C. William Bevins, AIA, of Charleston, West Virginia, recently assumed the presidency of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) at the organization's annual meeting in Seattle. His rise to Council leadership was assured a year ago, when he was elected first vice president/president-elect.

Bevins is an owner/vice president of ZMM, Inc., a Charleston-based architectural and engineering firm well-known in the Mid-Atlantic region for its design of numerous award-winning buildings. His public-interest career as a prominent regulatory official was launched in 1989, when he was appointed by the Governor to the West Virginia Board of Architects. Subsequently, he was twice elected to the NCARB Board of Directors, representing the seven states and the District of Columbia which make up the Council's Middle-Atlantic Conference.

Over the past decade, he has been instrumental in the development of a computerized examination—the first among learned professions—which is administered to architectural licensure candidates in all 50 states and the 12 Canadian provinces. He is currently spearheading NCARB's efforts to negotiate agreements with a number of nations through which qualified U.S. and foreign architects may practice in each others' countries. Such agreements have already been forged with China, Canada, and the Czech Republic, while others are currently at an exploratory stage with Japan, Mexico, and New Zealand.

As NCARB's president, Bevins will also lead the Council this year in discussions with architects within the European Union, as well as with the Practice Commission of the International Union of Architects (UIA). Commenting on NCARB's outreach to its regulatory counterparts worldwide, he says, "Globalization is here to stay, and architects have never been more mobile. So we at NCARB couldn't happier that our regulatory colleagues overseas are looking with favor on our system as a model to emulate. It tells us that our mission—to safeguard the public health, safety, and welfare—may soon be spelled out as their mission, too."

A graduate of Virginia Polytechnic and State University, Bevins is currently registered to practice architecture in eight states. He is among some 36,000 registered architects in the U.S. who hold the NCARB Certificate, which qualifies and enables them to gain licensure in most states without further examination.

Bevins is active in numerous cultural and social organizations in the Charleston area. He resides with his wife, Bonita, in Cross Lanes; they are the parents of three sons: Corey, a 1999 graduate of Virginia Polytechnic and State University, and Aaron and Jeremy, who are both juniors at Marshall University.