Alice E. Novak

Since 1997, Alice Novak has taught UP 420: Planning for Historic Preservation, in which students have created a 1,000 building inventory for the City of Urbana. Now digitized, the project is housed in the Illinois Digital Archives. The student survey substantially contributed to the City of Urbana’s demolition delay ordinance (PDF) in 2007, which specifically cites the course. Novak’s Historic Preservation Workshops are responsible for a number of entries to the National Register of Historic Places, including Buena Vista Court in Urbana; the Main Library, Busey-Evans Residence Hall, and Louise Freer Hall on campus; the Fischer Theatre in Danville; and the Transfer House in Decatur.

Professor Novak received her Master of Urban Planning with a concentration in Preservation Planning, then worked as a Preservation Planner for the Ohio Historic Preservation Office before returning to Urbana-Champaign to work with Professor Lachlan F. Blair in The URBANA Group, historic preservation consultants. She later established her own practice and amassed twenty years of Preservation Planning consulting experience before joining the Department of Urban and Regional Planning full time as Assistant Head in August 2009. She is very pleased to serve as advisor to the SPO/Student Planning Organization and to the Anthemios Chapter of Alpha Rho Chi, the professional fraternity of architecture and the allied arts, of which she is also a member.

Professor Novak has served as Chair of the Urbana Historic Preservation Commission since it began in 1999, after serving on the Urbana Historic Preservation Steering Committee for three years. She returned to the Board of Directors of the Preservation and Conservation Association of Champaign County in 2015 and served as Secretary (2016–17), then President (2017–18) during her three year term. She had also served on the board in the 1990s for seven years including two terms as Vice President and then President. She also held a two-year term on the Board of Directors of Landmarks Illinois and now serves as the Regional Advisor for Central Illinois. Her recent consulting work includes the buildings of the Illinois Central Railroad (local) Historic District and the Lincoln Building in downtown Champaign. She served for three years on the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council, the group which reviews nominations to the National Register of Historic Places. She was Vice Chair of IHSAC in 2011.

Professor Novak is in preservation paradise in her 1933 French Revival house near campus. She finally nominated her house for local landmark status and it was unanimously approved in May 2016, in celebration of Preservation Month.