CADC Student Receives Prestigious Auburn University President’s Award

On April 19, fifth year Bachelor of Architecture student Jedediah Grant was awarded with one of the University’s prestigious President’s Awards for 2019. The President’s Award recognizes one graduate in each school or college who has completed at least three semesters at Auburn with a minimum grade point average of 3.4, and posses outstanding qualities of leadership, citizenship, character and promise of professional ability.

Before coming to Auburn, Jed was an infantryman in the United States Marine Corp and completed two deployments, the last in Afghanistan in 2013. He is committed to developing public awareness of issues related to veterans. Four years later, while he was studying architecture here at Auburn, he found himself battling cancer. A professor who worked with Jed during that difficult period says “On every occasion that we had to speak about what Jed was experiencing, I never saw anything but determination in his eyes and never heard anything but confidence in his voice as he spoke about the disease and the rounds of treatment that he endured. His courage and quiet grace inspired me and everyone around him.” Jed, who is currently working on his architectural thesis at Rural Studio in Hale County, Alabama, has been called a true citizen architect, following the foundation of a program originated by citizen architect and APLA Prof. Samuel Mockbee. He has devoted much of his time at Auburn to design-build projects related to the Rural Studio 20K Home and the 20K Habitat affordable/energy efficient housing initiatives. The work at Rural Studio requires a team mentality and Jed is recognized as a natural leader. Prof. David Hinson has remarked that Jed is “a generous, gentle teammate with a great sense of humor, and is as committed to helping his teammates learn as he is to accomplish the goals set before the group. His professors claim that having Jed in a design-build studio class is like having a second teacher on the team. His fellow students consider him a leader, a mentor and a good friend, and look to him as a model of what to do and how to act.”

Please join the faculty, staff and students of the Architecture, Design and Construction and congratulate Jed Grant on his 2019 President’s Award – the recognition is richly-deserved.