3
OPINION
Universities do their students a disservice if they leave their programs without a fundamental understanding of what the career they have chosen entails. A call for rethinking AEC education
I ’ve had many discussions with peers and recent graduates about the disconnect between an architectural education in the U.S. and the actual practice of architecture. Based on these discussions and my observations as the person responsible for hiring at our 40-person firm, I believe there is a strong argument for a significant shift in the curriculum and teaching methodology at architecture schools.
Nea May Poole, AIA, LEED, AP
In the past 20 years, I have had three interns leave the profession in under a year because it was so different from their expectations. A while back, I had a recent graduate (two months out of school) seriously ask me how long it would be before he was lead designer at the firm. I told him a strong designer understands, and is inspired by, codes, budgets, client needs, and of course, how a building goes together. Without that basis, a design is sculpture for someone else to make a reality. But this is not new; at the University of Virginia, my first class was taught by a “professor” who was 25 years old and had left one of the finest design firms in the world after just two years for life as an academic because he had no interest in the reality of architecture. However, on a positive note, the majority of our recent
graduates were thrilled to discover architecture was a much more colorful tapestry than their university ever indicated. They thrived on learning how buildings went together, grew confident as they coordinated with engineers and clients, and some were even genuinely curious to learn about codes. One of my favorite parts of mentoring is getting to take interns who have been working on a project to “their” jobsite for the first time. To get the perspective of recent graduates, I held a roundtable discussion with eight employees who had graduated within the last four years. They were from four-, five-, and six-year programs and half graduated from universities ranked in the top 15 of American architecture programs. The most common
See NEA MAY POOLE , page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER MAY 30, 2022, ISSUE 1443
Made with FlippingBook Annual report