Dear Colleagues,

Architecture schools face the complex challenges of a rapidly changing world. We rethink educational models and forge new pathways through dramatic shifts in global, national, and regional economies. We find opportunities within the challenges of changing demographics, regulations, technologies, and environments. And through it all we continue to produce graduates who want to make an impact on the world around them.

This month the ACSA Board of Directors embarks on a new year, welcoming a new class of board members just weeks before the ACSA membership welcomes its new class of students. This year ACSA is focusing on a number of internal and external programs.

We are working with our collateral organizations, AIA, AIAS, and NCARB, to find ways to promote our discipline’s leadership potential to the general public. Please spend some time on our cutting edge online exhibit ARCHIVE and share it widely with your own external audiences. This highly visual website contains hundreds of creative and relevant projects that demonstrate the value of the profession to the public.

We are also working with NAAB and the collaterals to update and refine accreditation requirements, developing improved data-sharing protocols among the collaterals, and exploring a more streamlined path to licensure upon graduation for our architecture students.

Internally we continually test the resilience, structure, and accountability of the ACSA Board of Directors. We are setting measurable performance indicators to promote teaching effectiveness, support scholarship and creative work, and advance research. In the coming months you will see new programs to collect and share standards for tenure and promotion as well as best practices and metrics for student learning. We will focus more on supporting feeder affiliate programs and community colleges, as well as schools offering postprofessional programs.

Finally we will expand international participation in our membership and programing through an Annual Meeting in Miami and an International Conference in Seoul.

I invite you to participate in ACSA’s programs to collectively debate our discipline’s challenges and opportunities, including those related to civic engagement, public health and policy, new materials and technology, energy consumption, and climate change. The Journal of Architectural Education stands ready with a new executive editor, and our conferences, competitions, and awards provide channels for faculty, students, and practitioners to tune in and share.

Today, it is more important than ever that we work together. I welcome your feedback as we move forward.

Sincerely,

Norman Millar, AIA
ACSA President, 2013-2014
Dean and Professor of Architecture
Woodbury University
Norman.Millar@woodbury.edu