Marietta Monaghan
Dr. Monaghan serves as a Senior Lecturer in the College of Architecture and Construction Management at Kennesaw State University. She holds a special interest in sustainable development and the mentoring of high school students who consider becoming architects. Dr. Monaghan attends workshops and lectures on sustainability and participates in various committees, notably Marietta High School’s Career Path Discovery, Pre-Engineering and Pre-Architecture Boards and their Engineering Pipeline Extravaganza held twice each year. This helps her recruit architecture students from local high schools. To that end, since 2014 she has developed and managed the Summer Academies for the ACCI SPIKE Studio, an introduction for middle and high school students to the college courses they will encounter, one held at Georgia Tech and one at KSU. These programs have been a resounding success and have recommenced after a pandemic hiatus. The last year at KSU (2019, before the pandemic), KSU Summer Academy students designed homeless shelters and built one to donate to the Mad Housers group, so that a homeless person now has a place to call home.
Dr. Monaghan firmly believes in hands-on learning; Summer Academy students had an introduction to hand tools and construction techniques that will positively influence the rest of their lives. Dr. Monaghan and her ACCI Spike colleagues were presented with the AIA Bronze Medal Award for community outreach in December 2019. Dr. Monaghan, Education Adviser and Lead Professor in charge of the program is a team player who values collaboration. Through her mentorship several of her students have attained scholarships to the Harvard GSD through the ACCI SPIKE Studio partnership and have presented their own research papers at local and regional conferences.
Volunteer work is at the heart of community participation and involvement. Dr. Monaghan feels it is imperative one gives back to the educational and social organizations which helped to nurture them, therefore, she is delighted to serve on committees like the University-wide Education Abroad Advisory and Standing Committees, and Department of Architecture Study Abroad committees over the years. She regularly volunteers as a docent at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art, and reads papers for conference acceptance and reviews for the proceedings of conferences such as NCUR and SESAH.
