Last week the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture awarded their annual Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education to Deborah Berke. An award-winning architect and current dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Berke also won RECORD’s 2021 Women in Architecture Educator Award.

Berke’s four-decade career has centered around equitable access to architectural education, with a particular focus on cross-disciplinary curriculums. After graduating from RISD, where she established a high-school level architectural studies program at New York’s Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, Berke taught at the University of Miami and the University of California, Berkeley. As Yale’s first woman to serve as dean, she has spearheaded initiatives to diversify the faculty and student body as well as overseen the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture and the development of an undergraduate urban studies major.