Carl Smith Named Associate Dean for Faculty Development in Fay Jones School

Carl Smith, a professor of landscape architecture, has been named associate dean for faculty development in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the U of A. His appointment began Jan. 1, 2026. In this new role as associate dean, Smith will oversee research and faculty affairs.

"The school welcomes professor Carl Smith to the Dean's Office in this new and important role," said Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School. "As the school's leadership team transitions forward, and as the school continues to grow in all areas — student enrollment, faculty research and practice, and research facilities — the focused work of an associate dean for faculty and research affairs will be critical to our continuing success. Already an accomplished educator, Carl brings great energy, experience, insight and commitment to this administrative appointment, and his work is already of substantial benefit."

Originally from the United Kingdom, Smith came to the United States in 2007 to serve as the Verna C. Garvan Distinguished Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture at the U of A's then-School of Architecture. He was then hired for a tenure-track position in January 2008. Over the next 13 years, he advanced from assistant professor to associate professor to full professor.

Smith has already established three themes of emphasis for his work as associate dean. First, clarity, and the provision of guidance through campus policy and expectations. Secondly, to help faculty identify and leverage opportunities for development as teachers, researchers and creative scholars, as well as public servants. And, thirdly, to nurture a culture of faculty mentorship within the school. Smith aspires for the Fay Jones School to become a leader for faculty mentorship on campus.

"Research is one of the most important ways for any unit to be successful and impactful," Smith said. "I view research as the underpinning for so much of what happens in the design studio and classroom, and a principal driver of many of the tangible, positive differences that the school can make across the state and beyond."

Smith adds that much of this impact will call for collaboration — across architectural disciplines, but also with other fields across campus and directly with the communities in which the school is embedded. With a background in both traditional empirical research and reflective, creative practices alike, Smith sees and emphasizes the value of a wide range of scholarship across the architectural arts and applied and natural sciences.

Smith recognizes the school's ongoing emergence as an important player in the state's technologies and economy as an exciting opportunity, while also seeing the potential for design intelligence to be applied at the regional scale, helping to guide growth and a balance of built and natural assets and capital.

"I also want to champion the vitality and cultural enrichment provided by smaller-scale acts of creativity and outreach," he said. "I believe this is the potential of architectural design, to be of consequence and of benefit from the scale of the region to the scale of the chair."

Smith is a chartered (licensed) landscape architect in the United Kingdom and a Fellow of the Landscape Institute — the highest rank of British Landscape Architects. He is also a chartered (licensed) geographer and an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has wide, international experience in the practice, teaching and research of landscape and urbanism. 

Smith has served as a visiting professor or critic at a number of design and learned institutions domestically and internationally, while his scholarship has been recognized through appointments at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Center and Library at Harvard University, the British School at Athens and the American Academy in Rome, where he is an Affiliated Fellow.

In addition to his primary teaching role in the Fay Jones School, Smith served as the ArchiScape Visiting Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, from 2020-2024, and more recently served as a visiting scholar at the University of Edinburgh's School of History, Classics, and Archeology.

Teaching, Research, Publication and Practice

In the Fay Jones School, Smith teaches studios in landscape architecture and urban design, as well as classes in urban studies, landscape theory, hand-drawing and the history and culture of the American landscape.

Smith's primary research focuses on anthropogenic landscape change in and around home-places and the effects on the perceptions of place and preference. Ultimately his twin aims are to inculcate and sharpen a sense of place-consciousness within himself and his students and to understand place-consciousness as it relates to the sustainability and resiliency of landscapes and cities in Arkansas and beyond.

Smith's current research focus areas include public attitudes toward relatively dense residential layouts and the use of drawing to record and document aesthetic public and personal responses to changing places. He also has research interests in design studio culture.

Among other venues, Smith's work has been published in the Journal of Urban Design, Journal of Urbanism, the International Journal of Art and Design Education and Area. He has contributed chapters to books on architectural representation, international perspectives on sustainable landscapes and everyday histories of changing places. He has co-authored and edited two books, with another volume on the recently completed GeoLab collaboration on campus — a joint project between geologists and landscape architects — currently moving toward in-press status.

He has delivered lectures on sustainability, housing, place and drawing in Europe, South America and the United States, and his own drawn work has been shown in exhibition in the U.S. and Europe.

In professional practice, Smith's projects have included town extension master plans, townscape analyses and strategies, park and greenway masterplans, and concepts and detailed designs for a wide range of public spaces. He has prepared landscape character reports for highly sensitive rural, urban and suburban locations such as remote uplands, and the edge of historic towns and UNESCO World Heritage Sites. His design work has been recognized by the Landscape Institute, the Association of Professional Landscape Designers and the American Institute of Architects — the latter for a residential collaboration with the office of Marlon Blackwell, recently retired Distinguished Professor of Architecture at the U of A. 

Honors, Awards and Education

As well as the fellowship through his professional landscape architecture and geography institutions, Smith was elected to Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2019. He also received the Lorenzo il Magnifico medal for drawing (2021) at the Florence Art and Design Biennale.

Smith was recognized by the Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects with its Award of Merit for services to architecture and planning in the state (2020), by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture with its Excellence in Design Studio Teaching Award (Senior Level) (2020) and by the Garden Communicators International with its Green Medal in Sustainability Award (2020).

Smith has received multiple honors from the U of A Honors College, including Distinguished Artist in (2021), Dean's Faculty Fellow (2018) and Distinguished Faculty Award (2016). He also received the Faculty Gold Medal (2018) from the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards at the U of A and the Howell-Vancuren Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award for Landscape Architecture from the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design (2019).

Smith received a B.Sc. (Hons) environmental science degree from the University of Lancaster; a postgraduate diploma in landscape design and an M.A. in landscape design, both from the University of Sheffield; a postgraduate diploma in urban design from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne; and a Ph.D. in architectural studies in sustainable housing design from the University of Sheffield.