» Alumni Achievements

Far right to left: Maya Vince Prentiss (MFA ’18 Acting) accepts Jeff award alongside fellow alumna Danyelle Monson (BFA ’18 Acting) and the rest of the ensemble cast for Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes. Photo by Joe Mazza.

Alumni Win Big at 2023 Jeff Awards

Illinois Theatre alums were among the recipients of the 49th Anniversary Jeff Awards for Non-Equity Theatre. Among the 35 award recipients across 28 artistic and technical categories, four graduated from the Department of Theatre at Illinois. Erin Pleake (MFA ’17 Lighting Design) was part of the Grippo Stage Company team that won Best Projection Design for Chagall in School. Alumni José Manuel Diaz-Soto (MFA ’16 Scenic Design) and Eme Ospina-Lopez (MFA ’23 Media Design) worked as the scenic designer and projection designer for Tebas Land. This production of Chicago Latino Theater Alliance, in partnership with the National Museum of Mexican Art, won the following awards for Short Run: Production, Direction, Performer in a Principal Role, and Artistic Specialization. The Story Theatre’s production of Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes received these awards also for Short Run: Production, Ensemble, New Work, and Direction. Among the seven-actor ensemble cast for this winning production were alumni Danyelle Monson (BFA ’18 Acting) and Maya Vince Prentiss (MFA ’18 Acting).

Ralph Johnson Receives 2022 AIA Chicago Lifetime Achievement Award

School of Architecture alumnus Ralph Johnson (BSAS ’71) was recently honored with the 2022 AIA Chicago Lifetime Achievement Award for his consistent contributions to the quality of the built environment, his positive impact on the profession, and his lasting influence on Chicago Architecture. Ralph Johnson, FAIA, LEED AP, currently serves as the principal and global design director for Perkins and Will and is a member of its board of directors. Projects he designed have been honored with more than 150 awards, including ten National Honor Awards, more than 80 Regional Honor Awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and a Progressive Architecture Design Award. Johnson designed Temple Hoyne Buell Hall, the current home of the School of Architecture and the Departments of Urban and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture, as well as the Chemical and Life Sciences Building at the University of Illinois. This year, he established the Ralph E. Johnson Professorship in Design which supports the school in attracting and retaining the most brilliant scholars in the field of architectural education.

Greg Drasler Awarded 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award

Greg Drasler (MFA ’83 Painting) was honored at Krannert Art Museum with the School of Art and Design’s 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award. Greg lives and works in New York City. His paintings have been the subject of 16 one-person exhibitions and included in over 30 group shows. Greg joined the Betty Cuningham Gallery in New York in 2007. His recent exhibition On the Lam traced his references from film production apparatus into auto interiors as places of independence, seclusion, and screening. His current work Road House continues the use of assembly procedures in constructing patterned panoramas. Cloud computations above planes of vivid crazy-quilt terrains contain structures suggesting vernacular American roadhouses as places between here and there. Greg has taught and lectured at Princeton University, Pratt Institute, Williams College, Hofstra University, and Montclair State University.

Carol Ross Barney Awarded the Order of Lincoln and Design Leader by Architectural Record

Illinois School of Architecture alumna Carol Ross Barney, FAIA, was recognized by Architectural Record with the 2022 Design Leader award. This category in RECORD’s ninth annual Women in Architecture Design Leadership Awards honors women architects with significant built work and influence. This past year, Carol Ross Barney was also honored as a 2021 recipient of the Order of Lincoln, the state’s highest honor for professional achievement and public service. A native of Chicago, she is the founder and principal of Ross Barney Architects and a founding member and first president of Chicago Women of Architecture. Her work has earned her an international reputation in design of institutional and public buildings including the reconstructed Oklahoma City Federal Building, two of Chicago’s most heavily used transit stations at Fullerton and Belmont Avenues, and the Chicago River Walk project. Barney is only the third architect to have received the Order of Lincoln, joining Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Buckminster Fuller.

Planning at Illinois Launches New Alumni Strategy Council

This past year, the Department of Urban and Regional Planning formed the Alumni Strategy Council (ASC) made up of 16 undergraduate and graduate alumni. These inaugural members, diverse in background, cohort, and workplace, will serve three-year terms. The council will work to reinforce and deepen the department’s commitment to making communities more equitable, inclusive, sustainable, and just. They intend to expand professional development opportunities to current Planning students including internships and practice-oriented course engagement. The council will work to strengthen the department’s connections with alumni, practitioners, and leaders in the fields of urban planning and community development.

Illinois Theatre Forms New Alumni Advisory Board

Illinois Theatre recently announced the inaugural members of their new Theatre Alumni Advisory Board. The board is comprised of alumni that represent the diversity, breadth of careers, and a variety of accomplishments of graduates from the Department of Theatre. The overall mission of the board is to build and maintain a robust alumni engagement program that provides value for alumni, current students, the Department of Theatre, and the broader theatre community. The board serves in an advisory capacity offering input to the department head and the producer of Illinois Theatre. The board also mentors current students, generates human and material resources to help the department produce well-equipped theatre professionals, and advocates to keep Illinois Theatre and theatre arts at the forefront of the campus community and beyond.

Nathan Alan Davis Awarded Prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize

Illinois Theatre alumnus and playwright Nathan Alan Davis (BFA ’05) is one of eight recipients from around the globe to be selected for the prestigious 2021 Windham-Campbell prizes. The Windham-Campbell prizes are global English-language awards that call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with an unrestricted grant of $165,000 to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. The judges referred to Davis as “an artist whose work fuses depth of feeling and love of language, balancing the profound, the prosaic, and an overwhelming desire to reach through the fourth wall and pull his audiences towards him.”

JP Ramirez Wins Award for Design

Alumnus JP Ramirez (BFA ’11 Art & Design) designed the 2020 and 2021 MFA exhibition catalogs and websites. His work has been selected by the Type Directors Club TDC67 Annual Communication Design Competition judges to receive the Certificate of Typographic Excellence. His designs will be included in the Annual of the Type Directors Club and The World’s Best Typography. The winning entries will also be included in exhibitions that will tour Canada, China, England, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States, and Vietnam. Ramirez’s work was selected with 254 other winners from more than 1,600 entries from 57 countries.

Dina Griffin by Dudeley M. Brooks, Ebony Magazine

Dina Griffin Awarded Illinois Medal in Architecture

Dina Griffin, FAIA, NOMA, IIDA, was selected to receive the 2021 Illinois Medal in Architecture. The Illinois Medal in Architecture, first awarded in 1981, was established to recognize prominent University of Illinois School of Architecture alumni that exhibit a lifetime of professional dedication and excellence in the practice of architecture. Griffin is currently the president of Interactive Design Architects (IDEA), a Chicago-based firm that has collaborated on prestigious projects such as The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Barack Obama Presidential Center. She was the principal architect on the contemporary design of the new Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Read the full story here.