Tom McNab ’75 Wins Montana State University President’s Award
Montana State University has awarded Tom McNab ’75 with the 2011 President’s Award for Excellence in Service Learning during the University’s Awards for Excellence banquet. McNab is the Director of the School of Architecture’s Community Design Center and an Assistant Adjunct Professor. He accepted the award as a proud Duck on February 22 in Bozeman, Montana.
Under McNab’s direction, the Community Design Center partnered with the City of Lewiston to develop a master trails plan document to expand the trail system and meet a wide array of rural community needs. Students were afforded a wide range of opportunities to experience the design process first hand by engaging in research, planning, and building design projects that cut across a range of social, cultural, environmental, and physical issues.
McNab joined the Montana State University School of Architecture faculty as Director of the Community Design Center in 2005 – a perfect marriage of his passions for community service, lifelong learning and his native state of Montana. The Community Design Center was established in 1976 as a collaborative community-university partnership approach to the research and design of the built environment that serves the people of Montana. The Center is committed to environmental stewardship and sustainable land planning and boasts a tremendous record of success.
In a career spanning over 30 years, McNab’s personal practice was rooted mainly in commercial, institutional, and public arenas with a variety of firms, including his own partnerships in Oregon and Montana. Throughout his career, McNab has made community service and architectural practice advocacy a priority. He served as an American Institute of Architects chapter president in Oregon 1986 and Montana 2001. He lobbied on architectural issues in the Oregon Legislature as Vice-president for Legislative Affairs for the Oregon Council of Architects, and in the Montana State Legislature as a lobbyist for the Montana Technical Council. He has and continues to serve on many community design and advisory committees.