Faculty 

Assistant Teaching Professor Juan Grisales is a versatile transdisciplinary designer and researcher with studies in architecture, landscape architecture, ecology, and urbanism. His work focuses predominantly on design research methods to read, decode, and project misinterpreted, and often marginalized domains (territories, ecologies, and publics), their evolving processes, as well as their relation to their larger bio-physical geography. Learn more.

Assistant Professor Nesrine Mansour, joins ENVD from South Dakota State University and is an expert in architecture and the built environment. Her research centers on the convergence of architecture, digital media and sacred spaces, bridging disciplines like social sciences, digital humanities, and modern technology such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Learn more.

Associate Teaching Professor Martín Paddack is founder and principal at DesignMAP, in Washington, D.C. He is an architectural designer, artist and writer who has worked in Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Spain, Uruguay, Peru and the United States. With previous teaching experience in Fine Arts and English, Martín is most interested in finding deeper meanings in architecture through the intersections of color, art, language, cultural identity, social responsibility, sustainability and fabrication. Learn more.

Postdoctoral Associate 

Lecturer Sophie Weston Chien is a designer-organizer: a practitioner and an educator who builds community power through social and physical infrastructure to ensure people can shape their own spaces. Learn more.

Staff 

Writer & Content Coordinator Sierra Brown writes news stories and feature articles that promote ENVD’s alumni, faculty and student stories. She earned her master's degree in urban reslience and sustainability from the Masters of the Environment Graduate Program at CU Boulder.  Learn more.

Academic Coach Sara Freix is dedicated to supporting ENVD students in their academic, personal and career success. She's pursuing her master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of Colorado Denver. Learn more.

Assistant Director of Advising & Student Retention John Tran oversees the management and assessment of the recruitment for First-Year, transfer and intra-university transfer students, new student orientation, the Diverse Scholars Program, First-Year Experience, and efforts related to student persistence and retention. Learn more.  

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The Staff Leadership Team was established in July 2022 as part of a staff reorganization during the transition and retirement of Assistant Program Director Peggy Gordon. The reorganization emphasized three areas of staff responsibilities key to the support and success of the Program in Environmental Design: finance and human resources, operations, and undergraduate education and student success. 

Meet the Staff Leadership Team: 

Alea Richmond Akins | Director of Undergraduate Education & Student Success 

Anna Parsons | Director of Finance & Human Resources 

Amanda Pyers | Director of Operations 

The team has been charged to work as a cohesive unit to lead, assess and support the program’s culture of development and engagement amongst staff, and will play an integral role in realizing the program’s core mission while working with Stacey Schulte, ENVD director, the Executive Committee and Executive Leadership team to support the goals and needs of the program.

Developing a full change management plan for the staff reorganization was key in the first year of implementation. In partnership with Director Schulte and input from staff, the team developed the plan and established a new vision and purpose for each unit, refining operations and workflows, creating new partnerships and collaborations. The team also spent time writing job descriptions for new positions and revised several existing ones as part of a long-term strategic staff hiring plan.  

Under the realm of undergraduate education and student success, the advising team launched a new advising model to include a first-year advising team and an upper-division advising team. The new model aligns with campus best practices, and it has allowed ENVD to lower advising caseloads for the first-year team so that more time can be dedicated to support incoming students.  

This year, the Staff Leadership team will continue to build on their work to foster an inclusive, creative, industrious and supportive environment.

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Down the hall from the Environmental Design (ENVD) front lobby, hangs a large portrait of a serious older gentleman wielding a thick mustache with shoulders draped in blue-green tartan. It’s mounted on an office wall, large enough to be seen by all who pass by. 

“His name is Thomas MacLaren,” Peggy Gordon, assistant director of academic services at ENVD, who resides in the office, explained. “He’s a current project of mine.” 

Years ago, after finding his portrait stashed in a corner of the office next door, Gordon took it upon herself to dust off the cobwebs and unveil the portrait’s history. After a bit of digging, she discovered that the man was a Scottish architect living in Colorado Springs in the early 1900s. Research revealed that when he passed, he donated a significant amount of money to help start an architecture school in Boulder, a school that Gordon believes later became CU Boulder’s Architectural Engineering program (ENVD’s predecessor). “He’s our founding father if you want to think about it that way,” Gordon said.   

His portrait, which came with the donation, has since found a home on the office wall of someone who is arguably as significant to ENVD’s history.

Since starting at CU back in 1996, Gordon has worn a lot of hats. “Other than teaching I think I’ve worn almost every hat here,” she exclaims. Her first hat was offered to her when she arrived at CU Denver for an interview and was instead immediately put to work as the front office secretary for the College of Architecture and Planning. In a short time, she became the administrative lead for the college’s majors and then later moved to an advising position at CU Boulder. To Gordon, advising was the right fit.  

“I really like people and I like helping people,” she said. “I enjoy meeting with students knowing that each student is different. They all want to become something design-related, but all have a different way of expressing it.” 

At the height of her advising career, Gordon had 900 students to guide and direct toward their architecture-related futures. But managing student needs and concerns was only a fraction of her role in ENVD. When the program’s administration split from the Denver campus ten years ago, she explained that the staff, many of whom reported directly to her, felt an overall lack of support and direction.  

Fortunately for the program, Gordon shared that she’s “one of those people who when I see a need, I step into it. So, I did.” Through fluctuations in student populations, program-wide shifts, and multiple cycles of new leadership, she has offered ENVD a sense of support and much-needed consistency.

​“Peg has served as the go-to problem solver for countless students, staff and faculty over the years,” ENVD Director Stacey Schulte said. “Her office has been the ENVD hub of wisdom and preserved the sanity of ENVD through thick and thin.” 

After 27 years of administrative, advisory, leadership and program support work, the reign of consistency through Gordon’s office will come to an end this spring as she graduates from ENVD with the class of 2023 and enrolls in retirement.

“The job will never look the same way I did doing it. When you grow with the position and when the position grows with you, you take on what you can, and you build it out.” The position has been built out so much in fact that her role will be split into three new positions. “To just give everything that I was doing to just one person,” she explains, “they would go crazy!” Luckily, she has full confidence in her successors. 

The people–the staff, the faculty, the students–after all, are what she’ll miss the most about working in the program. For Alea Richmond Akins, director of undergraduate education & student success, and one of Gordon’s successors, the feeling is mutual.

“Peggy Gordon has been the backbone of environmental design throughout her long and meaningful career in the program,” Richmond Akins commended. “She has provided valuable leadership and mentorship that has had a lasting impact on so many students, professional staff and faculty who have been fortunate enough to work with her. I’m personally going to miss her sage advice and genuine care that she brought to every conversation and decision that was made to help advance the Program and to make a difference in people’s lives.”  

Gordon shared that her retired life would consist of travel. She, her husband of 40 years, and their two Akitas already have plans to drive across the country in a trailer that she jokingly referred to as “the most expensive doghouse” she’s ever seen. They’ll visit family, take their grandchildren to Disneyland, and spend ten days camping around Colorado–their shared home state. 

As for the treasured portrait of Thomas MacLaren? Gordon thinks he ought to leave her office as well and be displayed more publicly.  

“I don’t think I’ll take him with me. He’s definitely not going to fit in the trailer.”

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ENVD/ENVS/GEOG Advisor, Dylan West, is honored with the University of Colorado Boulder's Award for Outstanding New Advisor, a recognition given to two staff members each year for going above and beyond in the field of Academic Advising. Undergraduate Staff Advisor for , Victoria Ibarra, won the award for Outstanding Senior Advisor.

One award is granted to a new advisor at CU who has worked on campus for 1-3 years and the other is granted to a senior advisor who has dedicated more than 3 years to the CU community. Any staff or faculty member is allowed to nominate an advisor and the award is funded through the office of the provost with the Assistant Vice Provost for Advising and Academic Services, Shelly Bacon.

The award was presented at the annual Advisor Day Professional Development Conference hosted by CU's Advising Council, of which Dylan West serves as the ENVD representative.

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Sheryl Koutsis, Advising Unit Manager of ENVD, receives distinguished annual Chancellor’s Employee of the Year Award.

This award is presented to just a handful of individuals here at CU Boulder who display outstanding performance, leadership, and service to the campus and community. Leading such efforts as the Designers Without Boundaries scholarship community and the installation of the Peer Mentor Program here at ENVD, Sheryl truly embodies what it means to be a dedicated member of the CU Boulder community.

Full article

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