Tuesday, November 14, via Zoom, 11 am – 12:30 pm, Central Time
Opportunities for design students to study the built environment at graduate school range widely, from accredited professional degrees (M.Arch, MLA, MUP, etc.), to other programs at architecture schools that integrate studio and research, to paths in adjacent fields that somehow incorporate design thinking. But it is often very difficult for students to discern salient differences between offerings, especially in studio-based tracks. How do we best support students as they sort through programs, program types and destinations? What kind of advice do they need, and what are the most helpful questions for us, or for them, to ask? How do our ongoing global climate crisis and the rapid changes programs are undergoing to emphasize it shape these questions? When might a student be happier pursuing a typical professional degree, and when might they be happier forging a less standard path?
Our second conversation in this year’s Architectural Studies NOW series will be relevant not only for educators within Architectural Studies programs, but also for anyone else advising students considering graduate school in design. This session will follow on, but have quite different emphasis from, last February’s event, which focused on graduate school from an admissions qualification and application process perspective. (There is no need to have attended this earlier meeting.)
In this session we will discuss a set of twenty questions we have developed to facilitate feedback from current graduate students with an eye toward crucial program differences that may not be obvious or easy to spot otherwise. We have asked a handful of our former students now pursuing graduate study, in several countries, to respond to these questions, and both the questions and sample responses will be shared, as a starting point for our conversation. After that, we will welcome attendees to share their own insights about their students' and former students' experiences, and their own questions and ideas about how we could support one another in advising students.
Session organizers:
Luke Joyner, University of Chicago, lukejoy@uchicago.edu
Sophie Read, University College London, sophie.read@ucl.ac.uk
Zoom link: