This fall, the LSU School of Architecture will add five new faculty members to its team: Associate Professor Jason Lockhart and assistant professors Catherine Bonier, Robert Holton, Jason Crow, and Shelby Elizabeth Doyle. The new faculty’s combined teaching, lecturing, and professional experience will be a valuable asset to the graduate and undergraduate architecture programs at LSU.

The School of Architecture was recently reaccredited by NAAB for the maximum term of eight years, and the Visiting Team Report praised the “clear direction being set with a new but cohesive team.” Professor Jori Erdman, director of the School of Architecture, said that faculty transitions and new hires have been some of her main focuses.

“The School of Architecture was very fortunate to hire exceptionally high-caliber faculty this year. We look forward to their contributions as we continue to build our national reputation as a great place to study architecture,” said Erdman.

Associate Professor Jason Lockhart has over 13 years of architecture, design, planning, and project-management experience. He was a planner for the City of Gahanna, Ohio’s Department of Development; assistant project manager at Stephen Wen & Associates, Architects, in Pasadena, California; and partner and chief planning officer for Sinektiks, LLC in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.Lockhart received a bachelor in architecture from Southern University and a master of city and regional planning from Ohio State University. Formerly assistant professor at Southern University School of Architecture, he was assistant director of the Community Design and Research Center (CDRC) and assistant director and program manager of the Urban + Rural Community Design Research Center (U+R CDRC). Lockhart specializes in community planning with a focus on delivering integrated business and design solutions. He will teach Architectural Techniques and will lead outreach and service-learning projects as co-teacher of a fourth-year undergraduate studio. Lockhart will bring his expertise and experience to an expanding partnership in the Mid-City area of Baton Rouge.

Assistant Professor Catherine Bonier

Assistant Professor Catherine Bonier will teach History of Architecture and a fifth-year undergraduate design studio. Bonier received a BA in European history from Harvard College and a master in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, where she lectured and taught graduate studios in architecture at PennDesign. Bonier was named a 2012–13 Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science (PACHS) Fellow for her dissertation, “American Waterworks: the architectural construction of public space and the infrastructural production of public health.” She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and will defend her dissertation in 2014.

Bonier draws on cultural and landscape theory as frameworks to fuel design inquiry. Her past positions in construction management, video game design, and mental-health counseling contribute to her broad perspective—uniting design, construction, technology, and health. These layered interdisciplinary influences are reflected in her teaching, research, and practice.

“I’m absolutely delighted to be teaching at LSU. During my campus visit I was most impressed by the students. Everyone I met was so lively, intelligent, and well-spoken and their design work so serious that I knew teaching here would be fun and rewarding. I’m also excited about being in Louisiana. This is a fantastic place for me to continue my research concerning water, health, landscape, cities, and civic life,” said Bonier.

Assistant Professor Robert Holton earned a bachelor of science in interior design from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a master in architecture from Columbia University. He has previously taught at Virginia Tech University, Florida International University, the Pratt Institute, and Columbia University. Holton will teach a third-year undergraduate design studio and Advanced Architecture Technology this fall at LSU.

Holton has worked with several prominent architectural offices in the United States and France. His professional experience spans a variety of project types and scales and includes the Corning Glass Center, the University of Cincinnati Athletic Center, and office buildings for Mastercard International. Additionally, he has worked on winning proposals in Europe, such as the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, and concert halls in both Rouen and Limoges, France.

Jason Crow is a USGBC LEED Accredited Professional and has worked at the forefront of sustainable design for the United States National Park Service and the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts as a registered architect. Crow graduated from Clemson University with a BA in architecture and earned his first master of architecture from Iowa State University and his second from McGill University in Montréal, Canada. Currently a doctoral candidate in architecture history and theory at McGill School of Architecture, Crow is working on a dissertation concerning the interrelationship of the histories of vision and stone under the working title, “Animate Matters: Stone 1100–1600.”

Assistant Professor Jason Crow

Crow’s research explores changes in the understanding of the artisan’s ability to transform matter, which he sees as comparable to the inherent power of stone to change itself. Crow has taught courses in architecture at McGill and Philadelphia universities and has received numerous honors, awards, and grants, including a research fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a Facility for Architectural Research in Media and Mediation Research Award from McGill University.

Crow joins the School of Architecture as an assistant professor and will teach a fifth-year undergraduate design studio and a second-year graduate studio, as well as a professional elective.

This fall 2013, Shelby Elizabeth Doyle will also join the School of Architecture faculty as a visiting assistant professor and will teach a second-year undergraduate design studio and a professional elective. Doyle holds a bachelor of science in architecture from the University of Virginia and a master of architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she completed her thesis, “Neft Dashlari: Architecture, Oil and Urbanism in the Trans-Caspian Union.” Doyle was a 2011–12 Fulbright research fellow based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Her research in Cambodia is entitled, City of Water: Architecture, Infrastructure, and the Floods of Phnom Penh,” and can be found at cityofwater.wordpress.com.

Doyle has taught in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design; at the University of Houston’s Pan Asia summer program based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and in the Design Career Discovery Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Doyle has worked in architecture firms in Cambodia, Virginia, Massachusetts, and in New York—primarily with Manhattan-based COOKFOX Architects. Doyle’s work can be viewed at shelbydoyle.com.

The recent reaccreditation by NAAB and the addition of five such nationally esteemed faculty members solidifies the School of Architecture’s frequent ranking as one of the top-10 architecture programs in the South. For more information about the architecture programs at LSU, visit design.lsu.edu/architecture.