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For decades architect, teacher and academic administrator Patricia L. Eidson has brought her extraordinary energy, unrelenting appetite for learning, and discerning passion for excellence to the myriad activities in which she takes part.

Arriving in Manhattan, Kansas, in 1954 from California where she had studied art and design at colleges in Oakland and in Long Beach, Eidson became a landscape architecture student at Kansas State. During the next dozen years she adroitly balanced her professional work as designer/ draftsman/office manager in the office of William R. Eidson, AIA, Architect, and her academic studies which led to membership in Tau Sigma Delta honorary and award of the Bachelor of Architecture in 1966.

By 1973 she was a principal with her husband in their newly formed partnership, The Eidsons, Architects. The firm flourished and extended its well deserved reputation for design excellence founded on such landmarks as the Manhattan Public Library, the Elderly High Rise, the First Lutheran Church and many fine residences carefully wedded to their Flint Hills sites.

Pat Eidson's wealth of professional understanding and potential as a gifted teacher led Professor Jack Durgan, founding Head of the Department of Interior Architecture, to recruit her in January 1974 as a member of his growing faculty. Until Bill Eidson's untimely death in January 1979 led her to resign in order to focus on obligations to their many clients, Professor Eidson developed and taught innovative courses addressing professional practice issues in interior architecture employing the texts she had written and published.

Her selection as 1976 Manhattan Woman of the Year reflected her high profile as leader in the community, and her appointment in the same year to the Manhattan Urban Area Planning Board, led to her selection as its chair during 1978 and 1979. Eidson was instrumental in preventing development of a suburban shopping center that would have doomed prospects for the Renaissance of downtown Manhattan.

Invited to teach at the University of Hawaii during 1980/81, Patricia Eidson enrolled a year later at the University of Cincinnati where her graduate studies focussed on history, theory and criticism of interiors for architecture.

Joining the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, faculty in 1983, she taught design studios, theory, technology and professional practice courses until her 1988 appointment at the University of Oklahoma. In Norman, Eidson not only taught design, history and practice courses, she also served as Director of the Interior Design Division from 1989, and as Assistant Dean and then Associate Dean of the College of Architecture from 1990 until her return to full-time teaching earlier this year.

Active in the American Institute of Architects, the Foundation for Interior Design, Education and Research, as well as other professional and academic groups, Eidson is prominent among the educators leading and informing debate on professional licensing for interior designers and curriculum change. Exemplifying the enduring productive professional relationships she has forged, Eidson collaborated with Kansas State University architecture and interior architecture faculty members on a paper presented earlier this year at a national conference in Washington, DC, on diversity in architectural education and practice.

Throughout her long career Patricia Eidson has exhibited an enduring quest for quality. Her commitment powerfully influences and significantly benefits not only the people with whom she works, but the universities, communities and professions of which she is a member. We are privileged to count Patricia Eidson among the alumnae of our College of Architecture and Design, and proud to nominate her for a 1994 Kansas State University Distinguished Service Award.