School of Architecture Virtual Accepted Student Celebration 2024

You're working on the chat box.

OK.

Yeah, yeah. I'm just going to do a couple of slides for us and admissions and then I'll be monitoring the the chat box and I see people are joining us now. So we're letting people log in and get comfortable and then we will start. It looks like we have 17 people joining us. So thank you very much everybody. Welcome to the School of Architecture accepted student webinar. Thank you for joining us this afternoon.

My name is Matt Stabler. I'm one of the Assistant Directors for undergraduate admissions here at Rensselaer, and we're also joined by Evan Douglas, the Dean of the School of Architecture, who will be doing the Academic overview. And we will be finishing off the afternoon with some questions and answers for for Evan.

Just some housekeeping. You can use the chat box to submit your questions. I will be moderating the chat box.

You won't see the questions at first, but I do and I will be answering the questions either via the chat box or I will hold the questions for the end of Evans piece and we will answer them out loud together.

We're going to start off with a couple of financial aid and admissions pieces.

So the Office of Financial Aid have been confirming financial aid packages.

For the last couple of weeks, we've literally just been receiving the FAFSA from the federal government for the last few weeks and now we've been confirming packages which you should be able to see via your application portal. Appeals have also started to be reviewed as well. So if you submit an appeal, you should be hearing back from us very soon and you probably already know. But just to reiterate, we extended our deposit deadline through to May 15th so that students can have a little bit more time because of the the delay with FAFSA's and financial aid packages.

And if you feel like you need a little longer, then please just e-mail us admissions.rpi.edu if you need a few more days or maybe a week to finish up your decision making. And obviously we hope that will be in our favour.

And then that will move the deposited students onto their next steps. There's going to be a housing survey to submit. We have 10 different houses for first year students. We have some singles and some triples, but most of the accommodation is double S.

And it will be like community style living with kind of shared bathrooms.

Then you will be registering for navigating Rensselaer and beyond and orientation. You'll be receiving that information from the Office of the first year experience and also your advisor will be getting in contact with you during the summer. I think that happens in July about your first semester of classes and if you're looking for like moving dates, orientation, dates, those kind of pieces, then there's the the link there for the enrollment guide, which I will also be dropping into the the chat box.

In a few minutes and if you've got questions about this, then obviously submit questions via the chat box like I mentioned earlier. But we're here mainly to see and hear from Evan Douglas, the Dean of the School of Architecture. So I will turn things over to Evan.

Thank you. Thank you, Matt. And I'm going to click the slides here. All right.

And hopefully everyone can see the first slide. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Well, welcome everyone. I don't see you, but I know you're out there.

In in space and obviously you're doing you're attending this event for good reason. You're making a a life changing decision.

On which school of architecture is going to inspire you is going to get you excited about learning.

Is going to allow you to reach your full potential creatively and intellectually, and you'll be part of an amazing community of of fellow student colleagues both in the School of Architecture and at the institute level.

And you'll be taught by some of the most brilliant.

An interesting academic leaders and practitioners in the United States. I have an amazing school. I arrived in 2009 so 15 years overseeing the program and and I think we put it on the map and I'm very proud of what we've achieved and the kind of culture we've created. It's it's a true community. So this you know the take away on this slide.

Is really, you know, we do have an amazing student body from all over the world and they're curious and they're creative and they're totally passionate about the potential of architecture as a lifetime endeavor. And I'll you know, I'll do a deeper dive on some of the opportunities afforded first in architecture.

As a as a career. And then I'll at times be more as specific as I can about what's unique about our school compared to other schools. And I should maybe preface by saying that you've probably been to a lot of open houses, but you haven't had the Dean show up at these other schools. And I think that's telling because I take this very seriously.

I think the education of an architect is a.

Responsibility. It's a noble endeavor, and the next generation of students in architecture and for that matter in any discipline, represent the future. And it's in my best interest to attract, attract the most brilliant students around the world through our school. So that's why I'm involved in this.

OK, we're going to go to the.

Second slide here.

Preparing future leaders so.

You. You might ask.

What are they doing at Rensselaer School of Architecture that's different? Well.

I know that you're entering, You'll be entering into a school of architecture no matter where you go, and you'll get a degree and and you'll become a practitioner and you'll get a job. To me, that's low hanging fruit. I love the idea because no one.

Told me when I went to school at a young age. What's the larger purpose of being an architect?

And it's extraordinary, I mean you guys.

Are inheriting a planet at a particular moment in history where there are environmental challenges, you could even say a crisis.

And.

Architecture plays a significant role and can.

In terms of overcoming the depletion of energy, resources being self-sufficient getting off the grid.

Using alternative energy systems, being creative about how to move and and migrate off fossil fuel. And that's a whole discussion lecture in its own right. So on one level, it's environmental, it's technological.

And on another level, it's very much about humanism. That is to say that the built environment is our kind of collective consciousness, but it's also where people live and work throughout most of their life. And there's a difference between a building, just a building.

That's a shelter and a great piece of architecture that gets you excited about moving through that structure. And you can't wait either to go back.

To work or go to a museum or go to a housing complex or a single family house, there's a range of of different building types and a great architect is someone that sees the value of giving back to society.

And so you can be that person, right?

You know, I show this slide really to highlight the fact that.

Entering into architecture school today, unlike it was when I was going to school, is a bit of a calling, right? I mean, I use the word purpose before. So you're going to get your degree, you're you're going to receive an extraordinary education at RPI in history theory and technology and structures and digital design and and computation and fabrication techniques in ethics.

In energy analysis, I could go on and on and on and and each of those represent a school of thought, an area of knowledge, and they get combined, right? So it's an integrated project.

But the higher purpose is that you know, your entire generation and certainly the community of architects that rise up and and go out into the workforce in the next 5-10, fifteen years have a lot of work to do. And so it is a social and environmental project, which is, which is to me very exciting because there are other professions.

That don't speak on this level and don't talk about planetary priorities and and how cool is it at the age of 1718, nineteen years old, to know that you're engaged in a project that has the impact has an the potential impact on the entire human species and contributing to the next planetary strategy, right. Sounds like a science fiction film, but the truth is.

You are irrespective of what you decide to do. When you leave school. You may open your firm and do residential houses. You may get in a partner partnership and do design, museums, civic buildings, courthouses. You might work for a large firm, very large firm, work on skyscrapers. It goes on and on and on that. Which brings me to another issue, which is that when you get a degree in architecture.

Just think about your your brain getting 100 times bigger. Although you can still walk through any door opening, but there's so much information and knowledge that you're acquiring.

You will be able to deal with very complex problems that didn't exist today, but do in 1020 years from now, and I call that. I define that as critical thinking. So when you're facing a problem you're unfamiliar with, if you've had a great education, which you would get here at RPI, you will be able to resolve that problem. You'll also have an elastic mind, which means you're very creative.

Technologically, you'll be creative. From a design standpoint, you'll be creative, and to me, that's knowledge.

Is is power in the most beautiful way, right. And so the last line here, which I'm, I think is so exciting making a difference in your lifetime. I mean, you know, you get older like me and I think about my career and the people that I've impacted and the work that I still need to accomplish.

So I'm much more conscious of time, but it is of great value I think, when you.

Challenge a younger person, especially one that's entering into architecture school, and you say, listen, you can make a difference and you can impact in a positive way the environment and you can change the lives of others. I think that's really cool. So a lot of the background images you know are intended to be provocations.

You know, having empathy.

I think great architects do.

They they think about how a single individuals and and a a collective of communities again are inspired by public space, by large and small scale buildings, by natural light, by processional journeys moving through the building, by being able to see something in the landscape. All of these priorities are part of the imagination of the architect and once you acquire the skill sets and it takes time, got to be patient.

U2 will be able to be a major contributor.

So.

There are many schools of architecture around the world, and and I'm certainly not going to name any, but there some of them are OK. Standard. Mediocre.

Conventional conservative. And there are those and it's a select group that really.

Thinks outside the box. And what do I mean by that?

Every school of architecture has to prepare you to to become a practitioner. So you could argue that there is some common knowledge offered in every curriculum and so that you can take a licensed licensing exam a couple of years after you graduate and pass the test that again, is not.

It's not challenging enough for us that that doesn't seem to be comprehensive and ambition ambitious and aspirational, so.

We want our students to recognize, and I mean this, that each everyone that comes into our school has an enormous amount of creative potential.

Whether they're aware of it or not, they have an enormous potential to learn and to move forward as both a student and one day as a practitioner do extraordinary things. It's our responsibility as educators to prepare a student, in this case A5 year program, and that means you're taking knowledge and breaking it down every semester so the student fully understands what they're addressing.

Is confident, and they like building a pyramid. They're putting bricks together from one year to the next, and before you know it, they didn't. They don't even think about it as a brick because it's it's totally integrated. It's like speaking a language, and you're no longer thinking about each and every word and letter and structure and verbs and adjectives. You're communicating ideas into the world using the written and spoken language.

In this case, that language is architecture, right? I mentioned a number of things on this slide, but the last two lines I think are are really important, becoming a lifelong learner, so.

We often like to put the world into partitions into little boxes because it's easier to describe the world. But imagine if.

You just love learning.

You had a curious mind.

And and even if you were a little bit shy and ambivalent about that, if you go to the right school like Rensselaer, you you might get really excited about learning. And then before you know it, you don't necessarily have to be in a classroom with a teacher to ask questions, to read a book, to go online, to take a trip, to be involved in in certain collaborative relationships and opportunities and events. Your designing your life.

Quite honestly, right.

And you start the moment you choose your architecture school, right? I want to go to RPI School of Architecture for the following reasons. And then these are the firms I want to work for and with while I'm at their school and when I leave and I have a a degree.

These are the kinds of experiences that I would like to encounter as I move towards what might be your own firm one day or in a collaborative arrangement.

Right. That's what I mean by designing your life. And so that means when you're 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 you're, you're inspired to get up every morning and learn about the world around you, but also do it through the lens of an architect. And I think that's that's very exciting.

What might be something else that distinguishes our school from another school of architecture? In the US, there are many schools that think that architecture is an art, and it is.

But it's primarily just an art. Or there are other schools that think that it's incredibly pragmatic and it's about science and technology.

Here at my school, I think we see it as a combination.

And so each of you have probably you have a predisposition for a variety of reasons to be either more artistically inclined or more technologically inclined, maybe more math and science. Both of those profiles are extraordinarily valuable. As an architect, we don't expect you to be perfect in either one of those.

Prior to coming to school, Oregon, even after you arrive. But it is our responsibility to teach you as much as we can. And as long as you're receptive, you will get better every day and every week and month, right? So.

I just want you to know that that if if you're trying to generalize the school, you know what's going on with RPI. We believe that all three of those disciplines represent a comprehensive called architecture.

So the forces in a building related to structures and wind loads and earthquakes, that's what an architect has to know about. And if he or she doesn't, they hire someone who does.

The the materials that make up a building.

Are is both an aesthetic and a technological issue, right? And you learn about that the way buildings behave in terms of sunlight and heating and cooling, the environmental issues, the energy part of architecture, you'll learn about that.

How buildings look, what what their shape is, how they reflect the sun and shadow.

A kind of an aesthetic sensibility.

Is part of architecture. So just think of it. You come to Rensselaer, you get you get a lot of everything. And we don't, we don't want to, again, categorize architecture as a very simple thing. It's also an ethical project, which was implied by all the things I said before.

It's a social project. It's an environmental project. It is about promoting individual expression, right? Each of you has their own imagination and we celebrate that. We honor that. We respect that. And so if you were and if you don't have, if you didn't come on campus to get a book called Influx, we can send you a link in an e-mail. In fact, Matt Stabler, who spoke to you earlier from admissions.

Is going to send all of you in the next 2448 hours an e-mail and in that you'll get a link to a digital book. It's a 932 page book that covers over 10 years of student work in the undergraduate and graduate programs. Spend the time looking at it from first year all the way to 5th year and the graduate programs you'll get. You know, sometimes images speak louder than words, but you will see a city of research.

And a city of ideas.

Offering cutting edge digital design instruction, You guys are digital natives. You certainly at your age know a lot more than I knew about a computer even before getting into architecture school. And that's because when I went to school there, there were no computers. So just imagine what will be in the world from a technological standpoint.

When you're 3040 fifty years old, right, the world changes constantly. But it's a great time to study architecture because there's an extraordinary amount of software out there that is able to 3D model and simulate and create the illusion of reality. And it's extraordinary. So all of that software and hardware available to the architectural community represents an amazing asset. We also have access to laser cutting machines and 3D printers and a robot.

Which I won't show you in this slideshow, but you'll see a lot of this, the work that's produced with these tools and platforms in the book that you'll take a look at. And that means our, our, our students are building, designing, speculating on the computer, but also moving the digital file to the shop and making a physical equivalent of what they imagined in that virtual environment. So what an amazing time.

To be studying architecture and the last line on here, which is really important, imagine buildings as smart and beautiful change agents. It's another way of saying, you know, could a building have its own autonomy, its own brain? You know, it's again sounds like a science fiction film. But if we had more time, I would show you that one of our graduate research programs called CASE, the Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology.

Which you can spend a full semester at in Brooklyn. In addition to going abroad, which I'll talk about in a moment, they're actually looking at next generation building systems, not the current generation, the next one. That means you. This is important. You want to go to a school that provides you with knowledge that you could use immediately upon graduation, but also offers you experiences.

Educational experiences that make you think outside the box offer you more speculative, cutting edge technology. So 510 years from now, when you're in an office and someone brings in a project that no one else can figure it out, you can. So you'd be able to work with graduate students on what I would say as a metaphor, the next brick for the 21st century, right?

Buildings that absorb.

Sunlight.

Onto the elevation, the surface is the facades of their of the building in order to be off the grid. So they don't have to be powered by fossil fuel and electricity, they create their own energy. We're working on that right now and you would be part of that project and it's it's moving out into the public domain as we speak. So there's another example of how the school at Rensselaer is fundamentally different.

Let's see here.

You're seeing a whole sample, very small sample of projects in the school of architecture that.

Are contemporary, obviously, but there's a whole range of design studio opportunities for you where you'll work with something that's a little more standard and then you may be able to explore things that are that are a little bit more futuristic, and that's important.

Again, because you have to, it's a language, as I said, you have to be able to have the facility, the imagination and the understanding what the implications are of these designs. So they're not just an image, they're an integrated project that you understand how you would move it forward into the built environment.

I mentioned about next generation building, so think of it this way. Every school of architecture in the United States.

Recognizes that we have an environmental crisis and sustainability. One of the most popular words in the world is something that they integrate into their curriculum, but they're using exclusively current technology that's available in the building industry.

We offer that, but we offer something in addition to that, which is what I was talking about. So the Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology is something you won't find in other.

Universities and.

My God, there's It would take an entire lecture to tell you the kinds of things they're working on with artificial intelligence.

With hemp being used for cladding systems and for rebars and concrete for sensor, smart sentient interiors and buildings that change in real time according to sun and acoustics and sound and occupancy, it's just so exciting.

And so I I that third line here. And you get to graduate, you get to collaborate with graduate students, which is exciting, sentient buildings adapting in real time, like plants and animals. And that's what living things do. They're constantly changing. Think about them as, as smart machines, as a metaphor. They they adjust and recalibrate all of us in real time. It's magic being alive, right? Well, buildings can get there too, one day.

I know that sounds funny, but they will. And when they do, it will be extraordinary and and beautiful in the most powerful way because you will have created a more synergistic relationship with the planet.

And the RPI graduates will be in the forefront of this profession for a variety of reasons. Many of I I have just spoke about and more.

The other thing I wanted to highlight.

And that's unique about our school is I would imagine most schools of architecture have a study abroad program. They we all recognize the importance of leaving a familiar territory, your homeland, the United States, going to another country and learning about their historic and contemporary architecture.

Cultural etiquette, right? The way they think, the way they behave, the way the way the community is structured. There's so much to learn about other societies in the world. One, because it helps us appreciate the multicultural planet that we live in. And two, it allows us to come back and reflect upon our own and make it better. The democratic project, right? And so.

And on a more practical level, architects don't just get jobs within an hour where their office is, They may get commissions anywhere in the world, so the entire planet.

Represents.

How should you say it? A kind of sandbox of sorts, where you can design buildings, design infrastructure, collaborate with practitioners from many disciplines related to architecture.

Throughout your entire lifetime, so in light of the recognition of how important that is.

We have four study abroad programs, two are currently active and two are being redesigned post COVID. The two ones that are active are Italy and you're you can see right here on the right hand picture here Coliseum and Latin America. So we have partnerships, schools.

In both countries and our students get to collaborate with students at their school, and then we get to travel in various cities to see historic and contemporary projects, and that's a full semester our faculty go with the students.

And it's anywhere depending on the program, it's anywhere between 12 and 16 students. And it's it's absolutely life changing. I can't tell you how transformative it has been.

To be able to have an experience like that early in your life and you would take these off campus study abroad opportunities in your third year in the five year program. We're currently working on redesigning our India program and our Asia program, which means there will be 4 offerings in the school of architecture to our students. I'm not sure there's any school in the US that has as many options.

And it's important also to note that 75% of my entire student body post COVID and pre COVID have had a cultural immersion experience. So it's not mandatory. It means the students recognize that this is of great value and they move towards it and they have that experience and they meet friends for life from other countries. It gets them excited about traveling.

And as I said, I've had alum who come back and said one of the greatest things that ever happened in their lifetime was go to Italy, right, or go to China.

And so.

What can I say? This is something that we have, We're very proud of it, and you'll be establishing a global professional network. You don't have to think about it that way when you first arrive, but it means that this is the kind of experience in your lifetime.

That is so meaningful.

Another priority for the School of Architecture and I I spoke on on a number of occasions in this presentation is about the social project in architecture community engagement. We've had design, build partnerships with Habitat for Humanity. The Capital Region is in New York State. Longer discussion, but I think it's important that our students have an opportunity to think of architecture.

And the impact it has within the social domain, the public, the larger public arena. And so we set up from one year to the next collaborative partnerships with institutions they could be.

Museums. They could be nonprofits of all sorts, cultural institutions that are interesting in expanding their campus, and they come to the School of Architecture.

Curious as to whether the students could help them consider a whole series of designs. Think of it as an ideas competition. And the students get access to the leadership of these organizations at an early age, and they get to meet the board of trustees and the directors, and they make presentations and they engage in a conversation beyond the academic campus. Very, very important, very early in their life. And of course these institutions learn a lot about.

All the opportunities afforded from a design standpoint that they hadn't considered prior to hiring a professional architect. Our students, we've done this for for many years, we published books, we've had public exhibitions where the student work has moved into the public domain. So very proud of that.

We have a a city of Chicago, a semester way internship anywhere between 3:00 and 5:00 students, all expenses paid.

To work over the summer as an intern, part of the of the planning and development office for the City of Chicago and learn about the design of cities. Learn about working with developers, Learn about certain financial incentives, right, that spur growth in urban environments, something that you do not often acquire in an undergraduate program. But if you enter into this program and you get selected, it's.

It's another life changing experience.

Rise High is a is a middle school.

Set of schools in Schenectady, NY where our students have the opportunity to serve as mentors to 1314 year old students who are interested about STEM fields and architecture. So here's an opportunity for you to become the teacher, and you do it at different times when you're not in your class work taking classes.

Coconut byproduct We've done work in Ghana, Africa where coconuts after you you get the milk from the coconut they throw out the husk. But our Center for Architecture Science and Ecology identified through new research ways to.

Redesign.

The husk, so it becomes a building product. So this is called upcycling. In other words, you're using a common material.

And through a an innovative and rather savvy design strategy, you can actually redirect it back into the market as a building product. So it it shows you that even as an undergraduate student, you could be working on research that has an impact on society right away. And the last line? Using architecture as a productive tool for social change.

I think that's really just a beautiful aspiration.

Let's see here. I did want to show this. This is a really interesting temporary installation. We had an entrepreneur come to us who had designed a building that, I'm sorry, a a plastic bottle that could interlock in the X, the Y and the Z axis and essentially you could create an entire building out of it.

And this is what we did on the front lawn of our building, the architecture school building. And what's the value of this? The value of this is his larger interest was could you.

Redesign.

Any container for liquid, both for water or soda or tea, in such a way that after it was no longer being used to carry that product.

It could move into a different territory of construction. How interesting is that? And more specifically, he wanted to help him design rapid deployment structures, disaster relief, housing for people who are in need, whose life is on the line, and you have to put a building together in a short period of time. Well, imagine if you had panels built out of these vessels and they were flown within a matter of hours to a catastrophic area.

And you could create a room out of this material. It's it's an amazingly interesting project. This was the installation with the coconut husk in Africa.

And here's some some school highlights. I got to replace this slide. We have a new president of RPI who's brilliant. Marty Schmidt was the former Provost of MIT and he's our new president and he's visionary and he is supportive and he is.

How should you say committed to transforming this university?

Because he was an alum from RPI, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts is on the left. That's a $250 million building. That was it was there was an international design competition. It was won by Nicholas Grimshaw, British architect. That's where our lecture series are in. That's where we have international conferences. This is one of the studios inside that building and it's $1,000,000 winch system that moves that frame up and down.

And you can put a 360° panoramic screen in that room, which means better than VR. You can walk into the buildings and cities that you design.

And this is available to our students on a continuous basis. I have never seen a building of this level of technological sophistication at any school of architecture in the United States.

And I've been around a long time.

I have an incredible, diverse and internationally renowned group of faculty. While most live within the proximity of school, some travel from New York City twice a week because they want to teach at RPI School of Architecture. They could be teaching at all those schools in New York City, but they want to be here. I think that says a lot. I mentioned that 75% of our students enter into the study abroad program.

And I think this is really cool. 60% of our student body is female. I'm very proud of that. I think a school has to reflect the larger world that we live in and it should be intellectually diverse, ethnically diverse on a gender level. And I could go on right and and that's the school that I aspire to and I think that's the one we've achieved and for so many reasons, ethically, morally.

Just on a on a purely cultural level, and in terms of being inspired by people who think and look different from you, you'd want to come here.

School highlights they're no design intelligence was an organization that ranks schools for many, many years, if not decades. They've stopped ranking the schools and and much longer discussion about that. But.

In architecture, ranking is a bit of a popularity contest. Unlike science and engineering, which has very specific metrics in the school that underlie the ranking system or the actual number you receive, it's really.

Your graduates going out to the world and being in a position to run a firm and then vote, that means that it I'm talking about the architecture ranking it it certainly.

Favors large architecture schools because there's more graduates who vote. And that's what I mean by popularity contest. But when I when I came here in 2009, we were not ranked in the top 20 and we shot up within two or three years. We've been as high as 13th in the nation. And if you asked me, do I think we? You know what? What do I really believe our ranking is? I think we're in the top four or five schools in the entire United States.

Now you can say he's biased because he's the Dean, and that's true. On the other hand, I I see the graduates that are coming out of our school, going to Ivy League schools, going, getting offers, working in the best firms in the world, assuming leadership positions in major cities.

And being awarded prizes on a national and international level. So yeah, that's how I feel.

That same organization.

Recognizes the top architectural educators in the.

USI have been selected. I think it's now five times in the last 10 years, so I must be doing something right. And but I do see it as a collective project, so I don't take all the credit. I I have all these faculty and students around and they're acknowledging what's happening in the school.

What is the Bedford Chair? The Bedford Chair is based on an interdisciplinary project.

Where one of our alum many years ago said, you know, architects and engineers should talk to each other earlier and provide interdisciplinary collaborative opportunities for students.

So.

Clay Bedford gave money to an endowment which allows me to bring a world class engineer in Structural Engineer to oversee civil engineering students and architecture students in a Seminole.

And then an all expenses paid trip anywhere in the world to see structures up close over the summer and I have that initiative and and you guys could apply. Once you come into the school this is something you're interested in. You could take that seminar and and and take another travel experience abroad. The Browns Traveling Fellowship is an opportunity to give students that are going from 4th year to 5th year $5000.

In support of their own personal travel.

So unlike the study abroad program, which is part of a course and it's a collective group. If you wanted to take a look at Baroque churches in the South of Germany, or Renaissance buildings in Rome and Florence, or skyscrapers in Tokyo, you put a proposal together. And if you're selected to get $5000 and you travel on your own in between your 4th and 5th year in the summer, I think that's it's been very exciting. And then you come back and make a presentation to the school.

The Crave Lab when I spoke about a panoramic screen, a 360° panoramic screen, which is the equivalent of of going into AVR space with all your friends. We have two of them, one at MPAC which is in a circle and one off campus about 20 minutes away called the Crave Lab. And all the students in the school get access to this and it's amazing, it's amazing technology.

And this is my last slide and then I'll open it up for for questions.

You know, where do the graduates go? I mean, and that I could show you hundreds and hundreds of lines of where our, our graduates have gone that have had impact and success.

The American Institute of Architects is the most.

Important architectural organization.

For a practitioner in this country, there's about 150 a 160 practitioners in architecture and they give one firm award a year, award a year and one gold medal to a single individual architect a year. And as you can see here, I've had two of our alum who are part of my leadership team, my Advisory Council have won AIA national firm awards.

And one is won the gold medal. So you ask where do they go? They go to the top.

They do extraordinary work and they change the lives of others. I spoke to you about the Influx book, which you'll get a link to and do spend the time once you receive it, looking closely at the kind of work 95% of the students that enter into my school of architecture have had, no.

Architectural training. So if you look at these drawings and models and renderings and you go, how am I going to do this? They were in the exact same position as you were, right? They may have worked with the computer a little bit. They hadn't read a lot of books on architecture. They certainly never 3D modeled a building. We teach you that. That's our responsibility. Don't even worry about that.

Job placement, OK?

100%.

Overtime, 100% overtime. We have an extraordinary network. We have a job fair every spring.

That takes place at Impact and we we bring in about 3035 firms around the US, mostly the Northeast. And the students come in with their portfolio and they introduce themselves and they exchange contact information starting from first year all the way to 5th year and they get internship.

Opportunities. We have a portfolio class that we help you put your portfolio together and your CV so that you can attract.

A great firm to provide you with an offer. So we take it very seriously about helping you get a job while you're in school, during the five years that were with us, and certainly once you leave RPI. OK. Tremendous network and the students are very excited about that. And of course strong alumni.

This is one of my priorities as a Dean. I am reaching out to alumni on a continuous basis. And why is that important? Because those alumni will support you. They care deeply about their alma mater and they're there to help you as mentors and maybe even as as an employer for a part time job. A full time job, You know, So anyway.

I'm happy. Let's see. Is there anything else that I wanted to say before we open up the study abroad program?

Yes, there's a mentorship program. So when you leave high school to college, it can be a little bit overwhelming. You're, you know, I'm not, I'm not eating Mom's food. I'm not waking up in my parents house. My friends are off to different colleges. Yeah, it's a little anxious, but within a matter of days and weeks and months, all of a sudden it's it's an entrance into a new world that is so exciting and so challenging and so rewarding.

But.

In support of that transition, we have a student mentorship program where every incoming freshman, male and female, is assigned an upperclassmen, male or female, and they're available 24/7. And so if if you want to, you know, send them a text and ask them a question, You want to meet with them for lunch? You want feedback on coursework, on your personal life, on how to navigate.

Your college studies, they're there for you and I think it's been hugely successful and really rewarding on the highest level to our students. And of course the Dean is a nice guy and he's got an open door policy. And if there's anything that you need to find out, I'm I'm available as well. And all of the students who come into the school are signed, a faculty advisor. So there's a huge support system to help you be successful. I think I covered.

Most of everything and I'm available to answer any questions you might have. Matt, you want to come back?

There we go. And thank you Evan for that what we're doing now we're dive on into the the Q&A.

The first question here is from Charlotte. We have some other questions coming as well. Charlotte was asking about the accreditation or the re accreditation process. If you could just talk a little bit about that please, Evan?

Yeah, every every school of architecture needs to be credited.

And in order to, I suppose, validate that the teaching and learning that's taking place within that school is synchronized with the profession, and you're preparing your students to become a future practitioner.

When they come, there's a there's a package of information that you prepare, you send it.

To the team in Washington, they review it. They then come on to your campus. They spend 4 days reviewing the entire architecture program. They issue a report and they identify areas that you've done an extraordinary job and maybe areas for improvement. If they think your program is absolutely exceptional and no program is perfect from their view because it's always a work in progress, they will come back.

Eight years from the time they saw you last and that's exactly what has taken place. NAB, that's the, that's the accreditation organization. They were on our campus eight years ago and they're coming to visit us in the spring and we're preparing everything and we're in great shape and I am not worried about anything. So it's every school has to go through this and there are schools that are receiving them in the fall.

This, this coming fall, they'll be coming in the spring of 2025. It's actually a great opportunity to be honest with you with all the hard work involved to step back objectively and saying what do we believe in, what can we do to be better and what kind of support do we need from the institute and so forth. So be assured that we're in a terrific place standing and.

It's going to work out just fine, but thank you for the question. Appreciate it.

OK. Thank you for that. The next question is from Duncan. He's heard about some universities having in China having a weaker curriculum and you mentioned earlier when you mentioned study abroad that the, the China, the Asian part of study abroad is being reviewed. Is that is that because of their curriculum or is it down to some other reason?

Oh, very, very interesting.

Well, #1, when COVID hit, we all the schools of architecture throughout the US had a suspended study abroad programs for obvious reasons. And when you suspend a program, there's new leadership on both sides. Things change in a geopolitical point of view and you step back and you go, OK, what are we going to do? Are we going to just re engage in the exact same model or are we going to make any changes?

So Italy and Latin America were were very simple. I do want to interesting enough because I I've spent a good portion of the last 20 years in China.

Maybe 20 years ago.

Their architecture programs and their contemporary design practitioners were well behind the West. Things have changed significantly. Some of the best architects in the world.

Practice in China.

Umm, and this is a longer discussion, but there's some amazing contemporary buildings in China. And the school that we were associated with was called Tung Zhi University in Shanghai, the two finest universities in all of China and for that matter, Asia. Our Tungsten University and Xinghua Tsinghua's in in in Oh my God, they I just Beijing.

So in, in, in, in response to your question, is it is. Do they have inferior architecture programs? Certainly at the top they don't.

Are is the program that we were associated with exceptional. It was absolutely exceptional and it was an amazing experience while it lasted. We're pivoting and and now looking into South East Asia.

We're we're looking at Thailand, Vietnam and Laos with the possibility of traveling to Japan and Korea. So these are extraordinary cultures in their own right with their own architectural legacies and.

Where we expect that within a year, year and a half, we'll be able to get that one launched. Same thing with India leadership changes, we're redesigning it. So be assured that any partner.

That I sign on a piece of paper with whether they're in the United States or abroad are absolutely at the same level as RPI. Otherwise I I I wouldn't engage in that kind of partnership, but it's a great question. Thank you.

OK. Thank you for that, Evan. And a question from Evan Student. Evan asks about the difference between 5 1/2 year M arch degrees and a five year B arch, which is what RPI has. Can you kind of tell us a little bit about the similarities and the differences?

Well, I don't know if it's a typo or not, but.

There are a number of ways to become a practicing architect. Over 50% of the graduates coming out of schools of architecture in the United States get B arch degrees. These are five years degree from accredited schools like ours and then they work for two years in an office and they can.

Take the test and become a practicing architect.

Why five years? Why the B Arch degree? Students who want to become architects? They know in high school that they want to pursue architecture, will pursue the B Arch degree right out of high school. There are many young people who don't know what they want to do in their career, and so let's say they go into a four year liberal arts college.

And during that time, at some moment in their second, third or fourth year, they go, oh, I want to do architecture. So they have to go to Graduate School to get a degree to become a professional architect that's either a three or 3 1/2 year degree. We have an M ARC program as well. So these are students that primarily are going into those liberal arts colleges and then deciding want to be an architect.

If you know, as you all know early in your life you want to be an architect, you should go in the bee arch programs and get and you get 5 years to study something that's profoundly interesting. Whereas the older student gets similar information knowledge that's reduced to three or 3 1/2 years, which isn't as much time, but anyway the practicing. The practitioners in the United States either have the B arch degree or the M arch degree.

Is there another option? Yeah, there there are some schools that offer a building science, a four year building science degree.

And then you can get an. You can get advanced standing. This is complicated and advanced standing in a graduate program called the M Arc program. So it's a 4 + 2. That's six years instead of five years.

I would put our program, as I said, against any program in the USII think it's absolutely extraordinary to be ARCH program, but it's a lot of people don't know the difference between the B ARCH and the MRT.

And hopefully I've explained that and it's more clear now. And thank you for that question.

OK, Charlotte just asked about a recording to the webinar. I'll be sending that link out later on this week.

So give me a few days to kind of put that together and that seems to be all the questions that we have, so.

Hey Matt, Matt, starting to rub. I do want to add one more thing.

Which I did not speak about, which is that some of our students, not all of them but some, decide that they want to get a graduate degree after their five year B arch degree. Why would you get a graduate degree after a 5 year degree?

Two reasons, the most important is you're you're looking for added knowledge. There's something you know, you don't have to know that in your first year or second year, but you think that there's something you want to explore that you think would complement your five year degree and put you in a stronger position once you're seeing seeking employment or or you want to run a firm one day and it could be in civil engineering, you could be in business, it could be in computer science.

It could be a sustainability. It can be in a lot of things. At RPI, they offer what they call a coterminal degree, which means it's less expensive to stay on campus.

After your five years and stay for one more year of 5 + 1 to get both degrees. Then it is to leave RPI, go to another university and get your second degree, your graduate degree.

So there's a cost savings. Now, I'm not suggesting everyone has to do that. It's just an option. And the other reason that you may want to get a graduate degree is if you want to have one foot in your practice and one foot in academia. You want to teach one day, and in order to teach you have to have a graduate degree, and that's a one year graduate degree. You can also decide after you leave RPI with the five years, I'm going to work in an office for four or five, 6-7 years, and then I'm going to go to Graduate School for one year.

And some people do that too, and that's great, but I just wanted to point that out so that you understood that.

OK, awesome. We've got two more questions. The first one is from Charlotte and she asking about if it's OK to be an athlete and an architect.

That's a great question. We're very supportive of our student athletes at RPI and especially in the School of Architecture. And interesting enough, some of the highest GPA scores come from the student athletes.

And you might ask, how is that possible because they're so busy. It's called time management.

If you've got X number of hours in the day and you have to sleep, get a good night's sleep and eat and exercise and socialize, you've got to be very strategic and disciplined about how many hours you allocate for your design studio, how many hours you allocate for history theory structures, so forth.

The student athletes are magicians at this because they have no choice and that means they get a lot of work done in a shorter period of time and they're very effective and they appear to excel. Is it easy to be an athlete and an architect? No, it's not easy. Nothing's easy in life. But if this is something that you want to do, you'll do it and we'll support you. And we've had many, male and female.

Athletes in the School of Architecture and they figured it out, so we welcome you.

And the last question is from Mayor kind of asking about the location of RPI not being a in a big city. Is that a significant factor or is that kind of irrelevant to what we do and how we do it?

That's a great question. I I can just tell you personally that I lived in the big city for 30 some years and when I was offered the opportunity to become.

Senior RP I I moved out of the big city and I didn't know a lot about upstate New York, and in a short period of time I realized, Oh my God, it's so interesting here. So think of it this way. You're only 2 1/2 hours from one of the greatest cities in the world. You can get on a bus or a train or a car, and you can get there in a short period of time. So you're not, you're not so far away that you don't have access to that wonderfully dynamic environment. But you also.

Will have an opportunity to live and work in a campus in a post industrial city called Troy. Which is safe, which is intimate, which is beautiful and there's lots of culture here.

You just, you know, you get into a car and you can you can go to Mass Mocha. The largest museum in the United States is only 45 minutes away. The Clark Museum is probably about 30 minutes away. Another wonderful contemporary museum.

There there's a list of of different art museums and and places, art parks and and little towns and villages of all sorts that make it incredibly inspiring environment to learn and just be reminded that you're going to be so focused on your studies you really don't want. You could argue you don't want too much distraction from a city.

And you can always work in the city in the summer. And after you leave RPI with your degree, if you wanted to, you could spend the rest of your life in New York City and Chicago and San Francisco, LA and so forth. So.

It I would prioritize.

Your your decisions now, what is the single most important thing that you need to decide?

What is the best architecture school for me? You know which school is going to really challenge me?

And prepare me to be an extraordinary human being, a global citizen and a future architect. That's the question. And if it happens to be in Troy, NY in a small, again, picturesque city, then so be it. But you can get access to all the things that you will need once you've got some time away and and and you're looking to enjoy yourself.

OK, awesome. So I think that is a good note to end on. Thank you everybody for joining us today. Wherever you may be around the United States, around the world, We really appreciate your your time today. And of course a huge thank you to Evan Douglas, the Dean of the School of Architecture for giving us some insight and inspiration as well. I'll be in touch this week with a link to the recording. Please e-mail me if you do have any questions.

And I'll just put in the general admissions e-mail here in the chat box if there's any questions that you have about.

Enrolling about financial aid or about architecture, Please reach out. Other than that, thank you very much again and enjoy your evening. It looks like Evan wants to have the last word.

The, the final, Matt, thank you very much for your time, but I I just wanted to say if you do have any questions and in addition to Matt, if you want to reach me personally, you can do that at Douglas DOUGLIS at rpi.edu. And my last comment to you is just letting all of you know we would be thrilled to have you part of the school of architecture and part of the family in in the fall of 24.

Thank you for taking time out this evening and I hope this was insightful. Be well.

Awesome. Good night everybody.