July 8, 2026

Ferris State’s Michael McCulloch earns AIA Michigan’s President’s Award for growing architecture education in West Michigan

Michael McCulloch pulled his car over to return a call from Cynthia Pozolo, a former boss and now a leader with American Institute of Architects - Michigan.

She needed to update his contact information, she said, and asked him to call right away. It was a ruse.

“Just kidding,” she said. “You won the AIA Michigan President’s Award.”

McCulloch, a professor of architecture at Ferris State University’s School of Built Environment, received the President’s Award from AIA Michigan – the state component of the organization – last month. The honor recognizes architects who make significant contributions to the field through education or corporate practice, rather than traditional architectural practice.

The award is individual, but the program behind it isn’t a one-person operation. Ferris State’s Master of Architecture launched in 2014 – the newest of Michigan’s five NAAB-accredited architecture programs – and this year combined with a second architecture faculty based in Big Rapids into one program under the School of Built Environment.

McCulloch joined as its first full-time, tenure-track faculty hire, brought on by the program’s founder, and has led it since 2020.

According to AIA Michigan’s award materials, the recognition points to two of McCulloch’s achievements: a design-build project in which he led students in constructing a community greenhouse, and his 2023 book, “Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers’ Houses in Early Twentieth-Century Detroit.”

“It affirms the hard work that all of us are doing here with the Master of Architecture program,” McCulloch said. “The work isn’t just significant at the local level of our community of students and faculty. It makes a difference in the larger scope of the profession.”

The program earned accreditation from the National Architectural Accrediting Board in 2019. Students without a prior architecture degree complete the 90-credit professional degree in three years; those with a pre-professional bachelor’s degree in architecture can finish the 60-credit track in two.

The program remains centered on Ferris State’s Grand Rapids campus and now works alongside the university’s broader architecture faculty based in Big Rapids, with the two campuses trading guest critiques throughout the year.

Faculty are also developing a five-year track that would let students complete their first four years of study in Big Rapids and finish the Master of Architecture in Grand Rapids, shortening the path to the accredited degree.

Every M.Arch student completes a required internship, supported by regional architecture firms. Ties to the AIA Grand Rapids chapter connect students to local firms year-round, and a faculty member serves as a National Council of Architectural Registration Boards licensing advisor, guiding graduates toward professional licensure.

“The architecture practice community is thrilled that this program exists, and that it’s created pathways to becoming an architect right here in West Michigan,” McCulloch said.

That commitment to the region shows up in how McCulloch teaches. This spring, on a study-abroad course called Critical Travel, he took students to Paris and the Normandy region of France and told them to leave their laptops behind.

“We do a lot of digital drawing, digital model-making, high-tech work. We engage with technologies,” McCulloch said. “But this class specifically said we’re going to leave our laptops in Grand Rapids, and we’re going to make hand sketches and fill a sketchbook with reflections and observations about culture in France.”

“That gets at something that is signature of our program,” he said. “We care a lot about culture, about paying attention to the way people live in cities and in buildings. Those analog tools – drawing, hand model-making – allow us to be more perceptive, to really look carefully at the places we’re interested in.”

McCulloch’s scholarship shapes that philosophy directly. His book examined how small architectural details – a shaded porch, a private bedroom, a well-kept yard – shaped the everyday lives of Detroit’s early 20th-century workers.

“We’re always encouraging students to go beyond the big idea, the abstract, and to really hone in on the details and how those details are experienced,” McCulloch said. “I think that makes for much richer architecture.”