Chuck Griffin, AIA, NCARB, and Kelly Headden, AIA, NCARB, are two of the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s 2019 Alumni Service Award winners. 

Griffin is BarberMcMurry Architects’ President and CEO, and Headden is the firm’s Executive Vice President and COO. Griffin and Headden were recognized for their personal and professional service to the University. 

Both oversee the BarberMcMurry Professorship at the College of Architecture and Design, the largest endowment at the College at $1 million — a fund which brings internationally recognized architects to teach at UT for a full semester. 

Griffin graduated from UT’s College of Architecture + Design with honors in 1984, the same year he began a full-time career at BarberMcMurry. He has been a partner-in-charge at the firm for 24 years, specializing in healthcare and higher education design. He has overseen more than $835 million in healthcare construction — including dozens of projects at the University of Tennessee Medical Center, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, and Covenant Health. He has also overseen dozens of higher education projects for Tennessee Board of Regents universities, community colleges and TCATs. 

He is also a graduate of Leadership Knoxville and serves as chair of the Pellissippi State Community College Foundation Board and the Cokesbury United Methodist Church Board of Trustees. 

Headden is a 1988 honors graduate and Chancellor’s Citation recipient of the College of Architecture and Design. In his 30-plus years at BarberMcMurry, he has guided some of the firm’s largest and most complex projects, among them, the firm’s design work at the University of Tennessee — including the award-winning Natalie L. Haslam Music Center, Joint Institute for Advanced Materials and new Student Union. Other recent projects include the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Rocky Top Sports World and sports facilities at Maryville College. 

He is a longtime supporter of UT, serving as a Big Orange Give ambassador, a UT Chancellor’s Associate and a member of the College of Architecture + Design’s Advisory Board and Dean’s Advocacy Board. He is a graduate of Leadership Knoxville and Leadership Sevier, and serves on the board of directors for AIA Tennessee and SmartBank Knoxville, as well as serving on the Helen Ross McNabb Center Events Committee and the Knoxville Open Championship Committee.

BarberMcMurry has won two Awards of Excellence from the International Interior Design Association Tennessee Chapter at its annual Composing Great Design Awards ceremony in Nashville in early August. 

The firm was recognized for its interior design at Analysis & Measurement Services Corporation with the Award of Excellence in Small Corporate Design and for its work with Kingdom Design Ministries with the Award of Excellence in Long-Term Care Design. 

At AMS, BarberMcMurry designed a renovated addition that houses laboratory and testing spaces, as well as a state-of-the-art electromagnetic compatibility chamber. The interior design is carefully curated to reflect the AMS brand — from an embedded, custom-colored logo in the poured Terrazzo floor to the use of the company’s distinctive orange against otherwise spartan interiors. 

With Kingdom Design Ministries, BarberMcMurry donated services, funds and employee volunteer hours to support a Blount County teen who was diagnosed with “locked-in syndrome” following a brain aneurysm and stroke. BarberMcMurry and Blount County Realtor Jackie Mills worked with Kingdom Design Ministries to renovate Jonathan’s bedroom to be fully accessible for his motorized wheelchair and to upgrade the décor of the room to reflect his love of video games, which he can play with the help of an eye gaze computer and his older brother, Timmy. 

BMA donated professional interior design services to the effort, and 11 BarberMcMurry employees volunteered during the construction weekend to complete the renovation. In partnership with Mills, the team has raised $4,660 toward supplies and materials needed for the renovation. Additionally, more than 25 furniture, paint and technology vendors and suppliers have donated materials or labor to the effort, and many of those companies had employees volunteering during renovation weekend. 

The project was previously recognized as the winner of Kingdom Design Ministries’ own awards: the Judges’ Choice Award, People’s Choice Award, and Kids’ Choice Award. 

BarberMcMurry’s interior design team is the largest of any architecture firm in the area, with five interior designers, four of whom have earned their NCIDQ.