Mark Russell Named New AGC Endowed Chair

Mark Rus­sell

Mark Rus­sell has been named the new Asso­ci­ated Gen­eral Con­trac­tors (AGC) Endowed Chair in Con­struc­tion Man­age­ment and Con­struc­tion Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico. Rus­sell has been teach­ing at UNM since Fall 2011 and has more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence in the con­struc­tion indus­try with exper­tise in sus­tain­able con­struc­tion and build­ing rat­ing systems.

Rus­sell suc­ceeds Pro­fes­sor Jerry Rounds, who is retir­ing from UNM and was the AGC Endowed Chair for 12 years. As AGC Endowed Chair, Rounds helped the UNM Depart­ment of Civil Engi­neer­ing develop the Master’s of Con­struc­tion Man­age­ment degree and the Ph.D. degree in Civil Engi­neer­ing with a focus on Con­struc­tion Engineering.

The AGC Endowed Chair is respon­si­ble for vision and lead­er­ship of the Con­struc­tion Engi­neer­ing and Con­struc­tion Man­age­ment aca­d­e­mic pro­grams as well as research and indus­try out­reach. The Build­ing Branch of the Asso­ci­ated Gen­eral Con­trac­tors estab­lished the AGC Endowed Chair in 1984, cre­at­ing a part­ner­ship between New Mex­ico AGC mem­bers and UNM that has inspired cre­ative ideas and pro­vided a tal­ented work­force for the con­struc­tion industry.

“Jerry expanded our con­struc­tion engi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion man­age­ment pro­grams and strength­ened our net­work with indus­try,” says John Stor­mont, chair, Depart­ment of Civil Engi­neer­ing. “Mark will build on these accom­plish­ments and brings a wealth of expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in sus­tain­abil­ity. The Depart­ment is grate­ful to AGC for their vision and fore­sight in fund­ing the endowed chair position.”

Rus­sell obtained his Ph.D. in Design, Con­struc­tion and Plan­ning from the Uni­ver­sity of Florida. After 20 years in the US Navy, in which half of the time was with the Civil Engi­neer Corps, he served as a con­tract man­ager with URS Inter­na­tional, Inc. based in Frank­furt, Germany.

Rus­sell is a Licensed Pro­fes­sional Engi­neer, a Lead­er­ship in Energy and Envi­ron­men­tal Design (LEED) Accred­ited Pro­fes­sional, a Green Globes Asses­sor and a BREEAM Inter­na­tional Asses­sor. With his diverse expe­ri­ence in build­ing rat­ing sys­tems, he was selected to be the regional chair of the US Green Build­ing Council’s New Mex­ico Higher Edu­ca­tion Pro­grams.  In addi­tion, he coaches the LEED stu­dent team for the annual Asso­ci­ated Schools of Con­struc­tion (ASC) competition.

At UNM, Rus­sell teaches Senior Design, Con­struc­tion Struc­tures, Con­struc­tion Sched­ul­ing and Cost Estimating. Additionally, he will be devel­op­ing classes in Build­ing Mechan­i­cal Elec­tri­cal Sys­tems and Con­struc­tion Mate­r­ial Tech­niques. Russell’s research empha­sis includes analy­sis based on life cycle assess­ments with a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in car­bon foot-printing.

Media con­tact: Tamara Williams (505) 277‑5627; email: tamara@unm.edu