Roxana Vargas-Greenan
Instructor

Roxana is a licensed architect with expertise in housing and mixed-use building typologies, development scenarios, building design and masterplanning. She combines her experience in housing and sustainable design to incorporate affordability into green building design. Her work includes several architectural and urban design projects in California and Florida. In California, she worked at Fisher Friedman Associates and Solomon E.T.C. and led several projects including the mixed-use Othello Building in Seattle, Highland Park Hope VI apartment building in Milwaukee and the masterplan for the San Francisco parcels of the Brisbane Baylands.

While in Florida, she worked as a designer in an architecture firm specializing in housing and participated as an urban designer in charrettes which emphasized public participation, included projects for Key Largo, Ft. Lauderdale, the Fort Pierce waterfront, Downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Waller Creek in Austin, Texas. The projects ranged from corridor revitalization to downtown master planning.

Currently in her private practice, Vargas Greenan Architects, she is working with the City of Portland, Oregon to develop construction documents for permit ready plans that will be available to the public.

Roxana is a LEED certified professional and an Instructor of Architecture at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She holds a Masters in Urban Design from the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelors of Architecture from the Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, Peru.

She has been awarded top honors in national and international competitions. Recent Awards include a grand prize winning entry for the National Orange County Smart Growth Competition for the redesign of a Costa Mesa, CA strip mall into a neighborhood center. A merit award winning entry for the International Monterey AIA Housing Solutions Competition transforms a disinvested commercial corridor into a mixed-use Central Business District. A runner-up proposal for the two phase Broadway Square Design Competition in Fargo, ND introduces a gateway monument to announce the revitalized downtown.

Jennifer M. Asselstine
Instructor

Jennifer is a licensed architect and runs her own design office in San Anselmo. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Minnesota, where she was honored with an award from the American Institute of Architects. Ms. Asselstine went on to work for RTKL and CS&D in Baltimore, Maryland. She later moved to the U.K., where she studied at the Architectural Association in London and later worked for WATG Architects.

Ms. Asselstine has worked in the U.S., London, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Sydney, Australia on a broad range of projects, from hotel and resort design and senior housing, to an IMAX theater. The Red Cross Headquarters and Blood Processing Center, which was designed by Ms. Asselstine for CS&D Architects in Baltimore, Maryland, won a Design Award from the American Society of Interior Designers. She currently specializes in single-family housing and community design work.

Jennifer Lee
Instructor

Jennifer completed her architectural studies at the University of Oregon (B.Arch.) in 1991, where she was a teacher's assistant for a design studio, and an alumni guest critique. After her studies, she held two architecture internship positions in Barcelona and Munich, working on Olympic buildings in Spain and a savings bank in Germany. Later, she completed projects in Juneau, Alaska for two years before moving back to Portland, Oregon, where she worked in several small to mid-size firms as Project Designer/Manager.

Jennifer has worked on all sorts of projects, from low-income bungalows to retail to research facilities. She is a two-time winner of the Oregon Governor’s Award for Livabilty, in 1996 and 2000. She was honorably mentioned in Progressive Architetcure's Courthouse Competition, and her drawings can be found in Modern Architecture II by Kenneth Frampton.

Jennifer was recently Project Manager at Levy Design Partners in San Francisco, but left to begin Firm Foundations Design in 2004. Jennifer joined the Academy of Art University's Architecture department in 2004.

Elizabeth A. Tippin
Instructor

Elizabeth A. Tippin is an adjunct professor teaching Architectural Professional Practice. She is an attorney specializing in legal and business counsel to several architectural firms and other design professionals. Her experience includes general counsel services such advising on business organization, contract drafting, real estate issues, employment issues, quality assurance, and business development. Her litigation experience includes mediation, arbitration and trials, and she is often selected as an arbitrator and/or mediator for construction cases. Some of the cases she has handled include:

• Design and construction: design error and omission, construction defect, surveys, delay and acceleration claims, professional fee dispute claims. Projects include convention centers and infrastructure issues of large development projects, commercial buildings including offices, schools, mixed-use projects, multi-unit residential complexes and single family homes.
• Business and insurance disputes: breach of contract, partnership formation and dissolution agreements, copyright disputes, insurance coverage and bad faith litigation.
• Real Property: land use, real estate broker liability, non-disclosure relating to buy-sell agreements, flood and landslide cases, landlord-tenant.
• Environmental disputes: hazardous waste, toxic torts, site assessment.
• Employment disputes: wrongful termination, discrimination and whistle blowing.
• Products liability and personal injury: construction products, automobile/motorcycle/ATV cases, punch and printing presses.