Graham "Jeff" Fountain Shannon Jr., a longtime professor and former dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas, passed away Dec. 30, 2024. He was 78.

Shannon was born in 1946, the same year the architecture program was founded at the U of A. He would go on to graduate from the architecture program and teach in the school for 44 years, as it grew to become the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, with nationally recognized departments of architecture, landscape architecture, and interior architecture and design.

A celebration of his life and work will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, March 1, 2025, in Vol Walker Hall on the University of Arkansas campus.

Peter MacKeith is dean and professor of architecture in the Fay Jones School. He joined the school in 2014, becoming the fifth dean of the school, after Fay Jones, C. Murray Smart Jr., Dan Bennett and Jeff Shannon.  

"Great schools of architecture are characterized by legacies of design leadership, of passionate and compassionate teaching excellence, and devotion to both the school and the university," MacKeith said. "Jeff Shannon, as professor and as dean, exemplifies such a legacy for the Fay Jones School. As those closest to him on this faculty attest below, his vitality was vibrant during his time and will be sustained by the many, many graduates of the school who have gone on to their own lives of personal and professional success.

"Reflecting on my own experience in multiple schools and universities, Jeff is a significant figure personally as well as in the larger context of American architectural culture," MacKeith continued. "Together with others, he recruited me to this position and encouraged me in my daily work. Jeff understood that deans are only stewards of their schools, and, in the dynamic of this school's history, he handed forward a school of excellence and future potential. I am grateful to Jeff for this example, and, in a deeper way, I am grateful for his attention to the human factor in teaching and leadership."

Ethel Goodstein-Murphree, Ph.D., is an architectural historian and professor of architecture and associate dean in the Fay Jones School. She joined the faculty in 1992 and has served as associate dean of the school since 2009 and as interim dean from May 2013 through June 2014. 

"A legacy of more than 40 years in the academy is built of equal parts of inspiration, opportunity and challenge," said Goodstein-Murphree. "To build such a legacy as a teacher, a scholar and a leader is no mean task, but Jeff Shannon did just that. A thoughtful practitioner of architecture, a sage dean of the Fay Jones School, and most important, a professor whose passion for his discipline was outweighed only by his compassion for his students, Jeff's influence ever will remain alive in the thoughts of his many friends, the creative work of countless colleagues and Fay Jones School alumni, and, most potently, in primacy of teaching and learning across the disciplines of the Fay Jones School that he stewarded into the 21st century.

"I also had the privilege of serving as his associate dean," she continued. "Jeff taught me that there is something greater than individual attainment in the academy; it is giving back to others, building relationships, and fostering the success of those who will follow us. I will miss him dearly."  

Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, recipient of the 2020 AIA Gold Medal, is Distinguished Professor and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture. He also is founder and co-principal of his Fayetteville-based design practice, Marlon Blackwell Architects. Since joining the Fay Jones School in 1992, Blackwell taught on the architecture faculty alongside Shannon. From 2009 to 2015, Blackwell served as department head, a role that Shannon convinced and empowered him to take on. Shannon was the longest mentor Blackwell has had in his professional life.

"Jeff was a teacher's teacher. I really enjoyed his enthusiastic approach to teaching. His sense of wonder and love for questions were something the faculty and students learned from," Blackwell said. "He was a colleague, a teaching collaborator, a teaching mentor for me, and most of all, a good friend. And he's been the consistent thread. Jeff contributed in his own way — usually from behind the scenes, not at stage center — to the vitality of the architecture program and the school.

"The idea of the teacher-practitioner was a model that he firmly believed in, and it has become rarer and rarer in academia," Blackwell added. "The school early on was made up of practitioners who became teachers, so Jeff was always supportive of developing a practice and creating that opportunity to be able to teach and practice, but to practice what you preach."

John Folan joined the Fay Jones School in 2019 as professor and head of the Department of Architecture, following Shannon's last stint as interim department head. Shannon continued in his teaching role as part of the architecture faculty led by Folan, until his retirement in 2023.

"Jeff's legacy and imprint on the Department of Architecture are felt every day in many ways. Probably most specifically and significantly in terms of the extended culture he promoted in action," Folan said. "Jeff was an agent provocateur. He would stop by my office for five minutes every day without fail. My experience was not individually unique. Jeff made time for everyone. I always looked forward to that time each day. We would exchange articles, swap books, and share stories about heroes we held in common — and some we didn't.

"Jeff was disarmingly direct and could cut the fat off any argument," Folan continued. "Humor was a prevailing element in those abilities. He promoted and represented an aspirational academic culture — demanding, intellectual, open and welcoming. Those sensibilities live on in the thousands of students and colleagues he influenced and inspired. In that way, he remains, and will remain very present and accessible to everyone that is missing him."

Greg Herman joined the Fay Jones School's architecture faculty in 1991. Herman is an associate professor of architecture and director of the Fay and Gus Jones House Stewardship.

"Jeff was an exceptional teacher, and an enthusiastic scholar, with a never-flagging thirst for more knowledge," Herman said. "Nobody enjoyed a good discussion, even a good-natured argument, about hot topics in architecture, politics or just life in general, more than Jeff. His love of word play was the stuff of legends, besting even my own proclivities. But more than that, Jeff was a close, loving friend, and I enjoyed many an evening with Jeff and Carole, watching his children grow up, as he would eventually watch mine. I miss him every day."

SELECTED LIFE AND CAREER ACHIEVEMENTS

Shannon devoted most of his career to practicing and teaching architecture in his native Arkansas. He attended the U of A in Fayetteville, and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1970. He then spent four months working as a design contributor in the office of school alumnus and professor Fay Jones in Fayetteville.

After receiving his Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Rice University in 1973, Shannon worked at firms in Memphis, Houston, Palm Beach, and Little Rock. In 1977, he co-founded and was a principal at Polk Shannon Stanley, based in Little Rock. Noteworthy Fayetteville projects that Shannon contributed to include the former First National Bank and the Fayetteville Drug Store, both on the downtown square. In the early 1970s, he was also project director for the master plan for the 1,100-acre Moss Creek Plantation Recreation/Residential Development in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

In 1979, Shannon returned to the U of A to teach architecture. During his more than 40 years in the Fay Jones School, he served as a faculty member, three stints as interim head of the Department of Architecture, and as dean from 2000 to 2002 and, after a national search, as dean from 2002 to 2013. He retired from teaching in June 2023.

As a professor, Shannon taught design studios as well as popular lecture courses on the history of urban form and design thinking. Shannon received numerous teaching awards, notably the Master Teaching Award (1993) and Outstanding Teacher Award (1997), both from the school of architecture, and the University of Arkansas Teaching Academy Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Category of Creativity (1992). He was inducted into the University of Arkansas Teaching Academy in 1993.

He was twice named by DesignIntelligence as a Most Admired Educator and received a Distinguished Service Award from the Fay Jones School in 2023. In 2014, he was awarded the Fay Jones Gold Medal by the Arkansas chapter of the American Institute of Architects, AIA Arkansas, the highest honor the organization can bestow upon a member. He also served on the boards of AIA Arkansas and the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute.

Shannon published numerous articles in scholarly publications, notably tied to the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. "The False Bernini of Codex Chigi" is a scholarly paper based upon his close reading of an original sketch that he discovered while visiting the Vatican Library.

During Shannon's tenure as dean, a major accomplishment was the renovation of the historic Vol Walker Hall and the addition of the Steven L. Anderson Design Center, designed by Fayetteville architect and AIA Gold Medalist Marlon Blackwell, with his firm, in partnership with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects. Shannon convinced U of A leadership to allow an architecture faculty member to design the transformative project, and he shepherded it from conception to its completion in 2013. The award-winning facility enabled design programs to share space and collaborate more closely as a school.

As dean, he developed new programs to foster leadership and life skills among students and to enhance diversity within the school. He  was instrumental in the development of the university's Rome Center program.

Shannon also served as the executive editor and founder of the publishing collaboration between the school and the University of Arkansas Press, which began in 2009. Through this collaboration, he oversaw and edited nine publications, including the award-winning Shadow Patterns: Reflections on Fay Jones and His Architecture, a book of essays published to honor the architecture, life and legacy of Fay Jones. He also contributed, with David Buege, an essay to the book.

Shannon was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Feb. 25, 1946, to the late Graham F. Shannon Sr. and Elisabeth Satterfield Shannon. He was also preceded in death by his sister, Betty Hargis. He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Carole Klugh Shannon; daughters and sons-in-law Rachel and Tony Foshe of Fayetteville and Rebecca and Ryan Webb of Colorado Springs; grandchildren Haddie, Huck, Peyton and Kaitlyn; and a "grandest child" Izzy Sánchez, a grandchild who chose him. He is also survived by many nieces, nephews, and cousins, along with many friends and former students who became family.

Online condolences can be made at Berna Funeral Homes or Legacy.