Architecture Building
To keep up with drastic technological changes in the architecture field, faculty members plan to overhaul the architecture school’s 40-year-old curriculum and integrate more online and blended learning courses.
By 2015, faculty members hope to have a new series of courses that address the new digital technology for designing and building structures that has emerged in the architecture profession in recent years. Administrators also plan to adopt more blended learning courses, which combine computer-based learning activities with traditional in-person discussions.
“There have been radical and fundamental changes to how computerized technology is used in architecture that we needed to adapt to,” architecture professor Michael Ambrose said.
The new curriculum will also feature an expanded variety of elective courses that would allow students to customize their tracks depending on what interests them, whether it is traditional architecture, industrial design or even fashion design.
“It will be a modular curriculum, where you can build your own pathway. … Students will be able to get a variety of content from different paths and routes of design,” architecture professor Brian Kelly said. “We don’t just want to push people through to become architects, but instead make a curriculum with adaptable interests and needs to accommodate students’ change in career goals. We have failed people if we cannot get them a meaningful career.”
Niki Green, a freshman and former architecture major, said she also hopes the new curriculum will allow underclassmen to get more hands-on experience and instructioon in “true architecture.”
“First you take an intro class to architecture for your freshman year,” Green said. “I wish there was a way we could start doing more building and architecture earlier on.”
With the current curriculum, Kelly said faculty members are finding it challenging to include general education classes and requirements with architecture students’ already heavy workloads. He said they also have difficulty finding ways to easily transfer credits to graduate schools or other colleges or majors.
Plans for the overhaul are still in their infancy, and faculty members are going through a year of analyzing the best ways to change the curriculum to fit students’ needs. Kelly expects it will take another year to actually design the courses and the new program.
Whatever changes are made, Kelly said the difficulty and rigor of the courses will stay roughly the same. Because most students do not learn about architecture or visual design before college, faculty members have to ensure all students who complete the program are capable of making safe, well-designed buildings and completing the tests and internships needed to get a professional architecture license, he said.
Caroline Jean Buffum, a senior architecture major said, she thinks the changes will greatly help architecture students improve their craft, and allowing them to customize their tracks will give them a head start in mastering the necessary skills.
“In both upper-level classes and in real-life work, you must know how to argue your points. You can’t just expect to sit and listen,” she said. “You need to know how to discuss things with people you work with.”
