Gilboy named to national Association for Community Design Board of Directors

Elizabeth Gilboy, of Blacksburg, Va., director of Virginia Tech’s Community Design Assistance Center in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies, has been named to the board of directors of the National Association for Community Design (ACD).

Established in 1977, the ACD is a network of individuals, organizations, and institutions committed to increasing the capacity of planning and design professions to better serve communities. ACD serves and supports practitioners, educators and organizations engaged in community-based design and planning.

Community design is a movement focused on the creation and management of environments for people. This process promotes change to the built environment from the neighborhood to regional scale and aims to meet community needs through participatory decision-making at all levels. Practitioners of community design identify and solve social, economic, and political problems, as they relate to the built environment. There are more than 40 community design centers in the U.S. alone, and affiliates all over the world.

Gilboy received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a master’s degree from Virginia Tech.

The College of Architecture and Urban Studies is one of the largest of its type in the nation. The college is composed of two schools and the departments of landscape architecture, building construction, and art and art history. The School of Architecture + Design includes programs in architecture, industrial design and interior design. The School of Public and International Affairs includes programs in urban affairs and planning, public administration and policy, and government and international affairs. The college enrolls more than 2,000 students offering 25 degrees taught by 160 faculty members.