ENVD Student Receives 2020 President’s Award

Environmental Design senior Kristin Hamilton is the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture’s 2020 recipient of the prestigious Auburn University President’s Award. The President’s Award recognizes one graduate in each Auburn University school or college who has completed at least three semesters at Auburn with a minimum grade-point average of 3.40 and possesses outstanding qualities of leadership, citizenship, character and promise of professional ability.

ENVD Program Chair, Prof. Magdalena Garmaz speaks highly of Kristin, a first-generation college student, describing her as “an outstanding ENVD student: talented, hard-working, inquisitive and self-motivated systems thinker. [Kristin] never takes no for an answer, and always probes deeply into subject matter [to] create a meaningful contextual base for her projects. Rather than seeing boundaries, Kristin actively seeks connections between design and non-design disciplines.”

The reason for such praise is evident reading Hamilton’s “Statement of Purpose” where she states her interests lie in the relationship between the philosophical definition of justice and its application to the built environment. In this summary manifesto she outlines the path she took to reach that conclusion, focusing on topics and experiences necessary for the foundation of her study. Kristin has studied political science, history, and art with the intention of applying their principles to her work; her industriousness leads her to seek out experiences to build upon that foundation, one in particular she calls a “significant formative experience.”

For the past two years, Kristin has been tutoring Math and English during weekly sessions at Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore, AL. “I do not know of many (if any) college students who would spend a day every week teaching inmates in a correctional facility, and who would do it for several semesters.” Prof. Garmaz adds, “Kristin’s sense of social justice, and her ability to actually make it tangible through her actions, is highly commendable and will serve her well in her graduate studies. She wants to make a visible, concrete difference…to create built environment that serves everyone’s needs and aspirations.”
 
Kristin is exploring the idea of getting her masters in city and regional planning, and will apply to Georgia Tech’s Dual Master’s of City and Regional Planning & Law. 

Congratulations, Kristin—CADC faculty, staff and students expect great things from you!