ACSA Social Justice Shift

StudyArchitecture.com is a key component of our communications campaign. The site is designed to help potential students, and their parents, find comprehensive and up-to-date information about architecture schools and understand what it means to study architecture. One goal was to make studying architecture more accessible to an increasingly diverse student body.

An excerpt from the new strategic plan:

2. Advocacy and Impact

2.1 Increase understanding of the specific systemic barriers to achieving gender and racial diversity in architectural education and the profession.

2.2 Enhance understanding among college and university leaders of the unique characteristics and needs of architectural education.

2.3 Increase interdisciplinary programs.

2.4 Expand engagement with community colleges.

2.5 Expand multi-collateral conferences and workshops focused on education, research, practice, and civic engagement.

2.6 Expand K-12 programs to encourage a diverse range of students to study architecture.

Diversity & Equity Initiative
The task force is charged with recommending best practices to help schools increase demographic diversity at ACSA member programs. The committee should identify systemic barriers to these forms of diversity in architectural education, where previously published or discussed within ACSA. It should organize sessions or events at the ACSA Administrators Conference and Annual Meeting, plan a webinar, and author one or more blog posts on the ACSA website.

At the time, ACSA defined “demographic diversity” as comprised of the following categories:

• Race and ethnicity
• Gender
• LGBTQ identity
• Socioeconomics
• Marital/ family status
• International/ domestic status

2016 Administrators Conference, session

Student Success Across the Spectrum
Facilitators: Rashida Ng, Temple University
Lynne Dearborn, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

This discussion will address barriers and best practices for achieving student success within diverse student populations. It will be led by ACSA’s Education Committee, which is charged with recommending best practices to help schools increase demographic diversity at ACSA member programs.

The committee along with participating faculty identified the following barriers:

• Geographical distinctions
• Financial resources
• Low salaries
• Elitist profession
• Public perceptions of the relevance
  of architecture
• Studio/professional culture
• Lack of diversity in curricula
• Lack of diverse role models in
  practice and academia
• Need for greater work/life balance
• Complicated and self-guided path
  to licensure

The 2016 Equity in Architecture Survey was designed to generate a comprehensive national dataset detailing current positions and career experiences of architecture school graduates. With the assistance of architecture’s national collateral organizations, AIA component chapters, firms, and academic institutions, survey invitations were sent out to a broad cross-section of the profession. The resulting dataset — the largest ever collected on equity within the profession — documents the experiences of 8,664 individuals representing all 50 states and nations on six continents.

This list was created from a workshop held during the 105th Annual Meeting session. While progressive at the time, in hindsight this list was more focused on prejudice and microaggressions than systems and histories of oppression.

105th Annual Meeting, session

Moving Forward: Equity and Diversity
Description: The importance of understanding equity in architectural education is illustrated by the disparate outcome of students with diverse and uneven backgrounds. For many reasons, some individuals and student groups disproportionately drop out along the way and some graduates find themselves ill prepared for the professional world. Building on five themes identified at the 2016 Administrators Conference, session participants will engage in discussions structured toward the dual goals of identifying actionable activities and longer-range strategies to support success of diverse students in varied architectural education programs.

The committee is charged with continuing the work developed in 2016-17 to help schools increase the diversity of the faculty and student body. The committee should create resources for schools to deploy, and should continue to organize sessions or events at the ACSA Administrators Conference and Annual Meeting, plan a webinar, and author one or more blog posts on the ACSA website. The committee should also concentrate on developing ways for ACSA to engage the full range community colleges more fully, both through existing programs and in other potential ways, with a goal of community college faculty engagement.

The cards were available for sale and could be used at faculty meetings to discuss the 77 ways to champion diversity and equity at one’s home institution.

The journey map exercise was completed at AIAS Forum in 2017 with the President’s Circle and then again with faculty and students at an ACSA conference.

The Journey Map Exercise
Understanding Socio-economic Equity Along and Architecture Student’s Journey Objective

The objective of this exercise was to record your journey as you consider or complete an
education in architecture, framed in the context of socio-economic equity. Students and faculty were asked to documented the advantages and barriers they encountered as they considered an architectural education. To ensure a rich collection of findings, participants are encouraged to document their journey regardless of your current status, even if they are no longer considering architectural education.

The ACSA Pipeline Survey focused on the barriers to admission and retention for undergraduate programs in architecture. Results can be found in the “Moving Towards an Equitable Future” white paper published in June of 2018.

Pipeline Diversity and Graduation Rates
Data from the ACSA show that there’s room for improvement in on-time graduation rates among minority students.

Click the image to read more.

106th Annual Meeting, session

Moving Towards An Equitable Future
Over the last year members of the ACSA Education Committee have been looking at issues related to diversity and equity as it pertains to students trying to enter into the architecture profession. This topic has been brought into further focus by taking a strong look at the socioeconomic barriers that might be present for prospective students. While various qualitative data collection methods have been used in the past to pinpoint certain areas of struggle, this year the committee has approached researching this problem with a more quantitative approach. The committee created and disseminated a detailed survey to various administrators representing all of the US based architecture programs. The intent was to gather a broader, yet concise picture on what is actually required to enter into an accredited architecture program. In this session we will share the preliminary findings from this data in hope of generating a much broader discussion surrounding equity and highlighting what solutions might exist to help meditate these problems. Participants of the session will get a first look at the data, before further publication. The session will culminate with small group discussions and a panel discussion reviewing the expected and the not so expected results.

Moving Towards An Equitable Future, White Paper
The Education Committee leads ACSA’s efforts to improve the effectiveness of architectural education through best practices. The committee oversees and recommends, as necessary, actions to cultivate and disseminate these best practices.

Areas of focus for the committee include: Teaching; Access to higher education (including demographic diversity); Student success; Educational assessment; Relationship of architectural education to higher education; Education-to-practice transition; Curriculum development; & Pre-professional or non-accredited architectural education.

There are many challenges facing architectural higher education today. Among them achieving socioeconomic equity for current and prospective architecture students seems to be most pressing, and at the same time most elusive. During the 2017-18 academic year, the Education Committee has focused on this issue. Equity is what some might call a “wicked problem” that is difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, or changing requirements that are often hard to recognize. The discussion of equity and inclusion in architectural education requires that we start by defining the context of targeted diversity. This year, the Education Committee has elected to focus on diversity of socioeconomic status (SES) among prospective and current architecture students. The American Psychological Association characterizes socioeconomic status as a “combination of education, income and occupation” which is distinct from race or gender in that it is challenging for faculty to detect, particularly given that students might “strive to appear middle-class in order to self-normalize” (Yale Center for Teaching and Learning).

An excerpt from the new strategic plan:

Equity and Inclusion
ACSA will advance an inclusive, diverse, and equitable discipline and profession.

2.1 Improve gender, racial, and socioeconomic equity in architectural education.
2.2 Increase the number of architecture students with diverse perspectives and abilities.

The 2018 Equity in Architecture Survey was designed in partnership with the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and over 50 volunteers from around the country with the goal of generating a comprehensive national data set detailing current positions and career experiences of architecture school graduates. With the assistance of architecture’s national collateral organizations, AIA components, firms, and academic institutions, survey invitations were sent out to a broad cross-section of the profession.

The resulting data set—the largest ever collected on equity within the profession—documents the experiences of 14,360 individuals representing all 50 states and nations on six continents. This unprecedented collection of professional voices is the testimony that allows us to build a deeper understanding of our strengths as a profession, and to gain insight into the critical work needed to provide each individual within our field with opportunities to thrive and to make a lasting impact within the communities that we serve.

Increasing Access and Promoting Equity
The Leadership Committee is charged with identifying strategies to increase access to architectural education and support retention for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to improve the racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender diversity of schools and ultimately the profession. The committee is encouraged to consider the full range of architectural programs, including those in community colleges, non-accredited, and accredited professional programs.

This moment of learning and listening marked a major turning point for ACSA. Trainings started with the ACSA Board and senior staff and in the coming years would spread to new ACSA Board members and committee volunteers.

Call to Action to Seek a More Equitable Future 
The ACSA condemns the continual acts of violence against African Americans, including George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and so many others. We believe Black Lives Matter. The protests sparked by these events highlight the history of entrenched inequality experienced by people of color and Native/Indigenous people. We acknowledge the role of design in creating and perpetuating differential access to basic public services, including housing, green space, education, and health care, to name a few. We recognize the profession’s history of contributing to inequity through actions but also through inaction. We understand that architectural education has for too long accepted white privilege as the norm, limiting diverse voices and marginalizing the discipline’s impact on society….

Developing Policies and Shifting operations for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
This panel will share best practices to promote social equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at schools of architecture. What steps might schools take to develop and assess impactful and measurable EDI policies? What tools can schools and departments use to measure the increased awareness of, access to, retention in, and successful graduation from architecture programs for minority students? Participation in this workshop will jumpstart a program’s efforts to develop an EDI policy and imagine ways to respond to the 2020 National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) Conditions and Procedures.

Like many professions in the United States, architecture has a long-standing history of being a male-dominated field. From its inception, the discipline has not been accessible for all people. In 2014, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) investigated the disparities between men and women in the areas of representation, inclusion, and recognition. This 2020 edition of Where Are the Women? updates information highlighting how women make up an equal part of the population but an unequal part of the discipline.

ACSA Research and Scholarship Committee

Advancing Scholarship on Equity and Justice in Built Environments
The Research and Scholarship Committee is charged with assessing scholarly work in the discipline on the intersection of social equity and justice in built environments. The committee will collect data on scholarly activity, identify case studies, and consult experts in the field to create a report and recommend strategies by which ACSA can support future research and creative practice.

ACSA Leadership Committee

Power Dynamics and Racial Equity
The Education Committee is charged with examining the experiences and reflections of architecture students and faculty with respect to power dynamics and racial equity in program-level governance, curriculum decisions, policies and procedures, and how faculty and students perceive these dynamics influence success in the academic context. This work will involve collecting quantitative and qualitative data from students and faculty and comparatively analyzing these data between and among racial groups, with a particular emphasis on the experiences and reflections of Black and indigenous students and faculty members. This work should identify barriers as well as models that equitably include voices of Black and indigenous students and faculty of color in architecture’s academic contexts.

In the area of racial diversity, it is commonly known that representation, or the lack thereof, is a discipline-wide issue. Where Are My People? is a research series that investigates how architecture interacts with race and how the nation’s often ignored systems and histories perpetuate the problem of racial inequity. Inspired by the data visualizations created by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1900, the first research report in the series, Black in Architecture, highlights metrics to help both the profession and the academy understand what it means to navigate architecture as a Black person.

Culture Change in Architectural Education
Students and faculty alike are calling for architecture schools to be more inclusive and equitable, particularly for women and/or BIPOC students. This session will feature students and faculty engaged in change processes, both tangible (i.e., curriculum, teaching/learning culture policies) and intangible (i.e., unwritten practices and cultural conditions). Speakers will give brief presentations followed by breakout discussions about the building blocks for teaching/learning culture. All participants are welcome to discuss their challenges and successes.

As architecture continues to reckon with the harm and complacency engendered by the hands of designers, ACSA continues exploring the intersection of race and architecture. Where Are My People? is a research series that investigates how architecture interacts with race and how the nation’s often ignored systems and histories perpetuate the problem of racial inequity. Hispanic and Latinx in Architecture chronicles both societal and discipline specific metrics in an effort to highlight the experiences of Hispanic and Latinx designers, architects and educators.

Define & Design the New Normal: Faculty Diversity & Excellence
This webinar seeks to unearth and address implicit assumptions and expectations in current faculty hiring practices, and to consider what characteristics and experiences are privileged by the application of these measures in order to more directly apply a diversity-minded approach to defining excellence. In the context of today’s changes, challenges, and opportunities in teaching, the panelists will present and explore innovative new practices which seek to diversify the profile of an architectural faculty.

Perspectives on Power Dynamics and Racial Equity in Architecture
This online panel is a discussion that includes professional, academic, and student perspectives that will examine the experiences of architecture students and faculty specifically related to the topic of “Power Dynamics and Racial Equity in Architecture”. The discussion will begin with panelist experiences that inform their understanding of the advancement of racial equity. Topics of power dynamics and gaps in knowledge that influence inclusion will be explored in relation to power dynamics within architectural education and the profession that need to be re-examined with relation to racial equity.

Advancing Scholarship on Equity and Justice Across the Built Environment
This online discussion examines ACSA’s contributions to the past decade of research and creative practice that advances scholarship on equity and justice in built environments. A panel of ACSA Research & Scholarship Committee members will present preliminary findings from its review of ACSA publications, activities, and a survey of ACSA members, followed by dialog among participants.

The history of racism, injustice, and disenfranchisement is no stranger to architecture. Where Are My People? is a research series that investigates how architecture interacts with race and how the nation’s often ignored systems and histories perpetuate the problem of racial inequity. Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander in Architecture chronicles both societal and discipline specific metrics in an effort to highlight the experiences of designers, architects and educators of Asian, Hawaiian and Pacific Island heritage.

Courses Addressing Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the Built Environment
This directory of current and past course offerings was started in response to events in 2020 highlighting racial inequity across the United States and abroad. Many institutions have added new courses that investigate the intersection of race, equity, social justice and the built environment. Below you will find a list of ACSA member schools that have made efforts to modify the curriculum of architectural education at their respective institutions.

When evaluating this year’s changes in enrollment and applications, we also asked about BIPOC admissions. Of the participating programs, just over 1/3 reported no change in applications and enrollment. However, 28% of programs reported an increase in BIPOC applications and enrollment and when including those who saw a decrease in applications from BIPOC people, 36% of programs reported an increase in BIPOC enrollment. If this sample is indicative of the total population of schools, we should see NAAB’s Annual Report reflect the increased numbers of BIPOC students in the next few years

Architecture is a discipline inextricably tied to the land on which we live. This land has a story and uncovering the racial disparities across the continent is one way to tell it. Where Are My People? is a research series that investigates how architecture interacts with race and how the nation’s often ignored systems and histories perpetuate the problem of racial inequity. Where Are My People? Native and Indigenous in Architecture chronicles both societal and discipline specific metrics in an effort to highlight the experiences of Native American, First Nations, Alaskan Native, Métis, Inuit and other Indigenous designers, architects, and educators.

Culturally Responsive Teaching: Providing an Equitable Architectural Education
As educators, our mission is to ensure that every student can succeed. As a discipline, architecture often prioritizes the “product,” and the “place” before considering the “people”. This lecture will share the theoretical framework originally established by Gloria Ladson-Billings in her efforts to reach students from diverse backgrounds, and the tangible strategies necessary for validating students’ voices. By developing a socio-political consciousness, Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) empowers faculty to engage students in ways that architects should engage the public.

Dark Matter University: Lesson in Anti-Racist Design Pedagogy
In this session, members of the DMU collective will share one year’s worth of teaching experiences and efforts bringing new design education models to academic institutions all over the U.S. and Canada to better acknowledge and address the structural legacies of racial injustice. The courses that will be presented vary from introductory courses, to advanced seminars, to design studios. Unifying these efforts is a commitment to collectivity: each course is taught by at least two educators and experiments with cross-institutional, transdisciplinary learning environments that advocate for expanded criteria for success.

In the area of racial diversity, it is commonly known that representation, or the lack thereof, is a discipline-wide issue. Where Are My People? is a research series that investigates how architecture interacts with race and how the nation’s often ignored systems and histories perpetuate the problem of racial inequity. The last piece in the series, Where Are My People? Middle Eastern and North African, covers a group of people who continue to face mass discrimination, and combat popular misconceptions about heritage and religion.

ACSA Leadership Committee
In 2021-22 the committee will develop opportunities to highlight effective inclusion and equity strategies for leadership and operational changes in architecture programs. This includes new administrative positions or structures, committee initiatives, teaching resources, and community engagements. Aided by data and information collected from architecture programs, the committee is asked to prepare a report drafted in time for public input before the Annual Business Meeting and finalized by the end of June 2022. The committee will host sessions at the 2021 Administrators Conference (October 14-15) and 2022 Annual Meeting (March 17-19).

ACSA Education Committee
In 2021-22 the Education Committee is charged with researching ways to expand access to higher education, particularly for community college students. The committee will work to find ways to make transfer more consistent, fair, and equitable across institutions. This work will include collecting data and information about community college transfers and transfer policies and articulation agreements. The committee will develop a list of schools with transparent and welcoming transfer policies. The committee will also seek to strengthen connections to ACSA full member schools for community colleges and four-year programs. They will use ACSA conferences, StudyArchitecture.com, and ACSA webinars to highlight stories of successful people who started in community college or who are first generation college students. They will also explore creating meet-ups of community colleges and regional architecture programs.

ACSA Research and Scholarship Committee
Advancing Scholarship on Equity and Justice in Built Environments. The Research and Scholarship Committee is charged with continuing its work to strengthen and support architectural scholarship related to the intersection of social equity and justice in built environments.

Building from the data collection completed in 2020-21, the committee will identify case studies or exemplars for sharing with the ACSA membership and the public. It will determine the best means for developing content through these case studies, which might include sponsoring a poster session, written or oral interviews, summaries of work written by committee members, or other means.

Meeting the Moment: The Need for a Racial Equity Lens in Architectural Education
Heather Hackman discusses the need for architectural educators to develop a racial equity lens in order to rectify the injustice found in both architecture and the academy.

We asked schools if they implemented changes to provide more emphasis on social equity in architectural education. We are glad to report that 80% of the programs reported some implementation of new action to make the program more equitable. The most popular change is that of curricular reviews and curricular additions. Approximately two-thirds reported administrative and/or operational changes.

Progress Survey on Equity in Architectural Education
Understanding the new role of the DEI administrator

The survey from this year’s Leadership Committee is focused on DEI Administrators. The goal of this survey is to gather data about administrative positions/school designees and action plans focused on justice, equity, and diversity.

Survey on Expanding Access to Architectural Education
Best practices in transfer and articulation

In 2021-22 the Education Committee is charged with researching ways to expand access to higher education, particularly for community college students. The committee will work to find ways to make transfer more consistent, fair, and equitable across institutions. This work includes collecting information on transfer policies and articulation agreements.

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) is pleased to announce TIMBER IN THE CITY 4: Urban Habitats Competition for the 2021-2022 academic year. The competition is a partnership between the Softwood Lumber Board (SLB), ACSA and the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The program is intended to engage students, working individually or in teams, to imagine the transformation of our existing cities through sustainable buildings from renewable resources, offering expedient affordable construction, innovating with new and traditional wooden materials, and designing healthy living and working environments. This is the fourth competition in this TIMBER IN THE CITY series, and focuses this year on the interrelationship between housing, urban transit infrastructure, equitable living, and climate change.

In response to the simultaneous crises of Housing, Climate and Equity, this competition challenges students to envision the ideal Habitat home in one of seven North American regions. The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) is pleased to announce the HABITAT Design Competition: Climate Positive Concrete Housing for the 2021-2022 academic year. The competition is a partnership between the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMCA) and Habitat for Humanity International, Inc. The Habitat Design Competition: Climate Positive Concrete Housing is based on the Habitat for Human