Frequently citing creativity as the "currency of the new millennium," Texas A&M Architecture Professor Rodney Hill is busy creating excellence through a new generation of thinkers and inventors who are dominating annual student ideas competitions.

Hill, who was deemed "creativity champion" by the American Creativity Association in 2006, teaches architecture design students, as well as undergraduate majors from across the university, while also carrying on an active artistic career as a sculptor. His scholarly interests include social and behavioral factors in architecture, creativity and future studies, and he uses his own creative abilities to shape his teaching methods.

In the Design Process class taught by Hill and colleague, Jorge Vanegas, students are required to enter a variety of design, invention and creativity competitions to find solutions to simple, everyday problems and create what he calls "the next big Aggie invention." The majority of the students in the class are business, biotechnology and engineering majors. And the learning environment created is producing results.

More than 75 percent of the semifinalists in the 2007 Texas A&M Ideas Challenge, held in May, were students of Hill and Vanegas. And the first, second and eight third place winners were current students or alumni of their class. Hill's students also swept the Great Aggie Invention Contest this year, garnering all of the awards, including the Aggie Inventor of 2007. The winners were chosen from 350 entries, which were initially narrowed down to 11 semi-finalists—again all from Hill and Vanegas' Design Process class. A team of six Texas A&M students from the class also recently won three of the five contest categories in the National Entrepreneurship Week USA Challenge, a national competition sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation and The New York Times, which tasks students to take a common everyday object and create a new product with as much value as possible.

"Design thinking pays off in the 21st Century," said Hill. "With our rapidly changing world of new ideas and technology, creativity is in the core of competencies graduates need for a successful career, no matter what their chosen field."

Hill serves as a faculty advisor for the American Institute of Architecture Students, the Entrepreneur Club, and the American Creativity Association student chapter. During his 37 years in the College of Architecture, Hill has earned several professorships and advising and teaching awards. He currently holds an Eppright University Professorship in Undergraduate Teaching Excellence and the Harold L. Adams Interdisplinary Professorship in Architecture.

Most recently, Hill earned the 2007 Wells Fargo Honors Faculty Mentor Award, which is voted on by students in the Honors Program at Texas A&M, as well as the Honors Teacher/Research Award selected by the Honors Program faculty. He was credited for the vast number of honors students who mention him as their motivation for pushing themselves to question the status quo, commit to excellence and become scholars in their chosen fields.

For more information, visit Texas A&M University on the Web at www.tamu.edu and itunes.tamu.edu.

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