
Julia Beamich and Kathleen Parrott are professors in the department and JoAnn Emmel is an associate professor emerita. They were honored for their books Kitchen Planning: Guidelines, Codes, Standards (Wiley, 2013) and Bath Planning: Guidelines, Codes, Standards (Wiley, 2013). Both books are in their second edition.
The three faculty members were among the founders of the Center for Real Life Kitchen Design, which opened at Virginia Tech in 1998.


