlotte brass faculty Eric Millard (trumpet), Christopher Griffin (French horn) and Doug Black (tuba); and Winthrop University trombone professor Justin Isenhour.

UNC Charlotte voice professors Carl DuPont and Christina Pier will perform in the Opera Carolina production of Bizet’s “Carmen,” which will be presented on Jan.19, 20 and 24 in the Belk Theater at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.

DuPont, bass-baritone, will perform the role of Zuniga; Pier, soprano, will sing the role of Micaëla. The production will be presented in February by the Toledo Opera in Ohio.

Lee Gray is interim dean of the College of Arts + Architecture (COA+A). He follows Ken Lambla, who served 10 years as the founding dean of the college. Lambla is returning to the faculty as a full professor. A search committee is at work to find the college’s next dean.

In recognition of the Martin Luther King holiday, the Department of Theatre will present actor Wali Jamal in August Wilson’s “How I Learned What I Learned.” Performances will be Thursday and Friday, Jan. 17-18.

This one-man show, created by August Wilson and Todd Kreidler, chronicles Wilson’s life as a black artist in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, recounting his life from childhood to the completion of “The American Century Cycle” of award-winning plays. Wilson, himself, performed the premiere, presented by Seattle Repertory Theatre in 2003.