Paul Kelsch honored with emeritus status
Paul Kelsch, professor of architecture in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design at Virginia Tech and a member of the Washington Alexandria Architecture Center faculty, has been conferred the title of professor emeritus by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
The emeritus title may be conferred on retired faculty members who are specially recommended to the board by Virginia Tech President Tim Sands in recognition of exemplary service to the university. Nominated individuals who are approved by the board receive a copy of the resolution and a certificate of appreciation.
A member of the Virginia Tech community for more than 30 years, Kelsch made significant research contributions to the study of cultural landscapes, especially commemorative landscapes and historic parkways of the national capital region.
He served for over 20 years in the landscape architecture program on the Blacksburg campus and at the Washington Alexandria Architecture Center (WAAC) before shifting to the architecture faculty in 2021.
In 2020, he was named Robert L. Turner Chair in Urban Design and has led the urban design concentration in the Master of Science in architecture program at the WAAC since 2021. Through his leadership in the urban design program, he fostered international collaboration among faculty and students from Virginia Tech, the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, and Universidad de Desarrollos in Chile.
Kelsch’s work has been recognized through numerous awards, including national recognition as a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 2024. He was honored nationally by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture with the Recognition for Academic Excellence Award in 2005. He received numerous awards from the American Society of Landscape Architecture for his design work and for his Cultural Landscape Reports for the National Park Service.
Kelsch cultivated a culture of collective learning and discovery by his leadership of the award-winning Casey Trees competition. Additionally, he led the first landscape architecture practice-based studio, enabling students to intern with professional firms while developing research topics that integrated practical experience with academic inquiry.
In the classroom, Kelsch taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate classes on the topics of landscape architecture history, design theory, and site construction. Throughout his academic career, he straddled disciplinary boundaries, especially in integrated design studios for students in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design.
Kelsch received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Notre Dame, his master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Michigan, and his doctoral degree in geography from Royal Holloway, University of London.
Written by Emily Southern ’26
