2025 Awardee Spotlight: Margot McDonald, Leadership in Solar Architecture and Design Award
For advancing passive solar design, sustainable building, and solar education, enriching students and inspiring teachers for a better world.
Margot McDonald is a full professor of architecture at Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo, a member of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, and a leader in the LEED program for more than 20 years. She had earned national notoriety for her teaching and student mentorship, using an integrated project delivery studio drawing on architecture, structural engineering, construction management, and landscape architecture. Other teaching disciplines have ranged from building energy systems to historic preservation and advanced design. Her professional consulting work includes collaboration with Sasaki Associates on the sustainability master plan for Cal State University–Monterey Bay and contributions to planning for sustainable campus infrastructure improvements at Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo. She has been a member of the ASES Board of Directors as well as an active ASES Fellow. Passionate about passive solar since her graduate-student days, Margot asserts that the discipline lays a foundation for the climate-responsive strategies that are essential today.
Celebrate with us at the SOLAR 2025 Awards Banquet on Tuesday, August 5, at 6pm MT at the University of Colorado Boulder!
Learn more at ases.org/awards.
Register for the Awards Banquet:ASES SOLAR 2025 Registration hosted by Whova
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Ella Nielsen
Membership & Engagement Director
American Solar Energy Society
Boulder CO
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