People Who Make it Happen!

Board of Directors

President/Treasurer:

Jay Jacot, Associate AIA
Thompson Edwards Architects  
Construction Manager, Thompson|Edwards Architects
New Haven, CT 06511

Secretary:

Jeanne Loper
PrincIpal Loper Designs
Burlington, CT 06013

Executive Director:

Anna Sanko
Architecture Resource Center
Rockville, CT 06066

Members at Large:

Scott Jenkins
Sr. Manager, Receivables Risk & Credit Analysis
Controller’s Department
ESPN, Inc.
Bristol, CT 06010-7454

Alan J. Plattus
Professor, Yale University School of Architecture and Founder and Director of the Yale Urban Design Workshop
New Haven, CT 06511

Jill Jenkins,
Principal, J3Design Group
Windsor, CT 06095

Courtney Leigh Drake,
Yale School of Management, MBA Candidate–Class of 2012
New Haven, CT 06511

Deidre Cerminaro, Yale School of Management, MBA Candidate–Class of 2013
New Haven, CT 06511

Anna Sanko, Associate AIA —With a degree in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute, a Connecticut Interior Design license, and architectural training at Harvard University Anna has practiced professionally for fifteen years in architecture and design firms providing design services for corporate, medical, school, government, retail, and industrial facilities nationally. This experience provided the knowledge base from which the idea for the Architecture Resource Center (ARC) has grown.

As Founder and Executive Director for the ARC, Anna leads the collaborative team’s efforts to develop the ARC and implement its mission and goals. Her development experience has secured the Center over $2,000,000 in grants, contracts, materials, and services. In addition to the day-to-day operation and planning of the program, Anna works with the student and faculty populations throughout the Northeast. She has successfully taken the ARC’s design programs to national and international audiences through conferences and workshops in the United States and Europe, which have resulted in numerous state, national, and international awards. Her vision and determination have resulted in an individual National Endowment for the Arts grant for the purpose of writing and documenting the Design Connections© program. She was editor, photographer, and contributing writer for the teacher and student editions of New Haven's Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places©. Anna is currently directing The Hartford Connection© program which will result in publications for secondary school students and teachers in Connecticut and also serve as an interdisciplinary model program for educators throughout the country connecting the local landscape to state and natinal curriculum standards.

Anna has participated on Connecticut State Department of Education and Business and Industries Curriculum Advisory Committees and is a visiting design critic at the University of Hartford Ward College of Technology, where she has served as an adjunct professor. In 1998 Anna was appointed a Master Teaching Artist for the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and Young Audiences of Cnnecticut. She is a certified facilitator for Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection education programs and has recently completed a Master of Arts in Education at Goddard College in Vermont.

Personnel and Consultants
Darlene Susco—As the Director of Visual Communications, Darlene helps define and develop the communication goals and program strategies for the ARC by creating the look of its published products including; curriculum materials, project exhibit publications, ARC promotional and informational materials, proposals, and grant collateral materials. The student and teacher editions of New Haven’s Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places were designed by Darlene whose clear vision in creating order are to be applauded as well as her contributions to ARC’s pedagogical efforts through her understanding of the design process. Recently she wrote and designed the teacher development materials to accompany the Connecticut Historical Society’s Early American Tavern Signs exhibit. She also presented the professional development session at the Historical Society which included fifteen teachers from the Hartford, Connecticut area.

Skilled in the latest design and communication technologies, Darlene’s extensive professional experience also includes copywriting, editing, and product development. Other programs developed on behalf of the ARC by Darlene include an environmental graphic design scavenger hunt – Searching for Signs – which was launched at the 1995 Special Olympics World Games. For the Design Vision program at the Waterbury Enlightenment School, Darlene conducted the professional development and students workshops for the Logo Design and Motivational Poster projects. As a founding member of the ARC and now an Advisory Committee member, Darlene participates in program discussions and decisions.

With a BFA in Playwriting and an MFA in Advertising Design, Darlene is equally adapt at both design and has an unexplainable pathological affinity for the technology used to fabricate ideas. She is the sole proprietor of Susco Visual Communications in Hartford, Connecticut, and has a broad range of creative services to a diverse roster of clients for over ten years.

Jennifer Danner Mauss—As an Architectural Historian, Jennifer is responsible for ensuring that all ARC curriculum materials and teaching methods are compliant with the needs and practices of today’s architects and preservationists. With a Masters of Architectural History from the University of Virginia, a Masters of Architecture from the University of Tennessee, and a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from Maryville College, Jennifer brings the latest in educational thought and practice to the application of an integrated curriculum in today’s classrooms and communities. New to the ARC team of consultants, Jennifer has been instrumental as a principal writer for New Haven's Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places, has updated the programmatic plan for the national model, Design Connections, and is principal researcher and writer for the ARC’s latest collaboration, The Hartford Connection©, a cultural landscape program for all secondary school students and teachers in Connecticut.

Alan Plattus, AIA —Alan is Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the Yale University School of Architecture where he was Associate Dean of the School for ten years, he teaches both undergraduate and graduate level courses and directs the School’s China Studio. He has an independent practice as an urban design consultant and has lectured across the country and abroad on urban history and architectural theory. Alan also founded and directs the Yale Urban Design Workshop, a community design center based at the School of Architecture that has pursued practice-based research on the form and function of neighborhoods, towns and regions, and undertaken civic design projects in cities and towns throughout Connecticut. Professor Plattus frequently conducts design charrettes and policy workshops for citizens and civic leaders. Alan received his B.A. summa cum laude from Yale in 1976, and his Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University in 1979. Before returning to Yale, he taught for seven years at Princeton, and since returning has been a Fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center and of Silliman College.

Allan offers expertise in the areas of architectural design and history, making the resources of the Yale University Urban Design Workshop available and serves on the ARC Board. He wrote the Introduction for the teacher edition of New Haven’s Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places© and serves as a case study writer for The Hartford Connection©, contributing a unit on "Contemporary U.S.", a thematic section dealing with retail through the twentieth century. Alan has participated in numerous teacher institutes for the ARC in conjunction with the New Haven Cultural Landscape© and The Hartford Connection© programs.

Kathleen Hunter —Executive Director of Moving History, Kathleen is a history education consultant, working with school districts and history organizations to interpret local, state and United States History. She holds Masters degrees in History and Education. She has taught school in a wide variety of school settings, and she has worked as a program specialist for the Michigan Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education. Ms. Hunter is the former Director of Education for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a developing partner of the U.S. National Register’s Teaching with Historic Places program, and director of programs at Connecticut’s Old State House. She recently completed a three-year contract as Director of the Teaching American History program for the Connecticut Urban Consortium. Ms. Hunter directed the National Trust’s strategic plan for its education programs, and she developed the curriculum framework for the Teaching with Historic Places program. She has conducted numerous workshops throughout the United States for many hundreds of teachers and historic site personnel, and she has written extensively on local, state and U.S. History.

Kathleen has participated on numerous ARC projects and programs as an advisor, writer, and workshop presenter with plans to work with the ARC in its state programming expansion plans.


Partner Organizations

ARC collaborates with schools, community organizations, art and historical institutions, local and state government agencies, and colleges and universities to plan, develop and deliver its program and has been cited as a prototype for education/business partnerships. There are no other programs in Connecticut offering similar education experiences.

Recent partners include: The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Abolition, and Resistance at Yale University; Trinity College; Yale University Teacher Education College, St. Jospeh College; Old State House; Connecticut State Library; New Haven Museum and Historical Society; and the Capitol Region Education Council. These partners have been supported as well by outstanding regional and state cultural organizations , government agencies and individual scholars and historians!

Volunteers

The ARC’s volunteer corps participation is crucial to the organization’s sustenance and growth.

• 1,200 architects from the American Institute of Architect/Connecticut membership;
• Representatives from each component of a professional design team: graphic designers, industrial designers, engineers, landscape architects, preservationists, planners, developers, lawyers, economists, public officials;
• Teachers contribute project time outside of school hours and collaborate in writing the curriculum;
• Artists, such as photographers, painters, sculptors, graphic designers and writers;
• Crafts and trades people who fashion and provide furniture and equipment;
• Interns – students from high schools and colleges assist in workshop presentations; and,
• Family and friends of project participants.