Message from the President of the National Architectural Accrediting Board

Barbara Sestak, FAIA
PSU Professor of Architecture and President of the National Architectural Accrediting Board

Being asked to write this article had me reflecting over the transitions in my life and the people along the way that influenced who I am today and what I do.  I’ll tell you about a few.

I grew up on the east coast and attended the University of Pennsylvania to major in architecture, not knowing much about it but it sounded intriguing.  There were 48 students who graduated with a major in architecture, 2 of us were women. In order to get my professional degree I moved to the west coast to attend the University of Washington.  What a change in cultures! At both schools I had some wonderful experiences and a few that weren’t.  Fully focused on being in practice, I did think that if I ever had an opportunity to teach, that I would…….

I was in practice for several years in Seattle and Portland primarily doing multifamily housing, commercial and industrial work, and planned unit developments.  I was very fortunate that I was working in smaller firms where I was doing everything from initial design all the way through construction management.  I loved it.  Then a “recession” hit, interest rates went sky-high, construction stopped, and architectural firms were laying off their staff.  There was a 9-month full-time teaching position open at Portland State University that I was interviewed for and was hired.  This was an opportunity to try out some ideas that I had about teaching, and then I fully intended to go back into an architectural firm.  35+ years later, I am still teaching.

One of the most exciting things about being an architect is seeing your designs come to fruition and walking into spaces that you envisioned.  I love to build whether it is a physical environment, an academic program or an organization. Since joining PSU as the only full-time faculty member in architecture, I helped guide and develop the program over the years from a 2-year transfer program, to a 4-year BA/BS major in architecture to a fully accredited 4+2 Master of Architecture degree.  I certainly did not do it alone, and skills in building and working as a team were definitely influenced by work done in school and in practice.

For all that I enjoyed teaching and developing the architecture program, I did miss practice. 

Staying connected with the profession was important to me and I started to get involved in AIA Portland through the Architects in Schools program, which was originally run by the chapter before being taken over by AFO.  I served on the AIA Portland Board and became the first woman President of AIA Portland.  Nominated by AIA Portland and selected by the Governor, I served 12 years on the Oregon Board of Architect Examiners.  Each connection led to more.  During that time I was on several AIA NW & Pacific Region committees, did 12 accreditation visits, including two internationally, and was on a series of NCARB committees ranging from Education, Practice Analysis, IDP and ARE, each area having some impact on practice.  The breadth of service and connections with different architectural organizations was a reason why NCARB nominated me to be on the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB).  I joined NAAB in October 2017 and am currently the NAAB President.

Through its Conditions and Procedures, the NAAB influences architectural programs in what they teach and how they operate.  The Conditions and Procedures are revised every 6 to 8 years.  Starting in October 2017, ARForum19 was a totally different approach to revising the Conditions and Procedures for Accreditation by involving other sister organizations over two years of collaborative work culminating with the Board of Directors of ACSA, AIA, AIAS, NAAB, NCARB and NOMA coming together for several days to finalize the direction of the Conditions and Procedures.  Not only was this the very first time that all the Boards got together, but each organization influenced, accepted and approved the Shared Values that we all espouse.  These Shared Values became the cornerstone of the NAAB Conditions and Procedures for Accreditation. 

Topics and research during that time included the direction and needs of the profession, the lack of diversity within our profession, the cost of education and debt for students, studio and teaching culture, the breadth of what the curriculum needs to include, and how we assess ourselves, our programs and our students. All of this is reflected within the final NAAB 2020 Conditions and Procedures for Accreditation approved in January 2020, which has some major differences from the previous documents. NAAB’s focus shifted to implementing these new documents through training on the new changes with programs and visiting teams.  And then COVID-19 hit…..

We all have been impacted in a variety of ways.  As for me, our program went to remote teaching and is continuing to do so.  The NAAB went to a remote office and changed how the Board worked. Accreditation visits and timelines were revised, virtual accreditation visits for the next three years were mandated starting this fall, and information on COVID-19 is highlighting its disproportionately high impact on communities of color and systemic racism that we need to grapple with.  All of this requires new ways of operation and thinking.

What I learned along the way:

• It is rare that anything can be done alone; connections with others is critical

• Get out of your comfort zone and try something

• Be flexible

• Get involved

• None of this is easy but doing it is important

There are a variety of ways to make a difference.  Take the step to get involved at whatever level you are in your career: in AIA Oregon serving on committees or as participants at events; as mentors, crit reviewers, guest speakers and in an advisory capacity at the universities; find your passion within your communities and let your voice be heard.

I plan to join the October 2 AIA Oregon Virtual Happy Hour to discuss the NAAB and the future of the profession.  Click here to register and join me!

Message from the Director of the School of Architecture, Portland State University

Jeff Schnabel, Director
School of Architecture
Portland State University

I am pleased to be sharing my thoughts with my professional colleagues.  Too often there seems to be this strange line between academia and the profession.  For me it is a very faint line, if it exists at all.  I came to Portland State University after practicing decades in architecture and landscape architecture firms in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Portland.  For many years I straddled the fence between practice and adjunct teaching. I see what we are doing in the University as part of a continuous stream of activities to educate future architects.  At PSU we are blessed with a design community that engages with our students at every level of their education.  But, in the spirit of blurring that line even further, I offer the following information in hopes of a deep and meaningful dialogue.

It is long overdue that those of us in higher education own the fact that we are a major, if not THE major, barrier to diversity within the profession of architecture.  It is late, but I am pleased to say that the Portland State University School of Architecture is enthusiastically working to break down these barriers. We are doing so with the architecture profession as our partner.  I would like to acknowledge that the following proposals build upon the thoughtful work of Professor Andrew Santa Lucia and Professor Anna Goodman who are leading diversity and inclusion initiatives for both the School and the College.

Our initiatives currently fall into three broad categories:

1.     Increasing awareness of architecture as a profession for students of color.

2.     Removing financial barriers for students of color to attend a professional architecture program.

3.     Creating an environment within the School of Architecture where students of color can thrive.  

Increasing awareness of architecture as a profession for students of color.

The Architecture Foundation of Oregon does a spectacular job getting young students excited about design and planning.  Unfortunately, as students get older the prospects of attending college cool this excitement.  Starting the summer of 2021, PSU Architecture will offer a free summer immersion program for high school students.  Initially we will be working with counselors from local high schools to identify and encourage potential students.  The program will be led by Professor Santa Lucia, but will be taught by graduate students from within the program.  We want to reignite these students’ interest in architecture, connect them with students that are already enrolled, and normalize the campus experience.  By reaching out to architecture firms, I have received excellent recommendations on how to conduct outreach and to ensure participation.  I have also been given generous offers from practitioners of color to participate in the program as mentors and evidence for these students that a career in architecture is indeed possible.

Removing financial barriers for students of color to attend a professional architecture program.

This is going to be a significant challenge, but one we must confront head on.  Currently the 4 plus 2 professional architecture degree we offer at Portland State has in-state tuition and fees costs of around $70,000 (we are on the inexpensive end of the spectrum).  This does not include housing, transportation, or supplies.  Yes, student loans are available and we do offer some scholarships, but these tend to be in the $2,000 range.  The current scholarships do indeed make an impact on students, but if we are going to get serious about diversifying our student body, we need to think in terms of full scholarships for students.  On the University side, we need to reduce costs and bolster tuition remissions.  We can also make choices that ensure a student gets a quality education in timely matter. On the community side, we need to raise funds for scholarships. None of us has the resources for funding full scholarships, but if we all contribute a little, we can bundle the contributions to create a funded pathway for deserving students.

Creating an environment within the School of Architecture where students of color can thrive. 

For students of color who join our program we can and must do a better job of creating an environment where they feel a sense of belonging and their forms of expression are heard and appreciated.  To that end, we are committed to the following:

• Creating peer and professional mentor groups that simultaneously create community and offer advice on navigating the architecture curriculum as a student of color.

• Providing clear, safe lines of communications with faculty, advisors, and administrators to give voice to students about what is working and what is creating hardship within the program.  This must be followed with thoughtful responses and actions.

• Enhancing the diversity of full time and adjunct faculty.

• Diversifying review panels to better reflect the diversity of our students.

• Updating our course precedents to reflect architecture work from all over the world, not just Europe and North America.

• Offering studios that engage a full spectrum of communities and project types.

• Featuring the work and voices of architects of color in our courses, symposia, and lecture series.

The truth is that by embracing actions to serve the underserved and underrepresented, we are actually making our program richer and more meaningful for all who teach and attend.  By extension, it will do the same for the profession.  I am deeply grateful to the firms who have spoken with me about these initiatives.  Your insights continue to be incredibly valuable and necessary. I look forward to expanding these conversations with practice and partnering to make these ideas our new reality.

I will be participating in the 9/25 AIA Oregon Virtual Happy Hour to discuss all this and I encourage you to join me.  Click on the following link to register.

Message from the Associate Professor and Head, Department of Architecture, UO

Nancy Cheng, RA, LEED AP
Associate Professor and Head, Department of Architecture, UO

Hi, I’m Nancy Cheng, Department Head and Associate Professor at the University of Oregon (UO).  I’ve taught at UO for over 20 years, enjoying 2009-2014 as director of the UO Portland Architecture Program. I want to tell you about my mentors as I am eager to connect UO students to design professionals.

Do you remember someone who helped you along the way?  They were part of your mentoring circle and I would like to encourage you to support our mentoring circle program.

As the daughter of immigrants who grew up in St. Louis, it helped me a lot to have great mentors.  I was the shy middle sister who loved to read and draw, letting the older sister talk to adults.  My parents came to the U.S. for graduate studies when there was a lot of political turmoil in China. With four kids, our family was always trying to save money, so I loved “How to Make Things from Scrap Materials” and I did a lot of sewing, printmaking and pottery as a teenager. I learned that you can envision a project done quickly, but every project requires overcoming stumbling blocks along the way (i.e. seam ripper). While my parents were in science and engineering, our ranch house had Danish lounge chairs and knockoffs of the Saarinen tulip dinette set.  My brother and I went into architecture in part because a family friend, Mason Jen, was a successful architect for HOK who worked on the thin-shelled hyperboloid planetarium with Gyo Obata. Modernist sculptors like my teacher Erwin Hauer gave me love for sculpting surfaces.

How I got into teaching computational design was through one mentor after another. My boss, Gary Graham, bought one of the first Macs, and we were so excited to create really crude plan and elevation drawings with a Laserwriter.  When I went to grad school, it was a huge opportunity to be taken under the wing of digital design expert William J. Mitchell (Bill), who later became dean of MIT.  Originally from Australia, he came to Harvard after spending enough time in California to be on a different wavelength from the many of the Europeans running the school.  He was a master at explaining complex ideas in simple English and conveying his excitement for the “bleeding edge” of technology.  With the many international post-professional students he attracted, we had a little skunkworks for experimentation. Among the tutors he hired to teach emerging software, I was very excited to meet Erin Hoffer (later an Autodesk guru) who was my height (tallest of the Cheng sisters!) and with cropped straight black hair.  But it didn’t matter what my mentors looked like, as they believed in me and provided me opportunities. Assisting Bill Mitchell and working with Jerzy Wojtowicz, a returning doctoral student with a mischievous wit, got me my first teaching job at the University of Hong Kong, where I learned that being the only native English speaker in the room is a great way to build self-confidence in public speaking. One mentor produced a network: Students of Bill (SOB’s) who teach around the world.

Connection during a time of crisis

A key challenge of the pandemic is how to strengthen social connection among our scattered community: we want to find ways to support each other better. Our classes will be remote, taught mainly through live videoconferencing with whiteboards, chat tools and online. Many of our students have had few professional opportunities due to the small architectural community in Eugene. We are concerned that the lockdown is furthering their isolation, especially for those from low-income and underrepresented communities.

Our department is eager to train students to be resilient, able to cope with a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.  As I really feel my privilege during this time of wildfires, pandemic, racial violence and political strife, I will be focusing my Timber Tectonics studio on DIY shelter for the unhoused, incremental housing for microvillages. While incorporating the latest research on health, urbanism, building science and tectonics, our community is grappling with how to fully integrate spatial justice and anti-racist approaches into our teaching. Our students are eager to learn from you how to design projects that respond to diverse clients, reduce wildfires, protect watersheds and wildlife corridors and support ecologically sound transportation networks and material consumption systems. Our students must learn how to measure environmental impacts and inhabitant comfort in their design projects.

Can you help?

Students’ design abilities flourish when they are taken under the wing of an experienced architect. It’s not only the design advice, but also the invaluable encouragement when the students are emotionally drained.

Mentoring CirclesBecause a one-on-one situation creates a lot of pressure, we are pulling together participants to meet each other virtually in small, informal groups around common interests.  Reps from AIA Oregon, Room for More, Design for Diversity and AIAS have worked with our UO team on this plan.  We created the Mentoring Circles program in the hope that the small commitment of 3 to 4 meetings over 10 weeks can open up the opportunity to form ongoing relationships.  Each group will be led by a professional (or two) who guides up to six mentees in a conversation about a topic of common interest. Mentors optionally attend an initial prep meeting October 1st and then we will start with a virtual kick-off event on October 8th, both at 5:30PM Pacific time. After that initial meeting, the small groups will meet at least two more times for about an hour (once in November and once in December), facilitated by the leading professional(s) and a student volunteer. The topics for each subsequent meeting can vary according to the interests and needs of the participants. 

The intentions of this initiative are:

·       To connect those at different stages of professional development

·       To provide encouragement and mutual support 

·       To develop mentees' networking skills and professional contacts

·       To create a setting in which professionals can gain fresh perspectives while sharing expertise

·       To create more opportunities for professionals to recruit future staff

If you fill out this form, it will help us to match mentees with professionals.
SIGN ME UP:  https://oregon.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6s5YGw9WiHa3oc5

Want to learn more?  Join the Friday 9/18 AIA Oregon Virtual Happy Hour to discuss the Mentoring Circles program and chat about how your favorite mentor changed your life.  Click here to register.

Hope that you can join us for these casual meetups and Help a Duck!

Best regards,

Nancy Cheng