Díaz Montemayor, Webb Appointed to Assistant Dean Positions in Fay Jones School

Photos by Shawnya Meyers

Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, left, is the new assistant dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, and Jennifer Webb is the school's new assistant dean of graduate programs.

Two faculty members in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design have been appointed to newly created assistant dean positions, effective July 1.

Peter MacKeith, dean, and Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, associate dean, made this move to give additional focus and resources to two areas that are critical to the school's growth and future development: graduate programs and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Gabriel Díaz Montemayor, ASLA, is the school's assistant dean for diversity, equity and inclusion and an associate professor of landscape architecture. Jennifer Webb is the school's assistant dean of graduate programs and an associate professor of interior design.

"Corresponding to our growth in student enrollment and faculty ranks, and our growth in academic programs and community engagement, the Fay Jones School expands its academic leadership team with these significant appointments of professors Webb and Díaz Montemayor as assistant deans," said Peter MacKeith, dean of the school. "Professor Webb has led our graduate programs initiative almost from the first day, to their current productive momentum, demonstrating admirable administrative qualities of insight, vision and diplomacy. Professor Diaz Montemayor arrived to our faculty as a national leader in diversity and inclusion initiatives in the design disciplines, and the school is the beneficiary of his fierce commitment and deft collaborative skills in this important work."

Díaz Montemayor joined the faculty in the fall semester of 2019. Previously, he was a faculty member at The University of Texas at Austin, the Arizona State University in Tempe, and the Superior Institute for Architecture and Design of Chihuahua (ISAD). He received the 2019 Excellence in Design Studio Teaching Award, Junior Level, from the national Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.

He is a founding partner of LABOR (Landscape, Architecture, Border) Studio based in Chihuahua City, where he's practiced since 2002. The work produced by the office is characterized by a broad range of scales in private and public commissions, mostly in the state of Chihuahua, México.

He has been a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) since 2008 and participated in the organization's Diversity Summits in 2018 and 2019. He completed the Bachelor of Architecture — a five-year professional program — at ISAD and holds the professional architect title from the Autonomous University of the State of Chihuahua. He received a Master of Landscape Architecture from Auburn University, in Alabama, in 2007.

Díaz Montemayor's research focuses on the advancement of landscape architecture with a socio-environmental foundation in Latin America and in the border region between the United States and Mexico. As part of this, he has researched and written on urban ecotones as a model for resilient communities and hybrid urban-natural structures.

In addition to having designed and built buildings and landscapes, Díaz Montemayor has done master planning for parks and trails networks and mixed-use and housing developments. He has also been a consultant for USAID in a public space recovery project for northern Mexico cities. His professional and academic work has been published in Arquine magazine, the journal Sustainability, Journal of Urbanism, AULA Journal, and Landscape Architecture Magazine, among others. 

As the assistant dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Díaz Montemayor focuses on contributing to the ongoing transformation of the school's culture into one where all — faculty, staff, students — belong. This includes supporting the recruitment and retention of diverse students, faculty, and staff; supporting student, staff, and faculty initiatives on DEI; organizing training on DEI matters; organizing lectures, panels, workshops, and publications with a DEI focus; contributing to the transformation of curricular content to a diverse and inclusive model; supporting scholarship applications with a focus on assisting minority applications; and the planning and design of the school's DEI objectives, strategies, and methods for implementation in the short, medium, and long term.

Webb joined the interior design faculty at the University of Arkansas in 1999. She is also a registered interior designer.

She holds a doctorate in environmental design and has passed both the NCIDQ and the LEED AP examinations. Webb has taught a wide variety of courses in interior design that include commercial, healthcare, and hospitality design studios as well as courses that explore the behaviors and inclusion of diverse people in the built world.

In her tenure at the university, Webb has pursued an active research agenda focused on person‐environment fit. Working with colleagues in two institutions, she has investigated the role of privacy in living environments for older adults and subsequent adjustment in assisted living environments. She has also investigated proxemics patterns for older adults in both independent and assisted living environments.

Webb initiated research on anticipated living environments for Arkansas residents, and this investigation provided the pilot data for the Arkansas Health and Housing Survey (2006). This project has provided extensive data with regard to Arkansans' opinions on aging, health, design of home and community, and current and anticipated patterns.

She was recognized with the Joel Polsky Prize for contributions to the interior design profession for her work on Just Below the Line: Disability, Housing, and Equity in the South (University of Arkansas Press, 2010). She has also made contributions to the Universal Design Handbook (2010).

Webb is invested in the scholarship of interior design and related architectural professions. For six years, she served on the Board of Directors for the Journal of Interior Design with an additional four-year term as chair of the Board of Directors. She has also served as a national board member for the Interior Design Educators Council where she coordinated the efforts of conference review processes, the Journal of Interior Design, creative scholarship competition, and task forces and publishing integrity. The Interior Design Educators Council awarded her the status of Fellow in 2019.

Webb's experiences as a graduate student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oklahoma State University have motivated her interest in graduate education. At both universities, she received mentoring that transformed her understanding of graduate education and its role in developing the knowledge base for transformative design processes and solutions.

As assistant dean of Graduate Programs, Webb works to develop effective recruiting practices that include a strong web presence, social media outreach, and in-person events. She advises all graduate students and works to identify culminating residency experiences for each student, contributing to and informing each student's unique career goals. She also oversees the curriculum development within each of the concentrations, working with the school leadership and stakeholders.

The Fay Jones School offers a Master of Design Studies, with current concentrations in resiliency design, integrated wood design, and retail and hospitality design. Additional concentrations of study are being developed in the areas of preservation design, housing design, and health and wellness design.