Celebrating Melissa Harris

Beloved professor, architect, and colleague retires after 36 years at Taubman College

As Melissa Harris, associate professor of architecture, retires after 36 years at Taubman College, colleagues Anya Sirota, associate dean for academic initiatives and professor of architecture, and Antje Steinmuller, chair and professor of architecture, offer this reflection on her extraordinary legacy as a teacher, administrator, architect, and beloved member of the college community.

Dear Taubman College Community,

It is with deep appreciation (and, candidly, disbelief) that we share the news of Melissa Harris’ retirement from Taubman College. For more than three decades, Melissa has been a singular force here: a teacher with uncommon passion, an administrator who never dodged the hard work, and an artist-architect whose eye and curiosity have shaped generations of students and colleagues alike.

Those who have worked with Melissa know that her moral compass doesn’t break. She brings together a fierce sense of principle and a candor that disarms. It’s the kind of clarity that cuts through noise, throws open a window, and restores the oxygen in a room. And the Southern twang only makes her points sharper. She speaks plainly because she knows exactly what’s at stake.

Melissa joined the University of Michigan in 1990, after formative stints at Esherick, Homsey, Dodge and Davis; with Edward Larrabee Barnes; with Helmer Stenros in Helsinki; and even as the excavation architect at the Seila Pyramid in Egypt. Her early professional trajectory reads like a catalog of architectural touchstones, but it only hints at the broader terrain of her work here at Taubman College: Associate Dean, Interim Chair, Undergraduate Director, tireless committee member, reviewer, juror, advisor, and asker-of-the-right-questions across three decades of service. The list is long because Melissa always said yes to the work that mattered.

Teaching, for Melissa, has never been a performance of expertise but a full-bodied act of care. She knows every student’s name, remembers every mark made on every sheet of paper, and carries an almost astonishing belief in the potential of each person she encounters. Direct Drawing, The Sketchbook, first-year design studio — these courses have become the college’s de facto initiation rites. Under Melissa’s eye, students learn not simply to see, but to look: slowly, structurally, imaginatively, and with a disciplined ethic of attention.

Her sketchbook (analog and digital), which she has treated as a daily site of inquiry for some 40 years, is the clearest map of her sensibility: part analysis, part delight, always attuned to the behaviors of buildings and the idiosyncrasies of place. These drawings, shown in national and international exhibitions and recognized by the American Society of Architectural Perspectivists, are acts of thinking. They model the whimsical but rigorous interpretation of the world that Melissa invites all of us to practice: architecture as a way to read, to wonder, to stay alive, to be present, and to remain relevant through the simple, enduring superpower of the pencil.

What makes Melissa’s career so striking is the sheer range of her curiosity. Few architects toggle more deftly between the social, the technical, the artistic, and the pedagogical. She created the first cadette-level Girl Scout badge in architecture; she shaped the Yosemite design guidelines; she amassed teaching awards; she was licensed; she built exhibitions; she built trust; and she instilled a discipline of close observation here that will continue to shape us for years to come.

And through it all, Melissa has been an engine for humanity, a generous colleague who raises standards not through pressure but through care, and who consistently reminds us why this work matters. We refuse to believe she is truly leaving our daily orbit, because we know she will continue to influence this college in the way the most indelible teachers do: through the gestures, habits, and insights that stay with us long after the studio lights have dimmed.

In true Melissa fashion, she’s asked that we wait to celebrate until the end of the spring semester, giving all of us the time to take in the news and to gather ourselves. And when we do come together, we can offer the collective awe and warm applause she so fully deserves.

Melissa, thank you for your years of service, your sharp eye, your wholehearted teaching, your inexhaustible curiosity, your humor, your drawings, your twang, your questions, your capaciousness, your heart, your infinite inspiration. You have given this community far more than we can adequately name.

We wish you a retirement filled with wonder, days in your sketchbook, new discoveries, and the same expansive joy you have given so many.

With admiration and immeasurable gratitude, Anya and Antje (and the wider Melissa Harris Fan Club)