Alumnus Rod Booze just loves the idea of making a buck with a pencil. But the managing partner of Arlington’s Ascension Group Architects is moved by more than the bottom line—even when the job takes him to remote parts of the globe.

“It’s pretty gratifying to start with a blank piece of paper and end up at the end of the day, despite the size of the project, with something you can walk in, touch, feel and taste,” said Booze, who earned his B.S. in architecture in 1990 and his master’s in architecture in 1993.

His passion is evident in one of Ascension’s latest projects: the construction of a $100 million medical facility, the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in Alaska.

Located 50 miles north of Anchorage, the 215,000-square-foot medical center contains 50 medical/surgical beds, an intensive care unit, a progressive care unit, obstetrics facilities and a cardiac catheterization laboratory. It opened in February 2005, and Ascension is now overseeing the construction of a medical office building, expected to break ground this summer.

“Alaska really is, to a great extent, an undeveloped frontier where people literally live off the land,” Booze said. “To be able to build a hospital for communities like that is pretty exciting.”

— Susan M. Slupecki