2004 CAPD Alumni Honorees

Four outstanding young graduates of the Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning and Design, who completed professional studies at K-State in 1994, have been named 2004 Alumni Honorees. Three of the four Alumni Honorees will visit Manhattan on Thursday and Friday, November 18 and 19, to meet with students and faculty, as well as to participate in class and studio visits. An exhibition of the professional work of three of the four Alumni Honorees will also be displayed in the Chang Gallery of Seaton Hall from November 15-December 3.

Growing up in a small town taught MARY (EPPERSON) GOURLAY a lot about community involvement and responsibility toward the community at large—if you didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done!

Mary grew up in Clarksville, Missouri, a town with a population of just 500 located one hour north of St. Louis. Since it’s easy to do a lot in a small town, she always participated in and volunteered for a wide variety of activities: the mayor’s youth council, Hugh O’Brien delegate, music, sports, speech and drama, student government, science club and just about any other club. Upon high school graduation, her academic advisors recommended that her college major be engineering. After visiting a number of schools, Mary realized that field didn’t interest her—she enjoyed art and music in addition to mathematics—so, she decided to give architecture a try at K-State.

While completing first-year environmental design courses, Mary learned about the field of landscape architecture. Working with the environment and creating community greatly appealed to her, so she elected to pursue the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture. As a fourth-year landscape architecture student, Mary was fortunate to participate in the College’s study abroad program in Italy where she continued to learn more about towns and villages, so she decided to pursue a certificate in community planning as well. While at K-State, Mary was a member of Phi Kappa Phi honor society and Lambda Alpha Sigma landscape architecture honor society. She also received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in their 1994 annual student design competition.

During her final year of study, Mary accepted an internship with EDAW. She spent the first two weeks of the internship camping in the Rocky Mountains with other interns as they studied the Rocky Mountain National Park— its environment, capacity for increasing numbers of visitors, and sustainable practices. The project, “Planning the Green Zone,” was awarded a Sustainable Design Award by the Colorado Chapter ASLA. The remainder of the internship was spent in Atlanta, Georgia, where Mary eventually decided to join the company for her first full-time professional job.

Mary worked on more than 22 projects during her first year at EDAW. Some of the most intense and exciting included Centennial Olympic Park and World Golf Village. Yet, Mary still found the time to be involved with the community. She was a member of the Urban Land Institute and Generation Green, and she volunteered for Trees Atlanta and Habitat for Humanity.

After four years in Atlanta, Mary learned of an opening on the West Coast with the SWA Group which came highly recommended. She decided to take the job and rapidly relocated to Sausalito, California. Her professional work at the SWA Group varies in scope from planting design to land planning, yet allows Mary to continue to develop her interests in community development and design which considers social dynamics, ecology, and building upon the unique characteristics and opportunities of a given site. Some of her current projects include landscape design for independent and assisted living facilities for seniors on a roughly 19-acre Palo Alto site adjacent to two other inprogress projects—a Ronald McDonald House and Stanford West Apartments. Mary is also providing land planning and landscape architectural services to the developer for the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, closed as a military base in 1993. Mare Island is being redeveloped into a civilian neighborhood for 5,000 residents and 10,000 workers. Mary is LEED Certified and maintains membership in the Urban Land Institute and the Junior League of San Francisco. She volunteers with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and has run six marathons in support of that organization. Newly married, Mary also likes to spend as much time as possible with husband Doug Gourlay.

CAROL (C. J.) EISENBARTH HAGER grew up in Topeka where her mother and father, a public health nurse and an actuary, were involved in many community-service related activities. She readily attributes her own interest in public and community service, as well as her affinity in working with data, to her parents’ community involvement.

C. J. became increasingly interested in housing and community planning while attending Marquette University, where students were encouraged to become community volunteers because the school was located in an economically distressed part of Milwaukee. She tutored children in math and English, provided lunch for the homeless, and served as treasurer for Marquette’s first annual Hunger Clean-Up, which paired a day of public service with raising funds for local homeless shelters. That initial Hunger Clean-Up raised $40,000 and has occurred annually ever since. The most recent event raised $150,000. After graduating from Marquette with a B.A. in economics, C. J. returned to Kansas to attend K-State and pursue the Master of Regional and Community Planning. Because of her interests in housing and policy analysis, she continued on page 3 participated between her first and second years of study in K-State’s Community Service project. She was appointed to a team asked to develop a homeless service delivery plan in Hutchinson. One of that team’s other participants was Mark Hager, a K-State graduate who had returned from a Peace Corp assignment early due to political turmoil in his assigned country. Five years later, Mark and C. J. were married.

Because of her volunteer experience at Marquette and with K-State’s Community Service project, C. J.’s interest in housing policy was heightened. Her first job after completing the MRCP was with the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, which is routinely acknowledged as one of the best housing finance agencies in the country. C. J. coordinated the completion of Minnesota’s first housing and economic development consolidated plan, required by HUD to receive funding from its grant programs. The plan analyzed the state’s housing and economic development needs, addressed how four state agencies would meet those needs, and resulted in over $30 million of annual federal funding for Minnesota. She also helped coordinate a governor’s economic development and housing initiative, which addressed critical housing needs in areas of Minnesota that were experiencing significant economic growth. After leaving the Housing Finance Agency, C. J. then staffed two committees of the Minnesota House of Representatives—the Housing and Economic Development Appropriations Subcommittee, which legislated funding for all state housing and community/economic development programs, and the Tax Committee, where she served as specialist on tax increment financing.

Soon, C. J. and Mark relocated to Washington, D. C., where C. J. worked as the Director of Public Resource Development at the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, a national nonprofit organization created by Congress to provide financial support, technical assistance and training for community-based revitalization efforts. While serving in that capacity, she assisted two public housing authorities and their partners to qualify for an innovative HUD demonstration program which provided Section 8 voucher funding for first-time home purchase. Later, C. J. became the Director of Congressional Affairs for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation. During the time C. J. served in that capacity, the Corporation’s annual Congressional appropriation increased from $75 million to $115 million.

As C. J. and Mark now have an 18-month-old daughter, Zoe, C. J. has chosen to step back from her career to spend more time at home. She does find time to consult, working as the lobbyist of a small housing and community development association and helping to coordinate a conference for HUD. C. J. will be unable to participate in person during the 2004 Alumni Honoree program due to a previous commitment.

KURT SCHLOUGH can’t remember a time when he wasn’t drawing or painting. Some of his favorite childhood memories involve different moments that revolve around art. At some point in the fourth grade, Kurt received accolades from his teacher for a watercolor of a covered bridge. When he stumbled upon the piece years later, he laughed at the simplicity of it. However, Kurt says that painting and the remembered experience achieved its purpose—it was an early block that helped build his career.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Kurt’s parents encouraged his artistic side through various art-based summer classes. In addition to his love for creating art, Kurt was always drawn to architecture, the built environment and spatial relationships in general. When deciding on a direction for his college studies, Kurt realized working in an architectural field would allow him to combine art and architecture. Visiting K-State’s Open House, and particularly viewing the interior architecture displays, helped solidify his decision. He found the interior architecture exhibits showed not only the creation of space, but also the attention to detail upon which he had been learning to focus in his art.

While at K-State, Kurt benefited immensely from the variety of the curriculum and the discourse with students in the College’s other programs. During 1991 and in his second year of study, Kurt was awarded the “Outstanding Student Portfolio Award” from the interior architecture faculty. In his fourth year, Kurt spent a semester abroad with five classmates at the Fachhochschule Rheinland-Pfaltz in Trier, Germany. Those months in Europe were incredibly fulfilling in both design study and personal experience. Kurt’s “Gazelle” chair, designed and built in fifth-year furniture design workshop, won first place in that year’s Kansas City Architects, Designers, Dealers and Representatives (KCADDR) Design Competition. In that final year, Kurt also worked as the College’s graphic designer, producing posters for various lectures and Chang Gallery exhibits, and he also exhibited a painting at the K-State Union’s juried student show. Other achievements during his time at K-State include being on the Deans List for the last five semesters and membership in Tau Sigma Delta architectural honor society. To round out his realworld experience while a college student, Kurt worked as an architecture intern during the summers of 1992 and 1993 at Stone, Marraccini, & Patterson, St. Louis.

After receiving the Bachelor of Interior Architecture in 1994, Kurt moved back to St. Louis for a brief period and worked for an architectural illustrator. However, that position was short-lived—a friend in New Orleans told him continued on page 4 about an opening at the firm where she worked. A visit based upon a single interview at The Mathes Group, a large interdisciplinary firm, resulted in a job offer and a quick move south. The largest project that Kurt worked on at The Mathes Group was overseeing the design and construction of a local casino’s entertainment facility which included several restaurants, a lounge, and administration offices.

Shortly after graduating, Kurt started working on paintings that soon evolved into a sizeable body of work. Those pieces were based on figures and characters of his own creation set in imagined environments. In the fall of 1997, K-State interior architecture faculty member Fayez Husseini helped organize an exhibit of the figure oriented pieces for the College’s Chang Gallery. That exhibit, entitled “WORKS,” was Kurt’s first solo art show.

Around the same time Kurt’s art career was starting to take shape, three partners at The Mathes Group decided to form a new firm, Howard-Montgomery-Steger Performance Architecture (known as HMS Architects). They offered Kurt a position as the sole interior architect at a firm that would be focusing on university performing arts facilities and hospitality projects. Over the next eight years, Kurt became the design director for the 13-person firm. He managed and designed many large- and small-scale projects and worked as an integral member of various production teams. His tasks as design director varied widely on a day-to-day basis depending on the projects at hand. Kurt found that his interior architecture education benefited him greatly by allowing him to creatively solve whatever problem was in front of him. The project load at HMS offered many gratifying design challenges in locations that spanned the nation. Projects consisting of 200-room contemporary boutique hotels in the historic warehouse district of New Orleans were followed by new music schools with 600-seat concert halls and 150-seat recital halls in Washington state. Another recent shift in firms occurred in January of 2004 when one partner from HMS decided to leave and start his own firm focusing on performing arts projects. Kurt joined him to form Performance Architecture and took a position as Vice President, Head of Design. In addition to the opportunity to design yet another new architecture firm’s office, this new start has brought with it the responsibility to help make this firm a success. Current projects include managing the $15 million renovation of a 1929 Cadillac dealership in Hartford, Connecticut, into a performing arts center for the University of Hartford, and the final stages of construction administration for a new music education facility for Central Washington University.

Since his first solo art show, Kurt has continued on a path of creating both paintings and sculptures. He has shown in several solo shows and multiple group shows in New Orleans. In the planning stage for the spring of 2005 is an exhibition of several paintings at the Alexandria, Louisiana, Museum of Art. His continually evolving body of artworks, ranging from the early figure paintings and sculptures to the current more abstract figure and landscape derived topographical pieces, have always been strongly anchored by Kurt’s architectural background. Kurt looks at both art and architecture as ways to constantly explore various spatial and visual ideas. He notes that each area of practice allows its own focus and that both art and architecture have the ability to affect people emotionally—to achieve intrinsic, fundamental and guttural responses. He finds himself striving to achieve those effects within people in both the art he creates and the spaces he designs. The balance of art and architecture has been fruitful and gratifying in Kurt’s years since graduating from K-State.

To this day, Kurt still proudly call New Orleans home. He maintains close friendships with several K-State classmates from the interior architecture and architecture programs and sees several of them each year. The 2004 Alumni Honorees pursue their careers in diverse professional settings and capacities for which their education from the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design helped them prepare. Through these Honorees, the College celebrates the vital contributions its alumni make to environmental, social, and economic preservation and enhancement.

For more information, contact:

Diane Potts, 785.532.1090