final decisions almost always do lie with the design principal - at least if that principal chooses to be involved with all projects. ours leaves things pretty much to the discretion of the pm's.

if your principal is not interested in the exploration that the design team has made, ignoring them when making his/her own proposals, yeah, that might be a fundamental problem with the office for you.

if you're thinking that the principal should just butt out, however, and leave things as you designed them - so that your authorship shines through, for instance - then that's your issue. probably won't ever happen.

you're using the term "project architect" very differently than the way it is used in the offices i've worked in. project architect from my experience has been someone who is more technically oriented that supervises the production of the construction documents and spec and performs CA duties while the project is in construction. almost all project architects i've worked with have been licensed with a fair amount of experience. it doesn't sound like this is what you want.

the designers are usually hot shot kids who are proficient with 3d modeling that work with a design principal to create the design. to move up, they work long hours and sweat in the trenches for several years before eventually taking on small projects themselves. if you haven't started down this track, it is almost impossible to break in.

i'm talking fairly large offices here (50-100 people). it maybe different in a smaller office. i'm really not experienced enough to offer much advice, but it seems like the best you can do is have a conversation with the design principal in your office and be open about your desire to do more design. if you just get a blank stare or a polite smile, it might be worth thinking of moving to a smaller office where by necessity divisions of labor are less clear cut.

my experience has been that the "designers" are usually younger hot shots that work their way into the job captain & project architect roles as they gain experience.

As a project architect I'm always editing the design so it complies with code/constructability/budget limits. Anyone can design, thus why fresh grads to a fair amount of it...but making a design actually work is the hard part, and why I get paid more than the designers sketching on bumwad and playing with 3d programs all day.

Every office I've seen only had one or two design principals, that got there after years of doing PA/PM work. My best guess is you'll have to do the same.

Project Architect is generally the way jafidler describes it: the overseer of all things technical on the project. They are often the ones who coordinate drawings with specs. There may be some design involved in the job, but it often gets buried under the sheer enormity of mundane tasks the project architect is asked to do.

Some offices have a Project Designer, who is more like the design lead when the principal isn't around. More often, though, the design is a collaborative process, with everyone involved to some degree.

I've had the most freedom to design in very small offices (2-3 people). I've also had much more responsibility in those offices—but that comes with a price. Heavy workload, no one to pass the buck to, budgetary constraints. You're sort of PM, Project Architect, designer and draftsman all in one.

In bigger offices, roles tend to be much more segmented and defined. You might spend your life designing bathroom partitions.

I sympathize - Im in the same boat. However I make Killer money and these designers tend to only last a couple years and never get along with the principles. We have a design principle who thinks hes absolutely God. We basicaly feed his ego. I find myself as PM making critical design changes early on and really am the invisible guiding hand. Every job I already know what the "designers" are going to do anyways so its pretty easy to steer them. Glass, Glass more glass. Anyways, Do cherish your role as PM. It is the best way to become a designer no matter what anyone tells you. Most design Partners are also former PM's - they have to have a global view of the process. Most designers are sort stuck as being designers - hashing out layouts and throwing out ideas. You'll get there - and if not and you think your good, hang out your own shingle.

you sound like just about everyone in my office...good luck...get out on your own...stop making excuses for getting registered... and you will be fine.

this problem never happens to the new whateverists. they just pick up their checks on friday.

Taking on a designer role from a Job captain seems like a step back, in terms of you career progression. Whats wrong with becoming a PM?
Either way, if your design principal is a control freak, I don't think it really matter what title or level your at, they will still be a control freak. So, unless you or your team is ready to tell your design principal to keep their hands of your project, I don't think much will change.

Im not sure why a person cant be a project architect and designer at the same time? I know many architects that do that in small firms. Maybe in a large firm its more unusual but why the strict seperation of roles? The guy work for now is essentially both and pretty dam good at both as well as the third role, salesman.

The firm I am at is only 20, so roles are blurred, which I find is a good thing. I guess my question is: If I'm a job captain, and like to design and work on the actual building a lot more than the admin. stuff, what should I aspiring to be? A proj. arch. right?

It depends on the firm. Some firms a strict design nazis where theres one designers and their trusty render monkey, others are liberal where the designer is like the filter of the staffs ideas so everyone gets a a shot at input - sounds like you need to reassess your firm. They may have no desire to try out another designer nor care to to.

With respect, I find this part of your original post to be somewhat troublesome.

Becoming a PM or PA is about taking on significant responsibility - it's about delivering results where somebody else's money and reputation are at risk.

It's hard to convince somebody to give you that level of responsibility if - after eight years of work - you haven't even managed your own career to achieve the most basic, minimum requirement needed to be called a professional.

Get your license, then bring this question back for more discussion.

I really don't mean to be harsh, but you seem to have missed the most fundamental piece of this puzzle.

no, thank you for the input babs....you make a VERY good point. time to hit the books

in the 5 firms i've had experience w/ (that's before, during and after school) i met a lot of people that had 8 yrs. experience that weren't licensed.

also, i've found that in smaller firms, you get to wear more hats (and have more say in the design process) which has been really eye-opening and makes the day a lot more pleasurable than being a rendering spider monkey or relentlessly detailing doors. i spend half my day doing admin, half my day returning calls/site visits and half designing. ain't architorture grand?

babs, I think you are being too harsh. I've run across people with 20+ years experience that haven't gotten registed yet. Some people just don't aspire to take the liability of signing drawings. And in large firms many just don't see the need. After all it costs money to be registered and takes significant time. Continuing ed for example. Not that I think people shouldn't get registered, but I've heard worse excuses than "been too busy."

I'm with Babs on this one. Under current conditions, you're not an Architect until you pass the exam - no rationalization is going to change that fact (even Jefferson seems to accept that view).

As someone who has made staff assignments for many years, I have to say a person's licensure status can be a meaningful factor in the choices we make - often this is driven by our knowledge of the client's expectations. Some - perhaps, most - clients want to know that the key people looking after their project are licensed professionals.

I will say that I find the process of getting your architectural license byzantine and disorganized.

When you get a medical license, the profession supports you all the way through it and even prepares you actively for it. Then it's one day of exams every five years, depending on your specialty. And you can't actually practice without your license. I believe the same is true of law.

But in architecture, we have a situation where it's not even on most employer's radar to help employees get licensed. IDP is something of a joke. Many employees are allowed to just simmer in firms without a license—there's often no incentive to actually take the exams.

Then we have seven (or nine) exams that can be spaced out over a long period of time. The way it's set up makes the process intimidating/frustrating.

Anyone with me on that?

i don't know - the process is what it is. frustrating, yes, but more frustrating to fight it or stew against it. i've probably written otherwise on other threads, but i'm feeling more resigned to the process, at least today.

i really feel for the forty-year-old intern, but at the same time they can be incredibly difficult. because they have worked many years in the profession, they feel they know how things work, but most are still doing fairly menial cad work. additionally i do think it says something about a person's drive. if a person will not take the effort to work through idp and complete the exam, how much effort is he or she going to put in at the office? i know things come up, but it is a hoop everyone needs to jump through in his or her professional development.

(not at all talking specifically about your case, jefferson. you sound like you've reached a fairly high level of responsibility without getting licensed and could have only done that through hardwork.)

yeah i need a license too...a license to ill

I gotta say, I really don't understand these whiney posts about the supposed dearth of support from firms and the profession in making your route to licensure easy. There's so little employee loyalty, and so little interest in licensure among the bulk of recent grads, that firms have to ask themselves "What's in it for us?"

I got my license 3-years / 4-months after graduation. I did my own studying; I found and attended my own seminars; I paid my own fees; I never once thought it was anybody's responsibility but my own to make this license happen.

Hell - it's my license! Why should I look for anybody else to do the heavy lifting?

cheers digger

I concur. I'm really grateful to my firm for their full ARE support, but I also know I'll owe a few post exam/license years to them in return. I like where I'm at, but sometimes I wish I did do it fully on my own.

architecture is a team effort. just like piano moving is a team effort.

vado - you're right - it's a team effort, largely populated by ego-centric individuals, largely trained by the academy to be individual contributors.

and we wonder why there's so much angst exhibited here.

actually, quiz i was parapharaing PrestonSturges who compared the hollywood screenwriter of days gone by to the piano mover. this was of course, before he revolutionized the industry by becoming the writer/director. he was a genius ego centric individual.

vado - I'm actually quite fond of those "genius ego-centric individuals" when they appear - which is a rare occurrence.

to reinforce your point above, the rest of us must rely on different, and collaborative, mechanisms to produce good work - unfortunately, those mechanisms aren't the natural result either of our typical personality profile or our educational system.

I disagree. As I look around the office there are several people with 10-15 or more years experience my senior but haven't sat for one exam, and probably never intend to. They make good money, have more responsibility/different responsibilities than me and are perfectly happy. The only thing they can't do is get promoted to principal and sign drawings.

While quizzical is right that licensure plays a role in employee placement, at larger firms the lines get a bit fuzzy. Large repeat clients don't ask how many licensed professionals we have on staff. New clients come based primarily on past work, not current staff. So it makes no sense to promote some guy with 5 years experience & a license over a guy with 20 years and no license, minus the stamping drawings part.

Is this system right? I'm not sure. When I'm sick I want to talk to a real doctor. You'd think clients would want a real architect designing their building instead of just doing PM work and stamping drawings done by others. But from all of my experience, all in firms over 50 person staff, there have always been unlicensed people doing a majority of the work with minor oversight by a licensed architect. Smaller firms and smaller projects this might be different, I don't know. But you'd think it'd be more important on the larger projects to have professional involvement.

I can't complain. This is the system that allowed me to do design and CA work on a $60m project at age 24. The principal said "only bother me if you get in too deep." That was a baptism by fire.

Sorry for the threadjack.

that's okay, aqua. i think it's an interesting point, but only if you can find firms that will allow you to make it work. i've worked for primarily large offices as well, but have found the opposite to be true - only registered architects are allowed to coordinate the drawing production on projects of a certain size; they are titled project architects. but at these same offices, there may be project managers who are very good at what they do, but do not have their license. for me, that is the distinction between a project architect and a project manager: licensure. the forty year old intern that i feel sorry for is not the project manager, but the true intern, i.e. the guy that's trying to make it in architectural development without being registered.

having said that, the skill set between project managment and project architect are completely different. the project manager is a people person with good communication skills while the project architect has a wealth of experience and knowledge on the technical side of the profession. i think you know fairly early on what are cut out for and what you are not.

[disclaimer: all views here are colored by the large departmental office structure i am used to working in.]

Hey quizzical,

Most of the people who go to architecture school are relatively smart and creative. They have an impression that architecture will be a vehicle for brainy creativity—collaborative or not.

But the truth is that most work in design offices is fairly tedious. It's fairly hierarchical. It's not that creative. Much of it requires you to be a drafting robot—this is work that anyone can do.

No offense, but a considerable amount of the work I've done since I got out of school someone with a two-year technical degree could have done. Other professionals (doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers) hire less trained individuals for these duties: in medicine, there are nurses and physician's assistants who leave the doctors to make big decisions about patient care. In law, there are paralegals. But in architecture, we deal with both the stuff we're trained for, and the tedium. We have no "professional help." Our professional help are architects-in-training.

I don't think it's egocentric individuals that cause the problem. I've worked with so many architects who love to collaborate—so long as they're allowed to use their skills and their brains.

I think the problem is the structure of the profession, which trains you for higher level thinking but then sits you in front of a computer drafting bathroom partitions for months on end. No one in their right mind (and particularly with a Bachelors or Masters from a good school) would WANT to do that work.

The other problem with the architectural business model of hiring people with an advanced degree to do drafting is that they expect better pay. That's where much of the bitching happens on this site: someone graduates from X good institution, maybe with a Master's, and their first years on the job are spent drafting for less money than your average office assistant makes.

You don't think this is a recipe for bitterness? It's not at all egocentric—it's self-respecting to not like this situation.

No One wants to but they have to. How would our client respond to some one with these higher level thinking skills who cant cant explaine the how the toilet partitions system works, or the tile, etc. Stanley Tigerman once designed a house with a wood stud wall with 2 vapor barriers, one inside, one outside, and the cavity filled with rot.
I worked for a major firm that did international work wherte the principle after attending a building show proclaimed, " Did you know they now put weather barriers on the outside"? Theyve been doing this longer than iVE BEEN ALIVE.

Im just saying dont put too much faith on our higher thinking skills - I know what you mean, we do think uniquely, but we also tend to to forget the "why" our clients come to us, and what they're expecting us to know, and why increasingly they turn to design build, contractor lead arrangements. We are in danger of becoming glorified designers, not architects. So do those details, love those detials, and be interested in those details and the concepts behind them.
Go home and read books on details. Study old school details to see how it was done - I like to read 18th century carpenter journals - Im amazed at how much more advanced they were then, then even now in the field of carpentry.

I wasn't talking about details. Every architect should understand details. I don't think it requires three days of drafting toilet partitions or tile to UNDERSTAND how those things work. You might say all that time drafting actually detracts from a person's ability to really understand all aspects of the building.

I'm just throwing this out there as food for thought -- not to start a polemic.

"We are in danger of becoming glorified designers, not architects."

EP, I think we're already there... In my opinion, the whole 'who's licensed, who's a project manager, who's a job caption, who's doing what role in the office' bewilderment is a great way of keeping ourselves blissfully disengaged from certain realities of a shifting profession. Outside the architecture office, nobody cares. They really don't.
Buildings are being successfully built without the traditional role of architects all the time, and, I think you're right, in increasing numbers. Does it make anyone here pause a bit that some of them are even cropping up fairly well done, from a design point of view, even...hmm?
Rather than worrying about proudly displaying your name in stick-on letters on your new CA hardhat, it's just barely possible that we should look ahead to how we might fit into a new and non-traditional scenario.

i completely agree that the profession is changing very fast, and architects and architecture practices need to be malleable. at the same time, i'm guessing from some of your other posts, sandroad, that you either own or work in a small office where distinctions like pm, project architect, etc. are completely irrelevent. i personally aspire to that and think that's when architecture is most interesting - when you can wear several different hats on a given day. but from my experience in large offices, project team organization is critical and without making such seemingly irrelevent distinctions you find people continually stepping on each other's toes or always looking for direction. it's a balancing act between personal responsibility and coordinated teamwork.

While I certainly understand where this view comes from, the reality of the education system makes this approach almost automatic.

As has been stated here by many in the past, most students emerge from college woefully unprepared for the full realities of professional practice. Many may be strong designers in an academic sense, but most are very limited in their ability to develop and detail the intricacies of a modern building. Since that knowledge is rarely taught in school, some years of practice must be devoted to developing those skills.

As a result, there are productivity issues associated with the intern years. Essentially, interns are paid by firms while they continue their education. Even at the wages we pay, it takes some time for the productivity equation to balance. About that time, most interns bolt for presumed greener pastures. That's where the roots of the "lofty degree / low pay" irony reside.

IMHO, the schools don't much care about (or even understand) this problem. They take your money (largely financed through student debt) and provide you with few skills with which to make a decent living during the early years of your career.

Students should demand more from the academy, and not just dump on practitioners - calling us cheap bastards. We're more than prepared to pay well those who offer the needed skills (see several of the posts above) but we can't pay for "potential" alone.

The profession has been beating this drum for years - to no avail.

It is, I think, a mistake to suggest that the profession deliberately sets out to under-utilize and under-pay recent grads. As quizzical suggests above, firms apply funds, and make work assignments, as appropriate to get the work done.

You have to remember - our clients hire us to help advance BOTH the design AND the construction of their projects. Fully 80% (or more) of what we do in offices is work other than creative design - that is, creative design in the academic sense.

It is highly unfortunate that so many students enter - not to mention, complete - architecture school without understanding the true nature of professional practice. It must be a terrible thing to purchase an expensive education, only to find that the reality of practice barely resembles the work activity built up for you by your school.

Bet it makes you want your money back!

Fot those of you entering or currently in school, you should make an effort to fully understand what work is like once you graduate - if it's not what you want or expect, change your direction before you've invested so much you can't afford to carve a new path.

While our profession truly needs talented and committed young people, we do not need more resentful and disillusioned cynics.

I happen to love my work and consider myself successful - professionally and economically. But, I made it my business to understand the world I was entering long before earning my degree. It seems that's not true for many who post here.

You can't expect the profession to change overnight to meet your expectations, especially if your expectations are unrealistic. Open your eyes to what is - then, if you decide to hang around, join with other like-minded professionals to transition the profession from within - it will keep you busy for a lifetime.

being a responsible professional is an attitude that may or may not be determined by the licensing exam. An unlicensed para-architect/parchitect(?) may be willing able to assume more responsibility/liability then somebody with a license and the same level of experience.

I have the pleasure to collaborate with a really talented project architect on the project that I'm PMing - his wisdom is central to the projects success. But I also see my role as advocating for the greater implications of the technical solutions along with the greater interests of the firm, my staff, the client, the eventual tenants/users, and the public.

I'll be licensed soon enough, just find how to meet the last smidgens of IDP/landscape license stuff into my career since construction on any project we have in the office is many years away/not working for an LA and I need that time.

The regulations are frustrating, but I can't let them hold me back.

One thing Id like to add about the detailing specifically of toilet partitions and the like is that teaches respect. A designer must be able to respect the thousands of decisions and parts thart contribute to the whole of the design. The attention to and understanding of the seeminingly insignificant is what helps shape the perspective of successful designers. At some point the designer may elevate to sales and schematic design work but the path has to wind through the details at some point in the career. It doesnt mean the individual has to be gifted or talented at detailing toilet room sink basins, but they need to be exposed to them in order to gain the respect of the immense task at hand.

i usually disagree with the professional who wants a better trained work force coming out of school as much as i disagree with the intern railing against having to draw toilet partitions. you know, knowing the systems faults, and after hearing the complaints from both sides - academic and professional, it makes me think maybe the system we got ain't half bad. (other than the fact it takes a really long time to complete.)

the points made immediatley above by practitioners aren't really about wanting "a better trained workforce" -- they're more about keeping a reasonable balance between what that workforce can deliver and what that workforce costs. we practitioners can work with whatever level of skill comes out of the schools, but we'll need to adjust what we can pay so that our costs balance with the productivity received.

i find it mildly interesting that more students aren't complaining about what they receive (in the way of job skills) in exchange for tuition -- instead, it seems many direct their anger at the profession, rather than at the schools that leave them in this pitiful state -- broke, unable to function productively in an office without considerable additional training and thus unable to earn a living wage for a considerable number of years.

this is a question then for babs, quizzical, and the rest of the firm owners/principals, what would you prefer the schools be teaching? how to draw 3/4" wall sections? i'm just not sure students are graduating as woefully unprepared as your descriptions might imply. in detroit, there are generally graduates from three universities: lawrence tech, university of detroit mercy, and university of michigan. the la tech grads learn mep coordination and wall details from day one. um grads are twirling 3d rhino models around from day one. now maybe i'm a bit biased as a um grad, but i see very little difference between the two graduates when they come out of school as interns, and with all apologies to la-tech grads, i believe um grads end up making far better professionals because of the critical thinking skills they learned while in school. i really don't think the systems as broken as you may believe it is, and the correlation you are trying to make between lack of skills coming out of school and low starting wages is completely bogus.

jafidler - as you clearly understand, there is considerable variation among what the different schools deliver. in my experience, schools that concentrate on theory deliver grads who have less to offer a firm like ours during the early years of their career - they will offer much more to us 5-6 years later. I say that because we don't do design through a specialized department, but directly through the project team, which usually is composed of strong generalists. For these reasons, it takes some years before a new hire can make a strong contribution.

You can call our views "bogus" all you want - when you have the responsibility for making payroll, for maintaining a book of work to keep the firm solvent, for providing good people with steady employment, etc. you might see the situation defferently.

But, to answer your quesyion more directly, we don't have a preference - we can work with either and we pay according to what the individual can contribute in our system.

babs, i can understand paying employees based on experience; i'm just not convinced that the relatively low starting salaries of intern architects are related to being under-trained in school. unfortunately, i think it has more to do with the economics of our profession - the billing structure we've created and competitive pressure from within the construction industry. i take an aggressive stance on the issue because i don't think it's fair to blame the schools for these problems. i may take a different stance after seeing it from the other side, but only time will tell.

i guess to get back to my original question, i really am interested in what experienced professionals would like the schools to be teaching. i've heard many department heads and principals complain about the academy, but i've never really gotten a straight answer on what would solve the problem. i have real concerns about moving architecture schools towards a more technically focused education.

[apologies to jefferson for this getting off topic]

"....broke, unable to function productively in an office without considerable additional training and thus unable to earn a living wage for a considerable number of years...." Oy.

Babs, you seem to absolve the profession of any responsibility to change—instead choosing to solely blame a "woeful" education system. The frank truth is that our profession has many deficiencies, some of which come from firm owners. How many of us have pulled all-nighters for a less than appreciative boss, for instance? How many of us have made less than receptionists for our first years on the job?

No professional (lawyer, doctor, accountant, whathaveyou) can fully function within an office environment on their first day out of school. It takes years to train a successful professional, and the profession has an obligation to its young interns to help train them. I understand that there is a cost associated with this—hey, running a business is tough, and the employer/employee relationship is a two-way street. I've been in a number of firms where the older partners were resistant to the positive change and abilities that their younger new employees brought in. But rather than creating cost-savings on the heads of intern employees, how about investing in new methods of creating and doing business?

My point is that the profession needs restructuring, and fast. That includes our schooling, but it also includes the way firms conduct themselves with respect to their business models, clients, technology and employees. I'm saying this for the sustainability of our profession as a whole.

And I agree absolutely with what quizzical said a few posts ago. However, I don't think the employers here would be entirely satisfied if schools only taught contracts, flashing details, and specs. Much of what they teach is a process of critical thinking that's essential to what we do as architects. Architecture is too big a discipline to be taught in a few years of school—it will invariably require some time, and therefore money, on the part of employers.

worth a repeat: I don't think the employers here would be entirely satisfied if schools only taught contracts, flashing details, and specs. Much of what they teach is a process of critical thinking that's essential to what we do as architects. Architecture is too big a discipline to be taught in a few years of school...

I want to be clear that I absolve the "profession" or "firms" of nothing with respect to this particular issue -- but as Steven Ward has stated here previously, try to remember that WE are the profession and WE make up the firms -- there is no "THEY" out there. In the end, if these sorts of issues are to be resolved, we will need a cooperative effort by firms, the academy, the AIA, NCARB ... and, the people who work in firms.

As someone above suggested, the economics of professional practice in the US are difficult, at best. Most firms in our industry operates on VERY slim profit margins. Even in good times, many firms barely break even. As economic conditions worsen (as seems to be occuring now) many firms easily drift into the red.

It would be nice if all firms, in all communities, could pay the average recent grad at least $50k to start. However, the reality of that would be disastrous for the typical firm ... fee levels and productivity levels in firms simply do not support such a desire or expectation.

It's important to recognize that the typical architectural firm requires a net payroll multiplier of about 3.0 to be profitable -- meaning, for every $100 of direct labor charged to a project, the firm must invoice, and collect, about $300 from clients to cover payroll, benefits, marketing costs, facilities, equipment, etc. The typical firm generally will show an after-tax net profit in the range of only 3-5% of net revenues.

Someone else above mentioned how poorly design firms are managed. I agree absolutely with that assessment. The sad truth is that the typical design professional - at all levels - doesn't have much interest in learning about business management. The AIA has a very good and very active Practice Management Knowledge Community that provides solid, informative programs dealing with such matters -- these programs typically are poorly attended, while similar programs addressing design typically play to standing-room-only crowds.

I understand this preference. But, in the context of "we all make up the profession" I find it hard to pound on firms and the profession too hard when the vast majority of the people who make up firms and the profession really don't have much interest in learning about, or dealing with, normal business management issues.

What we all seem to want is to spend our time doing only the stuff we love to do -- to be the "artiste" -- and still make all the money we need and want. Regrettably, that never has been possible in the past -- and it never will be possible in the future.

We can treat what we do as a "hobby" or we can treat what we do as a "business" -- the hobby rewards are professional satisfaction / the business rewards are economic. We're all free to choose which way we want to go. IMHO, too many of us emphasize the "hobby" end of the continuum, then lament how poorly paid we are.

Sorry to be so argumentative and long winded.

i agree with much of what you're saying, babs, and maybe, that is a good place to start with reforming architectural education. i think a greater emphasis or even a rethinking of business practices and management would be a wonderful place to start, and something everyone at all levels might profit from (pun intended).

I would also have to agree with what babs has stated so well. This profession (academy + practice) has made its own bed and it will not be changed easily overnight.

I, for one, do not think the schools should be making a major shift in what they do and what they teach. You should emerge from the academy with a good grounding in theory and critical thinking, BUT you should also emerge with your eyes open. To be an architect is to be someone that has the artistic skill, certainly, but also the ability to merge that skill with an equal skill at the science of building. Much of the latter must be learned during the internship years, and beyond.

And to own and manage a firm, you must learn, understand and apply basic business principles. As babs points out, even many of the individuals that manage to successfully combine the first two skills (art + science) fail miserably at the third (business).