Judson professor to be president of National Architectural Accrediting Board

Judson University architecture professor Keelan Kaiser was inducted as president of the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) at its board meeting held Saturday, Oct. 22 in Denver, Colo., for the 2011-2012 academic year.

Keelan Kaiser, a Judson faculty member since 1998, was the first architecture professor to gain tenure after Judson's architecture program was established in 1996. Kaiser, along with many others, helped guide the program from its early stages into an accredited and reputable program with a diverse and innovative curriculum.

From 2006-2009, Kaiser served on the board of directors for the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), a nonprofit membership association representing more than 250 schools and over 5,000 architecture faculty in the United States and Canada. In 2009, Kaiser began serving as the ACSA-nominated member of the board of directors for the NAAB, which is the sole agency authorized to accredit professional architecture degree programs within the United States.

As a participant of the NAAB and the ACSA and as a practicing architect and architecture professor, Kaiser has developed a broad understanding of architectural education with a research agenda of green design and integrated practice.

"I am looking forward to spending this next year serving the NAAB in the role of President and continuing to improve the value of the organization to architecture programs and the profession," says Kaiser.

Judson currently has 185 architecture students, including 35 graduate students. Judson's students have gone on to work in firms across the United States as well as international firms. Students have recently been accepted to several top institutions for architectural graduate studies, including Yale University, the University of British Columbia, Kent State University, the University of Hawaii the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Notre Dame.

Located in Elgin, Judson University offers a Christian, liberal arts education through its four-year Bachelor of Arts degrees for art as well as more than 60 other majors/minors, graduate programs, online, certification and accelerated adult degree programs.

A special Preview Overnight of programs will be held Nov. 10-11. For more information, go to www.JudsonU.edu/VisitJudson.