Oct '09 - Apr '10
2 months ago, Luke, May, Chuck, and Myself had a meeting with Dean Balfour to unveil our plan to build the GaTech COA’s reputation up over the next few years in the academic and professional community. Luke and I have been discussing a fresh lecture series for next year, and we recently brought the grey matter(s) online publication into the mix. Here is what we will be proposing:
1. A lecture series run almost entirely by students.
Students make contact and continue correspondance with the Lecture guest.
Students will devise a theme [consistent ideal] to link the semester’s lectures together.
Student will be responsible for entertaining guest when they are in Atlanta.
A relevant poster to accompany the lecture series that can be distributed to architecture schools across the nation and attract interest in the school for graduate school [new GSA]
2. A school publication with 80-100 pages of student work, faculty papers, and grey matter(s) content.
This publication should also exist as the representative student gallery for prospective students to view.
This should accurately gauge the pulse of the school. Dead or Alive.
These are the two most important deficiencies we, as the student leadership underground, see as the most important to start working on, and believe they will bring the most results. We are also bringing with us our vision for the new GSA of which we feel responsible for establishing its identity in its infancy. The image of the school on a hill for all to see and all to flock, set in the middle of Atlanta, builds a notion of the new GSA being at the forefront of the profession in the coming years. Along with this, we will plastering the images all over the college as a propaganda campaign to encourage a culture and feeling in the students that Georgia Tech can be a top ranked architecture school.
Progress will be posted, and initial results are very encouraging...
2 Comments
When I was a student at Georgia Tech the lecture series was organized by the students. I remember that we had a small budget to invite lecturers. I was only peripherally involved, but I do remember that we blew our entire budget to invite Rem Koolhaas to Georgia Tech in '93. He also required a helicopter ride over the city. I think this was the genesis of his article about Atlanta in SMLXL.
Good luck with the effort. It sounds like a great idea. Ask Richard Dagenhart about the student run series and Rem's visit.
Other starchitects had various peculiar demands. One involved having us organize an ice hockey match with the pre-nhl ATL team (the knights.) Not sure if this was a joke or a blow-off, but it obviously didn't happen.
when i was a student there the series was organized by profs, but students were assigned to help host each lecturer. i've now organized 2 lecture series in my current institution [where i'm doing a phd] and it means more work than perks, although it is rewarding. i think you should focus on the continuity of the system--here, 2 students are in charge, one incoming, one outgoing, so you always do it for 2 semesters but the experience gets handed down and you don't need to learn things from scratch. we also have a student advisor and the program's admin asist helps out.
i appreciate your discussion on the future of the institute, but as a gatech alumni, i don't feel this image is very representative of the school. for one, i don't see the school building, the image is isolated and anti-urban, and highlights georgia tech as plus an island--which it sometimes is. efforts in the last 10-12 years have been made to increase communication with the city, why argue for a medieval castle?
[also that font for the logo also goes against the modern traditions of the school. odd that you would choose that]
i appreciate your efforts very much and hope you understand the critique is meant to be constructive.
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