worth going to just for the chance to live in the Bluegrass

It is a nice place but I just not sure about the school

i've taught design studios at uk for the past couple of years, both in 4/5 year vertical studios and in 1st year. what questions do you have?

kentucky is a great place to live. uk is a big campus but has a great campus life. there is good music in town. arch school has a great library and there is also a very good fine arts library. computer resources aren't bad and getting better all the time.

you'll find that there is no specific focus area for the school - no one thing upon which they base their reputation - which can be good or bad, depending on your habits. if you're driven and know what you want, you'll have the freedom and support to get there. if you float along and expect someone to lead you along, you'll probably be disappointed in your results and, by extension, the school.

feel free to email me off board if you like.

Thanks for the response, what kind of success do your students have in the local or national job markets? Do graduates tend to stay in the area or do they look for work else where? I Consider myself to be driven so that shouldn't be an issue.

barch students place pretty well, from what i've seen. since uk has the only architecture school in the state, most offices are packed with uk grads. when i moved here in '94, i was the only person in my office of 11 who was not from uk.

i don't know whether i can generalize about who stays in the area:

i know that we have grads in l.a., seattle, new york, etc. a lot try n.y. some go searching for work at star firms (and find it, typically). some just go to soak in n.y. a couple of my students that graduated in the spring are there now. (i'd impress you with the offices they're in if i could remember them. sigh.) and one was in phila, possibly now working for kieran timberlake.

a lot of students go on to grad school.

but, then, a good number stay here in kentucky to work as well.

economically kentucky's been pretty stable, so it's fairly consistently a good place to work. the profession here, though, is much more conservative than the school, so there is that adjustment of your goals upon graduation.

what other schools are you considering - as a comparison?

I've been looking mainly at Ohio State, Texas, Ball State and UCLA(not very likely) to name a few. By the way I understand the UKs grad school is fairly new. How do you see that progressing? Compared to the previously mentioned schools?

I don't know too much abotu the program, but a former professor of mine went there for undergrad (late 70s). THis was the time that HEjduk and Libeskind were connected with the school. There are still a few amazing teachers there. Anthony Roconovia is one of them. Amazing guy.

I was there in the spring of 2004. Some of my work was on exhibition in their downtown gallery and saw a lecture. The work at the school looked good, but I did not have a lot of time to look.

??

m.arch. program is like the b.arch. only moreso. you're really on your own and you kind of craft your own program. you're also expected to put together a committee of reviewers right away at the beginning of the year which is difficult if you don't know any of the faculty and what their strengths are.

i did the m.arch. and found it to be a great experience. i knew what i wanted from it going in and then discovered some great things along the way.

had a studio co-directed by michael rotondi and michael barry that was really helpful in getting me out of professional-mindedness and back into speculation and exploration. paired with a seminar by michael barry that followed similar pursuits as the studio, this was probably the best part of the program for me - besides my own masters project (not called thesis) research.

grad program IS still new and finding its legs. it's an exciting time to be there because it's all new and forming/evolving...but there is also no reputation to count on yet.

i'm afraid i don't know how exactly to compare uk to the schools you've listed. we see a lot of ball state students here in louisville and they are very good.

ohio state is also a great program and columbus is an interesting city. (keep in mind that this is from a adopted midwesterner's perspective. you learn to love different things here than you would on the coasts.) both the director of the uk arch program and one of their visiting professors (joe tanney), with whom i taught a studio, were from osu program.

i worked for two guys from uk. they were extremely talented and successful.

Thanks for the insight sounds like a good school. Its going to be a hard choice.