End of Year Academic Meeting Schedule

Last Updated: Saturday 25 April, noon.

End of Semester Reviews

Last Updated: Friday 24 April, noon.

Confirmed Visitors:
George Gintole, Professor at the School of Architecture, UTx-Arlington
Grant Alford, TTU Alum and Visiting Assistant Professor '09-'10
Ron Gover, HKS Architects in Dallas
Michael Hughes, Architect and Professor @ UArkansas
Arthur Anderson, Architect in Austin
Marissa Hébert, Alum with RMKM Architecture in Albuquerque
M.J. Neal, AIA. Alum, Architect and Professor @ UTx
Michael Banman, Architect with Stan-Tec Architecture in Winnipeg
Greg Hagmann, Alum and Architect in Dallas
Michael Binick, Alum in Houston
David Stewart, GGO Architects in Dallas

schedule:
Monday, April 27th
AM: Second Year Studio
PM: Third Year Studio
Tuesday, April 28th
All Day: Graduate Studios

Feel free to leave your comments or changes as either an email to b.rex@ttu.edu or as a comment to this post.

Motion Passed by Curriculum Committee : Core Math Requirements

The committee passed the following motion, which is now open to your comment and review:

Recommend math sequence, Math 1321 (Trigonometry) and Phil 2310 (Formal Logic) or Math 1550 (Pre-Calculus) and Phil 2310 (Formal Logic).

Justification for this is three-fold:
a) Analytic Geometry, which was our highest level math course required is no longer offered in the Math Department, so a reconsideration was required.
b) Committee members felt that Calculus 1 was too much to ask but Trig was not advanced enough.
c) Logic is a core math course and delivers critical reasoning, simple functions, and an introduction to simple parameters of programming and scripting that is a growing concern in architectural practice..

Your questions, concerns, and affirmations are welcome as comments to this post or you can talk to any one of the curriculum committee members present for this motion: Kuhn Park, Kentaro Tsubaki, Patricia Perkins, Michael Peters, Saif Haq, or myself.

This motion will be considered for implementation by the Dean's Council on Tuesday, February 16th. I will take any comments and questions raised by you to the Dean's Council and will present them with the motion for deliberation.

Motion Passed by Curriculum Committee : The Place of Physics 1

The committee passed the following motion, which is now open to your comment and review:

Require Phys 1403 (Physics 1) in the first year of the program prior to the Comprehensive Review.

Justification for this is three-fold:
a) The "Gate" into second year currently has no science or math component in its metier.
b) This will send a signal that this aspect of our student's education is as important as design, writing, and graphic representation.
c) This will create a de facto necessity that Physics 1 will be a prerequisite to starting the building technology sequence.

Your questions, concerns, and affirmations are welcome as comments to this post or you can talk to any one of the curriculum committee members present for this motion: Kuhn Park, Kentaro Tsubaki, Patricia Perkins, Michael Peters, Saif Haq, or myself.

This motion will be considered for implementation by the Dean's Council on Tuesday, February 16th. I will take any comments and questions raised by you to the Dean's Council and will present them with the motion for deliberation.

BUILDING a Strawman: a proposal for the technology sequence in the professional curriculum

This is purely my own attempt at formulating a method of working within a context (the curriculum), on a site (the students), with resources (the available faculty). It is designed as a strawman to entice discussion and serves only as a starting point.

I think material culture, in general, has changed far more in the last ten years than this curriculum reflects. I think there are two veins of construction that a student needs to learn today. This bifurcated nature has always been there and always is intertwined but our necessary professional expertise is more and more split between building in bits and building in atoms. Vito Aconci said, "Architects don't make shelter, they make drawings and models of shelter." We can agree that such models need to be informed and knowledge based speculations so knowing both building construction and building representation is necessary, symbiotic, and not exclusive but set into a definable difference.

The duality I propose is this:
There is a BUILDING Sequence. There is no construction sequence. There is no media sequence. Media, like materials or structures, is in the service of BUILDING. The two parts of the BUILDING sequence are:
The Technology of Building Information (Representation)
The Technology of Building Material (Construction).
They start in first year together in a general course that enframes the intellectual nature of technological thinking, diverge for a time, and they end in an integrative course and two subsequent electives.
I think a lot of current "floating" coursework should be brought into this stream to support the teaching you two are already doing. We should get to the point- if we're we're not teaching something that leads to better core professional skills then we're wasting an undergraduate's time in professional education. We should present our curriculum as the practice of architecture as manifest in the representation and construction of buildings.

In this outline I imagine that DES is redirected, the required math and physics courses are integrated into the larger picture (and become logical prereqs), the media sequence is dissolved so that the two drawing courses become more directly connected to the studio sequence (and the individual instructors in drawing have more autonomy), the bar for what is an appropriate media elective is raised to relate to "building information", and the rest of that coursework is shaped to form a Building Representation sub-sequence intertwined with the Building Construction sub-sequence. This is less course curriculum change than comprehensive course sequencing and association across the curriculum.

Fall, Year One:
"Thinking Through Technology" (formerly "DES")
Drawing 1
Physics 1
Math 1

Spring, Year One:
Studio 1
Building Information 1 (Intro to Digital Media)
Math 2
History 1

Fall, Year Two:
Studio 2 (Form)
Building Material 1 (Materials and Assemblies) (Prereq: Math 1 and Physics 1)
Physics 2
History 2

Spring, Year Two:
Studio 3 (Program)
Building Material 2 (Structures 1)
Building Material 3 (Site, Surroundings, and Ecology) (Prereq: Science 2)
Drawing 2

Fall, Year Three:
Studio 4 (Structures)
Building Information 2 (Digital Modeling)
Building Material 4 (Structures 2)

Spring, Year Three:
Studio 5 (Envelope)
Building Material 5 (Environmental Systems)
Building Information 3 (BIT)

Year Four:
Studio 6 (Urbanism)
Information Building Material 1 (Integration of Informational and Material Construction)
Building Theory
History 3 (Topical)

Graduate:
Comprehensive Studio
Three Topical Studios
Information Building Material 2 (Topical Building Information) (formerly "Media Elective")
Information Building Material 3 (Topical Building Construction)
Building Research (formerly research methods)
Professional Practice

Summer 2010 Study Abroad Proposals

It is time to start thinking about potential summer study abroad programs for 2010. Each summer the college send off approximately 12 faculty and 100 students out of country for Studio 6 (Urban Design Studies) and an associated elective course of the attending faculty's design for a total of 8-9 possible credit hours per student across the summer. To date the programs have all centered on North and Central America and European destinations.

Faculty participation in study abroad programs entails a significant amount of planning, recruiting, and advising in the semesters leading up to the trip, including some participation in a one hour teaching assignment in the spring before travel that is done as an overload on your teaching schedule. Faculty teaching in summer study abroad programs are expected to mamage some personal interface with various university offices such as the ICC, OIA, SBS, and the Travel Office in the form of arranging budgets, attending orientation and safety meetings, and reconciling budgets and affairs upon return. It is a job that some find incredibly rewarding and rich. It is a job that some wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. If you are interested in participating in or initiating one of these programs it is highly recommended that you speak to a colleague who has been a regular participant (Aranha, Buelinckx, Driskill, Gomez, Hill, Peters, and myself--to name a few) to hear about the rewards and pitfalls in this choice of summer teaching.

Each study abroad program is attended by two teaching faculty, one of whom is designated the program coordinator and acts as the logistical point person in the academic year leading up to the travel. The attending faculty determine the exact program schedule (somewhere between 5 and 10 weeks), number and type of excursions beyond the base, method of course delivery, accommodations, means of local travel, etc. The expenses of participating faculty are covered, within reason and university protocol. Compensation questions should be addressed directly to Beth for best guidance.

If you might be interested in participating there are two ways you can join in:
A) The college has three "standing programs" for study abroad: Puebla, Montréal, and Sevilla. The faculty participating in these programs are assigned on a rotating basis and according to budgetary matters. 12 month college administrators often participate because their salaries are already allocated in other lines so their inclusion has no impact on an already stretched and limited summer faculty payroll and budget. It is expected that new faculty will commit into these programs for a minimum of two years and be willing to move into the role of program coordinator in their second year, if called to do so. We are working towards a four or five year cap on participation in these program, broad based faculty interest willing.
If you are interested in participating in one of these programs please contact me at b.rex@ttu.edu before Monday, February 23rd at 5:00PM. with a notification and explanation of your interest.

B) The college has a need for three or four more programs beyond the "standing programs". Each year the college accepts proposals for both continuing programs and new proposals. Each of these proposals should come from two interested faculty, one of which must be identified as the coordinating member. Proposals are evaluated based on merits such as the comprehensiveness and plausibility of the proposal, novelty (diverse locations) and perceived relevance of the location as a setting for an urban studies education, familiarity and relevance of the faculty member's knowledge of the location and urbanism, safety of the location, cost per student, and apparent student interest.
The initial proposals for continuing and new program locations need not be elaborate. If you wish to propose a program for Summer 2010 please forward an email listing:
- the location proposed
- the two participating faculty
- a one paragraph description and academic justification of the proposed location
- the available on site educational facilities
- potential excursions from the base site (if applicable)
- the accommodations that will be provided for the students
- a rough estimate budget (cost per student)
to me at b.rex@ttu.edu before Monday, February 23rd at 5:00PM. This proposal need not exceed one page and one hour of your time.

As some of us begin to cycle out of our longstanding positions in these programs we hope that new faces and new locations will come to the table. If faculty interest is strong enough, personally, I would like to build a "wheel" for interested faculty to move in and out of these programs in a scheduled, equitable, and regular manner. Proposals for viable locations around the world are highly encouraged- especially from Asia, Africa, and South America. The decision to approve programs (both existing and new) and to distribute faculty within "standing programs" is made in the Dean's Council.

Mid-Term Reviews in Sp '09

What if we had a series of mid-project, PRELIM design studio reviews throughout Spring Semester?

It would give students an opportunity to respond to design jury comments almost IMMEDIATELY, perhaps the next class period.
It would give students an opportunity to respond to design jury comments DIRECTLY because they are still working on the same project.
It would give faculty and students opportunities to focus on design PROCESS since it is a preliminary review.
It probably would give faculty and students more opportunities to attend critiques because they are SPACED over the semester.

ARCH 2502 Wednesday February 25, Week 8
ARCH 3502 Wednesday March 4, Week 9
ARCH 550x Wednesday March 11, Week 10 (before Spring Break)
ARCH 5901 Wednesday March 25, Week 11 (after Spring Break)

If I’ve overlooked some studios, my apologies. My intention was to communicate the general idea.

Robert D. Perl, AIA
Associate Professor

From ARCHFACULTY to ARCHCHAIR

Discussions like the one just above about mid-term reviews are great and important. Electronic communications give us opportunities for fora that haven't yet been tapped into collectively. Rather than continue this as an email discussion across ARCHFACULTY I'd like to migrate this discussion over to a web site I've been making posts on about academic announcements, issues, initiatives, and discussion topics:

http://archchair.blogspot.com/

Crude as it may be, this is a first try at such a venue. I do recognize it may not be as comfortable or convenient as making an email response but, rather than running discussions such as this one through a string of response emails headed "RE: "What If..." that are sent to ARCHFACULTY, such an elective forum seems that it would be a more appropriate place for such comment and deliberation. We should try to keep emails to ARCHFACULTY as general announcements and, like Bob has done, initiate a general point of discussion to be hashed through elsewhere. Then, when faculty are aware of points of interest and concern, those so engaged can move into an electronic environment where concerned colleagues can participate in a focused discussion outside of everyone else's email boxes. That will leave mailboxes of those who aren't as interested in the discussion free of emails to ARCHFACULTY that are not general announcements.

I'd be happy to add any of you as co-authors for this web page if you are interested in making posts for discussion.

Math & Science in Our Curriculum

The Math Department has announced that analytic geometry is dead as a course. Students will move straight from trig to calc 1 in the progression of courses in math.

This makes a pickle for us- analytic geometry is the highest course in math we require.
Trig seems to set the bar too low. Calc 1 seems, maybe, just a little too high- though it has been the standard course required for many years here at TTU (up to about '94) and it is still the main course required at other institutions like Austin.

It has started an interesting discussion. How much math do architects need to study and why? I am trying to start a discussion with our colleagues in Math about the possibility of a "Calculus for Architects" course that would emphasize mathematical systems and concepts up into calculus.

I'll add to this post as data and progress on this is established. Your input is always welcome.

ASC :: Academic Student Council

After a particularly difficult lottery to place third year students in the summer study abroad I've decided to develop an academic student council that will meet weekly for an hour on Mondays after studio. I've asked the students for nominations and will announce the council here when it is determined. The council will make recommendations to the Dean's Council. If you'd like to participate or make an announcement to this group just stop in for one of our weekly meetings or forward your announcement to me to be read in the next meeting.

Explanation of the New Graduate Professional Studio Sequence

The courses in question, though graduate courses, are part and parcel of a total package of professional study in our college and are best understood holistically as part of a continuous and cumulative professional building design studio sequence that begins at "Studio 1" (ARCH1412) taken in the spring semester of the freshman undergraduate year.
Our last professional architecture curriculum incorporated an additive and incremental building design studio sequence of ten courses totaling 54 credit hours- 6 undergraduate courses adding up to 30 credit hours and 4 graduate level courses adding up to 24 credit hours. These changes do nothing to change that level of distribution. The sum will still be 6 undergrad courses of 30 hours and 4 grad courses of 24 hours. What is proposed is a pedagogical shift in the way we deliver content in individual coursework and how we define the stream of studios. To do so we made a shift in the coursework in the graduate level of study:
2007-08 Studio Curriculum Model: The sum ten studios form a sequence of eight studios (6 undergrad (1412, 2501, 2502, 3501, 3502, & 4601) and 2 grad (5604 & 5605)) leading to a two semester single project M.Arch. culmination or capstone (5691 & 5692), the "Master's Design Studio".
2008-09 Studio Curriculum Model: A sequence of seven core building design studios followed by a non-sequential set of three graduate topical (required elective) studios. The seven studio core building design sequence includes the sum six undergraduate studios (1412, 2501, 2502, 3501, 3502, & 4601) and culminates in the first graduate studio experience (5901) as an intensive compilation of the content areas covered in the six undergraduate courses (intro, form, program, structure, envelope, urbanism) and it meets or exceeds the requirements of the NAAB student performance criterium on "Comprehensive Design".
Comprehensive Design Ability to produce a comprehensive architectural project based on a building program and site that includes development of programmed spaces demonstrating an understanding of structural and environmental systems, building envelope systems, life-safety provisions, wall sections and building assemblies and the principles of sustainability.
The nine credit hour comprehensive building design studio set at the beginning of the graduate experience is a highly regulated and rigorous course with a narrow and focused set of expectations. It acts as both culmination and gateway in the overall program. Once that course (5901) is completed the student will have demonstrated a standardized and expected level of professional and disciplinary acumen.
After the nine-credit hour comprehensive studio the students then move into a set of three non-sequential open ended required elective five credit hour research and advanced practice related specialized studios whose content is designed to accommodate the integration of faculty areas of specialization and the introduction of advanced issues in contemporary practice in the architectural profession. In these changes the capstone "Master's Design Studio" is dissolved and replaced with a comprehensive (less independent and individual) nine credit hour building design studio at the entry point into graduate studies.
The content of the required elective graduate topical studios at the end of our professional curriculum is based on the topics that particular faculty will bring to the coursework. A key part of the implementation of these changes is the intention to rotate virtually all interested graduate faculty teaching in the core building design studios through these courses (the first seven studios) so that all qualified colleagues teach in this level from time to time. That will include 20+ faculty passing through the coursework each one bringing a highly focused and changing expertise. Our college curriculum committee will vet each proposal for a graduate topical studio based on relevance to contemporary practice, qualification and credentials of the proposing faculty, and potential to advance research and creative activity in the college and then forward their recommendations to the Associate Dean for Academics as they make final staffing decisions.

Summer Course Offerings

After yesterday's great morning of discussion Andrew, Michael, and I retreated to Schlotsky's to consider the matters raised relative to the coursework that the college can offer in our summer study abroad programs. We have these proposals for you:

Let's frame the ARCH4601 studio as an introduction to building design as a fundamental act of civics, place-making, and city craft thoroughly rooted in the tradition that understands the building as the primary component of the city- regardless of how "old-fashioned" that may seem while cozy in our Lubbockian world where the street is king. Issues in contemporary urbanism, like Landscape Urbanism or Social Advocacy or Community Design or Suburbanism or Agrarianism or Infrastructuralism or Eco-Tourism or Exurbanism or even Planning and Functional Consumerism (mixed use-ism), are best left to the three Topical Graduate Studios we'll be teaching in on a rotating basis. I'll be tapping a few of you to join me in fleshing out more explicit guidance for this summer's course in the near future. If you'd like nominate yourself for this task then send me an email.

Let's offer the ARCH4000 course in the same format planned- one credit hour here in the spring coordinated by Clifton Ellis and two credit hours offered by each program in their own way in the summer programs. The course be an architecture elective and WILL NOT count as either Architectural Theory (ARCH363) or Contemporary Issues (ARCH3341).

If you'd like to talk more about these issues we can plan a meeting in the near future. I found our discussion yesterday very, very useful and open. Thank you for your patience and support.

Student Evals- summer question

TTU, as an institution, does not support summer course student evaluations. Courses taught in the summer are not expected to be evaluated. Units within the institution can conduct their own evals but they would have to be hand marked and will not become part of the university's data warehouse.

This seems problematic considering the amount of summer teaching we do in the study abroad courses. We have a required studio course that is ONLY taught in the summer in ARCH4601. I've asked the Dean's Council to add this issue to their agenda to seek advice and possible petition frmo the Dean to the Provost's office to reverse this choice to ignore our teaching in the summer institutionally. The institution compels us to teach in the summer and looks for year round use of facilities and other resources. Some great teaching and very satifying teaching goes on in our summers. It seems a shame to not get student feedback on this academic experience and to make that feedback part of the institutional memory.

Any thoughts, questions, or comments?

Student Evals- delivery question

Anna Martinez and I just attended a session on Student Course Evaluations put on by OIM (Office of Information Management). They explained the various procedures for administrating this task in detail. One issue that came up in the meeting was that recently there have been a series of compromising situations in the university surrounding the administration of these evaluations. Faculty have coached students. Faculty have delivered the evals during an instructor paid pizza party. Students have openly coached fellow students in how to fill out the documents in a negative light. Students have filled out multiple highly negative evals. These and more issues have raised the question of how we safely and accurately deliver these evals in the classroom.

OIM and the Provost's Office representative present strongly recommend (and will probably require soon) that an outside party PROCTOR the administration of these evaluations. The goal is to have an unbiased representative of the College deliver the forms to the students, explain the instructions, watch over the assessment, and collect the results. They would rather the instructor not even come in contact with the forms and process until after grades have been delivered and student course evals have been returned to the department (college).

This is a radical break from our current method of delivery. I have always received these forms in my box for each course I'm teaching. At an appropriate date near or at semester's end I've taken time in my class where I've explained the instructions, asked a student in the course to act as a proctor, distributed the forms and left the room until the proctor had collected and taken a packet of the completed forms up to the 10th floor offices (Anna).

I've asked the Dean's Council to add this item to the agenda for discussion in that venue. We should find an outside proctor in the college for each course we teach- somehow and someway. I'll keep you informed of the progress on this matter that is important to each of us working in the classroom.

Any comments or suggestions on how to handle this matter?

CurricComm Agenda 07 Oct 2008

The Curriculum Committee today will be reviewing more faculty proposals for required elective course teaching in the Media Elective, Contemporary Issues, and Graduate Topical Studio courses. Once that is done we'll begin a study of an overlooked but key component of our professional curriculum, the technology sequence. If that discussion is diverted we'll either start looking at the role and place of Research Methods and Programming in light of the new graduate studio sequence OR we'll review a proposal for a Pedagogical Model for Studio Instruction.

Prospectus for ARCH4000-Sum '09

COURSE GOALS
The course is the Summer ’09 adjunct course in the study abroad programs in Belgium, Spain, France, Quebec, Mexico, and Central America. Matriculation through the course is designed to count for credit as either the required contemporary issues in architecture course (ARCH3314) or the required undergraduate theory course (ARCH4363) or a general architecture elective. The course is taught in a manner that meets the university’s expectations of a writing intensive course. It is designed to provide a brief shared overview of historical thinking in architectural theory and contemporary issues in urbanism for all students participating in the summer programs while supporting the particularized and heterogeneous experiences of the summer programs.
Course Catalog Descriptions:
3314. Contemporary Issues in Architecture (3:3:0). Prerequisite: ARCH 2311 and 2315. Contemporary issues in architectural theory and history utilizing precedents from early 20th century to present. (Writing Intensive) 4363. Architectural Theory (3:3:0). Prerequisite: ARCH 2311 and 2315. Examination of the theoretical issues in architecture through critical reading of texts selected from Vitruvius to the most contemporary thinkers in relation to the emerging design challenges. (Writing Intensive)

COURSE STRUCTURE
The course is accomplished in two semesters
SPRING ’09: a one credit hour component overseen by a course coordinator and taught to the full cohort of students going abroad in the following summer that is made up of two components:
Theory Studies: a set of eight lectures and readings each delivered by various participating ’09 study abroad faculty with expertise in delivering individual components of the subject matter, a final multiple choice exam over these lectures and readings, and four essay writing assignments spread across the semester and graded by the individual program faculty
Organizational Meetings: a set of four break out sessions for individual study abroad programs to make arrangements and preparations for the ensuing summer’s travels and one joint session of all programs in which university and college expectations of travelers are outlined
All students enrolling in the summer programs will participate in this one credit hour component.
SUMMER ’09: a two credit hour component taught by program faculty in their respective locales in the manner best suited to individual faculty expertise and location qualities. The component must include a significant writing component (i.e.- a paper, journal, or essay) that is submitted, edited, and resubmitted at least twice in the summer to meet the university’s writing intensive course requirements. The writing component may extend past the student’s on-site study experience but all work must be complete and a final grade submitted by the Summer II session grading deadline. Only students wanting credit for ARCH4363, ARCH3314, or an architecture elective will enroll in this two credit hour component.

COURSE CALENDAR
COURSE ASSESSMENT
At the end of the spring a grade for 1/3 of the course will be given. It will be 1/2 based on a writing grade supplied by the attending faculty and 1/2 on a grade from the exam.

OLD NOTES
In the Spring one hour lecture course we do the following:
a) The cohort registers for a single section of the class and all meet at the same time in the, preferably the end of studio on Wednesday.
b) We have four program preparation and organization meetings between the program instructors and their students. These meetings are on the last class meeting of the months of January, February, March, and April. Any further program organizational meetings will be outside of class time.
c) The other 12 class meetings will be large format lectures rotating among faculty going abroad. The subject matter will focus on two issues: Relevance and Roles of Theory in Architectural Practice and Theoretical links between Architecture and the City. Short supplementary readings and simple writing assignments will be given with each lecture. The writing assignments will be handed in to and assessed by the particular program faculty (i.e.- students going to Paris will get feedback from Clifton and the Dean).
d) At the mid-term and end of the one hour course a multiple choice exam will be delivered over questions submitted by lecturing faculty.
e) At the end of the spring a grade for 1/3 of the theory course will be given. It will be 1/2 based on a writing grade supplied by the attending faculty and 1/2 on a grade from the exam.

In the Summer two hour course we press program faculty to adhere to the course catalog description and meet the expectations of the writing component of the class but we should let the attending faculty shape their method of meeting the expectations of the course. Different faculty with different areas of expertise and different cities with different urbanisms and building sets will provide excellent case studies and tours. We can't really unify or police this component of the curriculum. We can ask for work samples from the theory writing component from each program. That's about it.

Upcoming Discussions at the TLTC

If you are thinking that what you do is different or you won't get much out of listening to colleagues from across campus talk about teaching then you are really missing out to this sort of wonderful learning opportunity.

Faculty Reading Circle

In the spirit of collegiality and community, the Faculty Reading Circle through the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center offers a relaxed venue for gathering over some provocative readings and invigorating conversation about teaching, learning, and higher education. This semester we will read a selection of articles and book chapters on topics that include academic bullying, assessment issues, and qualities of good teaching. Faculty, staff, administrators and graduate students from all disciplines are welcome! Come to one session, or attend them all! The discussions are scheduled as follows, and our first meeting takes place next week:

• Meeting 1: Wednesday, September 17, 12:00 – 1:00 pm, TLTC 153
Academic Bullying
Readings will include chapters from the book Faculty Incivility: The Rise of the Academic Bully Culture and What to Do About It, by Darla J. Twale and Barbara M. DeLuca, and the articles “Handling the ‘Bad Apples’” and “Dealing with Bullies” from Inside Higher Ed.

• Meeting 2: Thursday, October 16, 12:30 – 1:30 pm, TLTC 153
Assessment
Readings will include articles such as Lee Shulman’s “Counting and Recounting: Assessment and the Quest for Accountability” from Change and Laurie Fendrich’s “A Pedagogical Straitjacket” from The Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as a chapter from Ken Bain’s well-known book What the Best College Teachers Do.

• Meeting 3: Wednesday, November 12, 12:00 – 1:00, TLTC 153
Great Teaching
Readings will include selections from What the Best College Teachers Do, by Ken Bain, from Louis Schmier’s Random Thoughts: The Humanity of Teaching, and from Letters to a Teacher, by Sam Pickering (the inspiration for the film Dead Poet’s Society).


The readings are available for download on the TLTC website. To access them, go to http://www.tltc.ttu.edu/teach/facReadingCircle/. For purposes of copyright protection, you will need to use your eRaider information. When asked for your username, simply enter TTU\ and then your eRaider username. You will also enter your eRaider password. You will find the readings organized by meeting date and topic. Simply click on each title to download the article or book chapter.

Please register online for one or each session by visiting the TLTC website at www.tltc.ttu.edu and clicking on “Sign up for a Class.” For more information, please contact Dr. Allison Boye via email at allison.p.boye@ttu.edu, or by calling 742-0133.

Please bring your lunch and join our informal conversation about some important issues in higher education!

Grade Distribution Data Update

I entered the raw data into IBM Watson Labs' new on line visualization systems "Many Eyes" to get these charts. You can manipulate the data there too, if you wish. The link takes you to this database.

Women in Architecture

There's been an interesting debate brewing about the stats on female students in our college. Cursory checks indicate that we're graduating professional degree students at about 75/25 male to female. Here's the nationwide statistics:


Female architecture graduates from US schools as a proportion of all. Source: National Center for Education Statistics' Digest of Education Statistics (2007).

In 2006 almost 45% of all professional degree graduates were women. That makes us about 20% below the national average. We'll let you know the stats for our school in more detail when they come out.

Committee Shuffle

There is an initiative afoot to fold the role of the Lecture and Exhibitions committees and expand the domain of service into a new set of duties: The Symposia, Exhibitions, and Lectures (SEL) committee.
Currently, the Lecture Committee is:
Rex, Davis, Perbellini, and Taylor.
Currently, the Exhibition Committee is:
Tsubaki, Aranha, Pauls, Watkins, and Zugay (Martin, Ex-Officio)

The combined cohort would be nine faculty and that's too large. The SEL committee is proposed to be reduced to:
Tsubaki, Davis, Perbellini, Aranha, and Taylor. (Martin & Rex, both Ex-Officio)
That removes Rex, Zugay, Pauls, and Watkins.

End of Fall 2008 Schedule

Please adjust your semester's end schedule to the following:

Tuesday, November 25th:
Last Class Meeting for All Tuesday/Thursday Course Sections

THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY

Monday, December 1st:
Last Class Meeting for ARCH2501, ARCH3501, & all Monday/Wednesday/Friday Course Sections

Tuesday, December 2nd:
All Day Studio Reviews for ARCH2501 & 3501 - No Meeting for Other Classes

Wednesday, December 3rd:
All Day Studio Reviews for CompBuildDesign (Grad Studios) - No Meeting for Other Classes - Last Day to Submit Work to a course

Thursday, December 4th:
Student Dead Day - All Faculty Internal Reviews (focusing on CompBuildDesign)


If you feel it will be necessary for your course section to meet on either the 2nd or the 3rd then you should inform the Associate Dean for Academics, Michael Peters of the course number, section, #, the meeting time, and your written intention to hold class on one or both of these dates.

Outline for ARCH3341

The purpose of the adjunct course is to develop a comprehensive ability to model architectural projects through solid and parametric modeling technologies. The analogy we could use for such work is "building in a virtual jobsite".

Each section of the adjunct will have a roster identical to a concurrent studio section. They will be taught in association wherever it is deemed useful and appropriate by the studio instructor. Where the studio instructor sees the adjunct as irrelevant or unmanageable for the studio I have a schedule and curriculum that can be inserted (see below).

The TAs will be responsible for every in-class aspect of their particular section of this adjunct course. Kuhn Park and I, in tandem, will act as coordinator- setting up a common syllabus at the beginning, shared assessment matrices as assignments are given, and an outline for the curriculum of the course- which the associated studio professor can modify and adjust unilaterally to meet your desired level of coordination with your studio schedule and the agenda of your pedagogy. The TAs will work in this class under the clear instruction that they are to support the studio's expressed agendas when invited, take instructions from the studio professor as primary directive, but to not interfere with studio teaching. This is not designed to be an intensive course or a "mini-studio" in anyway. It should be loaded like a regular CoA@TTU 3 credit hour course. The students should not be working and studying this material more than 12 hours outside of class each week.

We expect the depth of studio faculty direction and "hand" in adjunct course reconfiguration and intervention to vary greatly from faculty to faculty. The base intervention of attending studio faculty will be to plug in the subject for each of the first of three phases of the course and to allow the adjunct TA access to the ongoing studio work in their studio. The extreme is that a studio professor can consider this curriculum to be nothing more than a straw man and instruct them to operate the course completely otherwise- as long as its goals and time requirements are still the purpose stated above and there are no more than 12 hours outside of class each week (not on average but in each week). The TA will provide a tentative course syllabus and schedule drawn up for your consideration and editing. 3501 faculty can redirect the class as much as they see fit as long as they notify the TA of adjustments so that the TA can incorporate them into their syllabus.

Our suggested outline for this course looks like this:
a) 3 weeks of studying the techniques and principles of the software while making a catalog of simple models of structural forces and systems in buildings.
b) 4 weeks of developing digital modeling skills and project management while creating a comprehensive building model of a precedent or case study. This model should be "built analogous to the way the building was built and should demonstrate material and trade phasing in construction. This model should be detailed down to differentiating overall bodies of material components (i.e.- a panel of brick veneer or a reinforced concrete slab).
c) 4 weeks of developing a "detailed bay model" showing each actual component element in the material construction (i.e.- each brick, structural member, fenestration frame, etc.).
d) 2 weeks of final production and summary representation of the semester's work.

Grade Inflation in Studios

Of 2723 studio seats taken in this college in the last three years:
48% of the students have made an A level grade
2.7% have failed (75 of 2723)
3.3% have dropped (90 of 2723)
94% of the students enrolling in our studios pass the studio
84% of those make an A or a B level grade
10% were average and made C levels

I've sensed for a while now an upwardly creeping assessment level and a recalibration of how we grade collectively. Now, I've "crunched" the numbers. Here's proof of the interesting "crawl" up in inflation in studio marks:
In Fall 2005 we gave out 42% As, 35% Bs, 17% Cs, 01% Ds, 02% Fs
In Spring 2006 we gave out 46% As, 37% Bs, 10% Cs, 02% Ds, 02% Fs
In Fall 2006 we gave out 50% As, 29% Bs, 12% Cs, 02% Ds, 01% Fs
In Spring 2007 we gave out 55% As, 33% Bs, 08% Cs, 00% Ds, 01% Fs
In Fall 2007 we gave out 56% As, 31% Bs, 07% Cs, 01% Ds, 01% Fs
In Spring 2008 we gave out 57% As, 32% Bs, 07% Cs, 00% Ds, 01% Fs

Personally, I think it is important that I use the full range of grades to best assess and signal a range of qualities to my students. I started grading more broadly across the spectrum of grades last Spring and intend to continue to do so in my own teaching in the coming semester.

The university catalog says an A level grade is for an "Excellent" demonstration of learning, a B level grade is for "Good" demonstration of learning, a C level grade is for "Average" demonstration of learning, a D level grade is for "Poor" demonstration of learning, and an F is for "Failure" in demonstrating learning.

That in mind, In Spring 2008 90% of all the students who took a studio performed above average (A or B) in assessment and only 01% of the total number of seats failed a studio. I think we all should consider reigning in this situation because it raises a question of academic integrity but on the other hand for each instructor there has to be respect for academic freedom in assessment. Share this data with colleagues as you think relevant for discussion. All of this is public record.

CompBuildDesign Examples

Student work from comprehensive design studios taught by B.Neiman, J. Bermudez, T. Castillo, & C.MacBride at U of Co: