Architecture Dean Roger Schluntz announced his plans to retire next year after a decade overseeing UNM’s School of Architecture.
Schluntz made the announcement June 30. He said he will continue as a UNM faculty member, but said it was time to pass the responsibilities of dean on to someone else.
“It’s a combination of ‘OK, I’ve probably done what I can do,’ and one has to realize there are other capable people,” he said.
Schluntz, who was honored as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, will still be chair of the Design Review Board.
“I’m not actually retiring,” Schluntz said. “I’m shifting courses.”
Among Schluntz’s accomplishments at UNM are the establishment of a degree program in Landscape Architecture and of two new graduate-level degrees — Historic Preservation & Regionalism and Town Design.
Schluntz was also instrumental in building George Pearl Hall, the architecture building located across from the campus bookstore.
Schluntz said the new space has helped bolster the position of the architecture department within the University.
“This building has certainly become a national landmark,” Schluntz said. “Our visibility within the University has basically gone from inconsequential to the highest in UNM, because of our location and the quality of the building.”
Architecture student Tim Castillo said Schluntz worked hard to get the building completed.
“He’s been phenomenally instrumental in getting this building done,” Castillo said. “The building is phenomenal compared to where we were before. It’s night-and-day.”
Virginia Raybon, another architecture student, said George Pearl Hall made the architecture department the face of the University.
“It’s a world apart,” she said. “We were across the street in that terrible building. I love how we have a really prominent building on Central. We went from a shoebox across the street to this.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
She said the new building has exposed beams, supports and wires so that students can see firsthand how the inside of a building looks, instead of relying on paper designs.
“The building itself is a learning experience,” she said.
Schluntz said he couldn’t have undertaken the George Pearl Hall project by himself.
“We’ve had wonderful support from the students, faculty and staff,” he said. “The building is a result of that support.”
Raybon said Schluntz is so busy that some people get the idea he doesn’t want to interact with students.
“It’s not that he doesn’t want to stop and talk,” she said. “He’s running around because he’s actually busy and concerned and trying.”
Schluntz emphasized the continued importance of architecture in students’ everyday lives. “Everything that you and everyone else does is informed or shaped by, influenced by the built environment,” he said. “Classrooms, apartment buildings – it has an immediate, direct impact. The ability to want to come here. It’s the power of design, really, to help shape people’s lives and make it possible to enrich their lives.”
