APDesign Welcomes 10-Year Alumni Honorees Back To Campus

News release prepared by: Emily Vietti, 785-532-1090, evietti@k-state.edu
Photos available. Contact Emily Vietti

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

APDesign Welcomes 10-Year Alumni Honorees Back To Campus

MANHATTAN - The College of Architecture, Planning & Design at Kansas State University has named its four 10-year alumni honorees for 2011.

The honorees include: Addie Johnson Abushousheh (Shorewood, Wisconsin); Amie Keener (Dallas, Texas); Lynn Oliver (Stevenson, Washington); and William “Jess” McNeely (Wichita, Kansas).

Each honoree graduated from the College in 2001 and was selected by the department from which s/he graduated.

The four alumni will visit Manhattan November 3- 4, 2011, to meet with students and faculty, participate in class and studio visits, and be honored at a luncheon. An exhibit of their professional work will be displayed in Seaton Hall’s Chang Gallery through the duration of the honorees’ visit.

Addie (Johnson) Abushousheh - Addie grew up in central rural Kansas. Having been immersed in construction and building projects from an early age, it was no surprise to her family when she decided to become an architect in the 5th grade. Upon entering Bennington High School, Roger Dual and Bruce Graham broadened her horizons to include a keen interest in people’s social, physical, and cognitive ability and context.

That interest was nurtured by K-State faculty, both in APDesign and Leadership Studies. In college, Addie began to realize the reinforcing and synergistic potential of organizational and environmental design. She participated in several extracurricular activities and received many awards, including the Alpha Rho Chi Medal for Outstanding Leadership, Service and Merit in Architecture; the U.S. Achievement Academies’ All-American Scholar Award.

After graduating from Kansas State University with her degree in Architecture and minor in Leadership Studies, Addie worked as an activity coordinator in the Minneapolis, Kansas, Transitional Crossroads Head Trauma Unit where she gained practical design knowledge through observation and interaction with clients, staff, and families. This would later provide the foundation for more meaningful dialogue with her architectural clients while employed at Peacock Architects, a small healthcare design firm in Atlanta, Georgia, where she advanced quickly and soon assumed responsibility for a variety of projects including a 42-bed Alzheimer’s unit.

Addie is now a Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate in the Institute on Aging & Environment in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee where she co-instructed building construction systems courses, finalized a Web-based design for dementia database “Dementia Design Info,” and completed three UWM graduate certificates: Applied Gerontology, Mediation & Negotiation, and Non-Profit Management. During this tenure, she also co-hosted the Center on Age & Community 2010 Next Steps Think Tank as well as a national Long-Term Care Delphi survey, “Culture Change Consensus and the Household Model.” Because of her continued affiliation with the College of Architecture, Planning & Design, Addie was asked to fulfill the alumni role in the development of APDesign’s Ph.D. in Environmental Design and Planning.

She applies her knowledge and gains further insights by working at both a local and national level, serving as: Culture Change Agent for the Jewish Home & Care Center in Milwaukee; President of CARE WI, a long-term care Culture Change Coalition; and Secretary/Treasurer for SAGE Federation. She is currently co-developing a pre-architectural programming process - SAGE PLACE as well as serving on the Center for Health Design’s EDAC Advisory Board. She is certified as a Mather Lifeway’s LEAP Program Trainer and a SE Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Association Dementia Specialist and has since acted as a consultant for both organizations. To further enable her ability to gain practical knowledge in a front-line, long-term care staff role, she was licensed as a Skilled Nursing Assistant and it is her intent to complete the Nursing Home Administrator exam as well.

Addie was recruited in 2010 to be the executive director for the Association of Households International. As an environmental and organizational gerontologist, facilitating culture change practices and design in long-term care, she presents and publishes regularly environmental and organizational development topics.

Amie Keener — As a child growing up in LaCrosse, Kansas, Amie Keener’s interest in interior design first manifested itself in intricate Lego creations, later branching out into sketching sessions on the walls of her room-a practice not altogether appreciated by her solid, Kansan parents. As a student at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Overland Park, Kansas, Amie took her first interior design and drafting instruction and became enamored with how design can impact people’s lives for the better.

After receiving her Bachelor of Interior Architecture degree from Kansas State University, Amie moved to Arlington, Texas, and joined Sterling Barnett Little, a healthcare design firm. She also spent a summer working for Guenther Mills Keating, a design firm in Raytown, Missouri, that specializes in religious architecture. Eight years ago, she accepted a position in the Dallas office of Gensler, the global architecture and interior design firm. Since joining Gensler, Amie has worked on a wide variety of interior design projects. Most recently she has been an important member of the project team working on new headquarters for Canadian energy giants Encana and Cenovus in their new Norman Foster-designed tower (aptly nicknamed “The Bow”) which is currently under construction in downtown Calgary. She has also undertaken numerous assignments for long-term Gensler clients Jackson Walker, Daltile, and Littler Mendelson.

Amie’s work typically includes programming, space planning, construction documentation, construction administration, and furniture specification and coordination. In addition to her commercial interiors work, she has also been involved in some of the large retail roll-out projects Gensler handles for a number of national brands.

Amie is a past president of the Texas/Oklahoma Chapter of the International Interior Design Association, IIDA; and is currently a member of the board of Texas Association for Interior Design, TAID. In her role with TAID, she advocates for legislative issues related to interior design.

In her spare time, Amie likes photography, listening to indie bands, going to art museums, cooking and traveling to exotic locales. She credits hours spent riding her bike as a child and exploring LaCrosse’s wide-open spaces for her continuing interest in adventure and outdoor sports. Amie also volunteers at the Art Institute of Dallas where she shares her knowledge and practical experience with fledgling interior design students. She also blends her love for walking/running with charitable giving participating in walks, relays, and half marathons for local causes. Most recently she joined a Gensler team to climb 70 flights of stairs in Dallas’s tallest building to raise donations for Cystic Fibrosis.

Lynn Oliver - Lynn Oliver came to find APDesign’s Landscape Architecture program after completing two degrees in Geology - a B.S. from University of Alaska Fairbanks, and M.S. from University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Lynn didn’t even know what landscape architecture was until he met a landscape architect working for the Forest Service when he was working as a geologist at Echo Bay Mines in Republic, Washington. He was always interested in mine restoration, and he realized, through this landscape architect, that there were plenty of opportunities.

After the seed had been planted, Lynn applied, and was accepted, to a program at the University of Washington, but when he came back to Kansas and visited K-State, the program sold itself, he says. And it didn’t hurt that he had Midwest family ties as well.

As a former geologist, Lynn really enjoyed the design aspects of the Landscape Architecture program and learning an interdisciplinary way to look at problems, complemented by the engineering skills he already possessed. Lynn did a narrative study of the Sunset Zoo for his thesis project, researching and interviewing local citizens about the 1930s WPA-era zoo.

After leaving K-State, Lynn worked as a landscape designer for AHBL in Tacoma, Washington, for a short time before joining the Forest Servcie. He moved to Custer, South Dakota for a position as a minerals administrator in Black Hills National Forest working on reclamation, cave management and other tasks.

Working for the government, promotions come through moving, so Lynn took his next job as a minerals program manager in Inyo National Forest in Bishop, California. In California, Lynn found new opportunities outside of his job as well - he met his wife Cheryl, a geologist, doing bat surveys, making decisions on how to close up abandoned mines.

Lynn now works as a resource manager at the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area in Hood River, Oregon. He says his Landscape Architecture degree definitely has helped open doors to new opportunities and new experiences in his career.

Jess McNeely — Jess McNeely was nine years old when he read an article on architecture and told his mother that’s what he wanted to do. He’s still working towards that goal. Jess graduated from Texas A&M University in 1992 with an Environmental Design degree. While at A&M, Jess was in the Corps of Cadets, was an Army ROTC Scholarship winner, graduated as a Distinguished Military Graduate, and was commissioned as an active duty U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Second Lieutenant.

Jess spent seven and a half years on active duty, most of it stationed in Germany. While in Europe, Jess became interested in community character, public spaces, pedestrian accessibility, and community quality of life. At the end of his German tour, Jess deployed to Bosnia with U.S. peacekeeping units. In Bosnia, Jess worked in military base camp planning and construction project management.

While stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, Jess took a couple of Regional and Community Planning night classes at Kansas State University. He finally found what he wanted to be when he grew up. Jess transitioned to reserve military in 1999 to attend full-time grad school at K-State. While working on his Master’s in Regional and Community Planning, Jess worked as a graduate teaching assistant with architecture history classes. In graduate school Jess worked on a downtown design plan for Topeka, Kansas, and a comprehensive plan for Auburn, Kansas. He also did a summer internship with MESA Design Group in Dallas, Texas, assisting with various planning and design projects.

Upon graduation in 2001, Jess took an associate planner position with the Wichita/Sedgwick County Metropolitan Area Planning Department. Jess has since been promoted to senior planner, and became American Institute of Certified Planners certified. His work includes staff analysis and recommendations for numerous property re-zonings, conditional uses, planned unit developments, and commercial community unit plans. He regularly develops overlay district design standards, and reviews construction projects for conformance with design standards and pedestrian circulation requirements. Jess was appointed as the secretary of both the Wichita and Sedgwick County Boards of Zoning Appeals, where he gives staff analysis and recommendations on zoning variance requests. Design initially attracted Jess to urban planning, but community involvement and participation keeps him passionate about the profession. While working as a planner in Wichita, Jess has twice served as an adjunct faculty member at Wichita State University teaching a Historic Preservation course within the Master’s of Public History program.

Jess’s other career, the U.S. Army Reserves, has taken him to Iraq for two one-year deployments. Jess served as the 1^st Armored Division base camp master planner in Baghdad from 2003 to 2004, doing the initial planning and project management for several base camps that continue to house thousands of soldiers. In 2010 and 2011 he served as the staff engineer for the 103d Expeditionary Sustainment Command stationed in Balad, Iraq. Jess is currently a lieutenant colonel, and serves as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics in the 451^st Expeditionary Sustainment Command in Wichita.