A legacy of leadership and belonging: Geraldine Forbes Isais

The University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning mourns the loss of former Dean Geraldine Forbes Isais, who died Sept. 25, 2026. Forbes Isais was appointed as the school's first woman dean in 2010. She was a nationally honored educator and a tireless advocate for women and underrepresented people in architecture who believed the university belonged to its community.

"She was also a close friend, mentor, and a cherished colleague. I followed her into the dean's office, and I have felt her example in it every day: her energy, her generosity with students and faculty, and her insistence that we could disagree and still care for one another," said SA+P Dean Robert Gonzalez. "Our thoughts are with her family and with the many people across the country whose lives and careers she shaped. She will be profoundly missed."

Forbes Isais came to architecture by an unusual path. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in cultural anthropology from California State University, Fullerton, and completed graduate work there in ethnomusicology before a growing love of the built environment led her to a Master of Architecture from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

She often credited her great aunt, a teacher who founded kindergartens across Mexico, with leaving a lasting imprint on her sense of what an educator and organizer could be. From 1988 to 1995, she was a partner in the Los Angeles architecture firm Butler, Forbes, Jubany Architecture. She returned from 2001 to 2005 as principal in charge of design at what was then Jubany Architecture.

Forbes Isais began her teaching career early on at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, then at Woodbury University in Burbank, Calif., rising from assistant chair to chair, assistant dean, and founding dean of the university's San Diego campus in 2000. She was later inducted into its Faculty Hall of Fame in 2009.

At Woodbury University, she guided many into the academy, often hiring those she mentored into their first teaching positions. A wide network of faculty across the country benefited from her mentorship. She was a tireless advocate for young scholars and professionals. Forbes Isais went on to serve as a program chair at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Denver before coming to the University of New Mexico in 2005 as director of the architecture program and then dean.

Although she had once been told that a Hispanic woman could never lead the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), she was elected its first Hispanic president in 2003. Forbes Isais was honored as an ACSA Distinguished Professor in 2006, later served as Chancellor of the ACSA College of Distinguished Professors, and was the first president of the ACSA Women's Leadership Council, which she helped build as a mentoring network for women in architectural education. In 2016, DesignIntelligence named her one of its 25 Most Admired Educators in the United States.

As dean of the UNM School of Architecture and Planning, Forbes Isais led the school through years of financial strain with the conviction that the university's edges had to become more permeable. That conviction drove the school's role in Innovate ABQ. That same philosophy shaped her research, including work with Professor of Architecture and current director of Community Engagement Initiatives Tim Castillo on cultural cartography and the acequias of the Embudo Valley in northern New Mexico, which explored how digital tools could help communities document and strengthen their own cultural landscapes.

Two of the School's research centers were established during her deanship. She secured the gift that led to the establishment of the Predock Center for Design and Research, and helped spearhead the Indigenous Design and Planning Institute with Distinguished Professor and Regents' Professor in the Community & Regional Planning Program, Ted Jojola. Faculty and staff fondly remember her presence at the school, especially her warm interactions with students and her spontaneous desk crits and words of encouragement.

Upon stepping down as dean in 2019 and subsequently retiring, Forbes Isais established two endowed scholarships at the school. She created the Forbes Lawton Scholarship with her lifelong partner, Susan Lawton, who preceded her in death, and the Gilberto Churchill Forbes Scholarship in honor of their son, who survives her. Both will carry her devotion to students forward for generations.