I’m a bit fed-up- in a bit of a fed-up mood.
Here at Michigan, we have a bunch of required classes- classes that you must take in order to graduate. They’re not required for any arbitrary reason- they cover topics that the accreditation board considers essential to the education of an architect- fine. These classes are taught in a large lecture hall, with a professor (sometimes more than one) at a podium, and usually rely heavily on powerpoint and quantitative evaluation- probably the most efficient way to teach. These classes; construction, history, structures, intro to theory, environmental technology, site planning- are often taught by professors who are hired and evaluated based first on their record as researchers or practitioners in their discipline and second on their ability to educate. We have a lot of great innovators, researchers, and designers here at TCAUP, most of them are good teachers too. Still, we have a few severely-challenged teachers.
If you asked students who they’d prefer to introduce them to a subject: a talented, motivated teacher with the minimum expertise necessary to teach an introductory course competently or a renowned expert or acclaimed designer who can’t teach well (and doesn’t seem to care), most, if not all, would go for the former. From the students’ perspective, teaching comes first; from the perspective of the university, research and publication come first. Admissions packets will always tell you that all of their professors are fine teachers, but the only information that any prospective applicant has to understand their prospective teachers are statistics on the number of faculty with terminal degrees, the books they’ve written, the things they’ve designed, and the panels, committees, etc. that they’ve served on.
These classes are part of a larger package, and that’s how they’re sold. When students complain about the quality of the classes, the answer is usually that it’s just one or two out of many and that not everything can be ideal. Students hate it, they resent it, they grumble, but then it’s time for studio and they move on. The semester goes on like this- frustration melts into apathy and then the semester is over and the next batch of students go through it again. Still, I really wonder if it has to be this way- do all schools follow this practitioner/researcher-primary, educator-secondary ideology? What’s it like at other schools? How do they meet NAAB requirements? Also, what do faculty think- do they perceive the system in the same way that students do? Do they value the same things in an educational environment?