Mississippi State’s School of Architecture Fifth-Year Program Director Jassen Callender has taken on additional university leadership duties as the school’s permanent associate director.
Callender, an associate professor, began his new role on July 1, supporting Director Michael Berk in administrative work for the school. Callender will be on the Starkville campus regularly and also will work remotely from the Jackson-based SARC Fifth-Year Program.
“Jassen has many years of professional practice, studio and lecture teaching, as well as administrative experience and scholarly research,” said Berk, who also holds the F.L. Crane Endowed Professorship. “He is a seasoned academic with practical skill, and he is a sought-after academic with a long list of invitations to prestigious programs around the country.”
Prior to the formation of the College of Architecture, Art and Design, the School of Architecture—offering the only curriculum in the state of Mississippi leading to a professional degree in architecture—was a stand-alone unit on campus with two administrators, a dean and associate dean. When transitioned into a college, the school lost one of its administrators, a void that Callender now fills as associate director.
“The School of Architecture has long established itself as a leader in the field, and the appointment of Jassen Callender as the associate director will provide an excellent support to the school moving forward,” said College of Architecture, Art and Design Dean Angi Elsea Bourgeois. “Jassen’s expertise will be an asset to both our faculty and students.”
A 1994 MSU School of Architecture alumnus, Callender teaches advanced studios and Theory of Urban Design at the Jackson Center. He also is an occasional practitioner, painter and writer, member of the Society of Architectural Historians and a regional board member of the U.S. Green Building Council.
Callender’s educational background underscores this range of interests and concerns, from undergraduate training in both architecture and philosophy to graduate work in painting, sculpture and art history leading to a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota in 2001.
These activities and his subsequent research aim at deepening human understanding of how meaning is constructed and shared through the built environment. His first book, “Architecture History and Theory in Reverse,” was published by Routledge in July 2017.
