UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Peter Aeschbacher, associate professor of landscape architecture and architecture in the College of Arts and Architecture, has received the 2014 President’s Award for Engagement With Students.
The award is given to a faculty member who goes beyond his or her responsibilities to engage and encourage students in learning. The honorees have made themselves available to interact with students outside class, link students to opportunities and help them build their confidence as learners and potential contributors to society.
“Professor Aeschbacher has demonstrated a long-term sustained level of achievement in engagement with students through his teaching, research, and extracurricular commitments to the academic endeavors of students across the university,” one nominator said.
Aeschbacher regularly involves students in public scholarship through hands-on design and applied research projects. From 2010 to 2012 alone, he participated in 44 service-learning/outreach projects with students in central Pennsylvania. Among the projects were the Juniata Terrace community history in Mifflin County, which was featured on WPSU; the sundial/solar system design/build at Corl Street Elementary School in State College, and real estate feasibility assessments for State College, Lewistown and Ferguson Township. He also has led students beyond Pennsylvania to explore the spatial dynamics of Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles, conduct research in the El Chorillo neighborhood of Panama City, Panama, and work on design/build projects on the Chief Dull Knife campus in Montana.
His annual Constitution Day Writers Blocks project, inviting students to answer Constitutional questions in chalk on large blocks in public spaces on campus, won a 2008 National Education Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Another project he co-authored, “The Secret Life of Public Spaces,” involved landscape architecture, architecture, dance and engineering students and won a 2013 ACSA Creative Achievement Award.
In 2013, Aeschbacher was appointed as Schreyer Honors College Distinguished Honors Faculty. He has served as scholar-in-residence for public scholarship with Penn State Learning and as a Public Scholarship Fellow for the Center for Public Scholarship and Democracy at Penn State.