Highlighting a graduate experience marked by scholarship, creativity and leadership, in which I held a full assistantship in the School of Music and helped teach an undergraduate Honors course entitled ‘Exploring the Arts’, were several prestigious awards including the Allerton American Fellowship, an AIA Foundation Scholarship and the Long Traveling Fellowship.  I won the Long Fellowship based on my proposal to study coastal resort development in Mexico.

Almost twenty-five years later, tourism is still the second largest industry in Mexico after oil and its development is largely overlooked and unstudied by the critical press, academia, architects and planners.  With the award, I spent a summer in Mexico traveling to a number of established and newly developed resorts. I met with developers, architects and staff at FONATUR, Mexico’s tourism development agency.  I observed radical changes to pristine landscapes, some that complimented and some that degraded the natural beauty.  And I endured no little kidding from envious fellow grad students about my ‘vacation’ when I returned home and gave my report.