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Skillfully employing a wealth of understanding of the design professions, extraordinary energy, and a talent for quiet leadership, Trudy McDermott Aron has adroitly juggled the myriad responsibilities of her post as Executive Director of the American Institute of Architects Kansas and provided distinguished service to all with whom she has worked.

Aron arrived in Topeka in 1989 from her native Denver, where she had served for almost a decade as Executive Director of AIA Colorado. Before the year was out, she and the concerns of architects were well known to the Kansas Legislature where she had quickly become recognized as a well informed and unusually articulate advocate for quality environmental design and preservation.

Not content with effectively representing the profession, during her initial year as Executive Director, Aron traveled across Kansas visiting the offices of all the members in order to learn, firsthand, of their needs, concerns, and ideas. Since then, she has been a key participant in collaboratively reexamining and restructuring virtually every significant aspect of AIA Kansas activity. Her role has been pivotal in moving AIA Kansas, a strong and effective AIA component, to markedly higher levels of achievement during a period of deep economic stress, unprecedented regulatory and legislative challenge, and rapid change in the profession.

Recognizing the critically important interaction between the profession and the schools of architecture in our state, Aron has been alert for and has discovered ways to heighten the already robust tradition of participation in the American Institute of Architects that has long been nurtured by our college. She has fostered a high level of cooperation and interaction with our staff, students, and faculty. Time and again we turn to Trudy Aron to arrange co-sponsorship of visiting lecturers, to discover who has the information we need, to understand what a legislative proposal might mean to our profession, or to determine who might assist in a project we were contemplating. She is always ready to respond, to share her experience and insight, and to let us know when she sees what we have overlooked.

Because of her outstanding contributions to the advancement of the profession, it was not surprising that Trudy Aron was selected in 1993 by a distinguished national jury as one of 15 Honorary Members of the American Institute of Architects. Her untiring efforts have been of enormous benefit to our school, our profession, and to the State of Kansas. We are privileged to count Trudy Aron among the trusted friends of our College of Architecture and Design.