Step 1. Offer to be a guest critic at a local Uni.
Step 2. Be a good/ enthusiastic/ helpful critic.
Step 3. Get introduced to other profs. at the school.
Step 4. Meet the head of arch. department and make a good impression.
Step 5. Cross your figures and hope they liked you enough to offer you a class or studio.
Or just know someone who is already teaching and have him or her skip you past steps 1-4.
alternately, check the websites of schools you are interested in for announcements of open positions. Submit requested materials. Make sure they are excellent.
there are about 100 previous discussion threads that go into great detail the various ways people have 'broken' into academia. do a little searching through and you should get as much information as you can.
What is worth discussing here, is what is required to be a good candidate to become studio instructor?
I doubt that somebody fresh from grad school who can only mimic their favorite professor is ready to run a studio. Being a critic isn't enough either, a studio needs a specific angle or hook - otherwise you're just a body.
The more in touch you are with emerging memes, the easier it will be to find a gig - but only at places where the department chairs are invested in staying relevant to the new decade and are not just sentimental for their youth.
even offering a specific studio might not happen..... and watch out for other professors that snake your proposal only to offer that same studio and teach it.....
keeping up on the memes is one approach, but as that blog post implies, ultimately a bore. another thing you might work on is just being a great fucking architect. I would have killed for studios w/ more of those.
Ultimately here is only one thing that is going to get your foot well in the door to academia: publishing. I don't mean a vanity press book of your renderings; I mean several substantive pieces of thought in a peer reviewed context. There is a reason people have been talking about publish or perish for a half-century now.
Plus, most design programs are under a huge amount of criticism form the parts of the university that are solvent and graduating employable (read capable of building the endowment) students that anything that gets recognition outside of architecture and within the rest of the academy is worth its weight in gold. A book that is accessible to a non specialty audience can work, or exhibitions with ideas that can be understood by the marginally visually literate.
The second thing you need to do is teach. LEED prep courses. IDP review courses. AIA continuing education. anything where students fill out a form at the end to say you did a good job. Deans have taken too many chances on people who can’t communicate anything to be interested in giving anyone who isn't spectacular the opportunity to enrage a group of students.
That said, I’ll agree that Barry’s question is relevant, although I’ll rephrase it as, “what might make me into a better studio instructor?” If all you can do after a graduate degree is mimic your favorite professor then you wasted your time in grad school, never mind being a professor. With apologies Barry, the idea of “thinking critically” has been part of the educational lexicon for so many decades now that mimicry of what your professor thinks, favorite or otherwise, should be grounds for dismissal, not high marks. Engaging in a constructive dialogue with those ideas, on the other hand, is a great idea. Constructing expertise in a related — but understandably different — issue ought to be a great way to get a job teaching where you can keep inviting your favorite professor to come and give a guest lecture.
This is the thing to me: make yourself into an expert in something a dean thinks they need to teach, and then figure out how to teach it. At minimum, you should be prepared to give at least 90 hours of lecture on the topic to a literate and interested — but not necessarily knowledgeable — high-school graduate on the topic before you propose a course in it. That’s twice the amount of lecturing necessary for a 3 credit lecture course, or four times the amount of pontificating you should do in a studio. Think of it as dressing for the job that you want.
The “memes” link is potentially a good example (Although if it were me, I’d skip the snarky comments on what’s not hot). Any one of those topics could get you a job if you really were an expert in it. The first bullet is a perfect example: I’ve seen at least four advertisements for someone to teach a studio on parametrics in the current academic job cycle. If you had started publishing about parametrics four years ago, you could pick between them. And if you had done Flash too you could get a job in media arts, which pays better, is hiring more faculty, and has grads that get jobs…
In a pinch, I’d say get another degree, and not necessarily in something related. I think Aranda/Lasch have been working on a PhD in underwater basketweaving for the last few years.
As to being a great fucking architect, I thought it was generally understood that being an architect meant you are great at fucking, especially figuratively. It’s worth remembering in this context that the only thing that professors are allowed to fuck is each other, so if you can’t identify a colleague you want to fuck, then you probably don’t want to become an academic.
Seriously, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we figured out that becoming an academic is a different career from being a practicing architect. The flip side of the aphorism that, "those who can't do, teach" ought to be, "those that do, can't teach." If you happen to be a great architect and love teaching, bully for you. But just as becoming a great architect requires a seven year educational investment followed by ten years of practice, it generally takes ten years to figure out how to teach well, regularly, to different kinds of students with different aspirations (and in compliance with the relevant federal, state, and local laws as well as institutional guidelines).
And most of us have fourteen years of education to your seven.
mespellrong - well said. Expertise (or at least the facade of expertise), is what has gotten me into academia. Getting published also has been useful. being a licensed practitioner is also useful. The closest parallel between teaching and practice for me has been project managing - the skills of a PM are very similar to teaching - coordinate a dozen consultants, staff members, and dealing with the client and stakeholders is similar to engaging the students and keeping ahead of the workflow of teaching.
I'd add to the list of things to do to become a better teacher: get involved. Not just at the local college or aia chapter, but with community groups/public projects, reviewing abstracts for conferences, writing letters to the editor, writing a blog, curate an exhibit, or anything else that requires communication with the public.
You just need to publish a book, practice architecture for 15 years, be active in community groups, hold a teaching position already, curate exhibits, FAIA, have 14 years education, and be an expert on parametric modeling to be a good teacher?
I don’t mean to be snarky, but I really think it is easier then that.
I’m not saying that the above mentioned methods for becoming a good teach are wrong, I just think they are a bit much.
Maybe these are the techniques for being a fulltime academic but for someone who wants to teach one studio class while continuing to practice, these methods seem like over kill.
I think it comes down to being good at what you do, showing your ambition (in whatever form you feel fit), and being good with people (being both a good teacher and a good person to be around.)
These things are what helped me get my foot in the door.
book lover, the competition to teach is directly proportionate to the number of under-employed architects. Most arch graduates seem to think they can teach studio. so you don't have to do all of those things, but one or more will help break out of the crowd.
for those of you who think shmucks become teachers and the competition is lite, you need to think again.
i have phd in urban planning, m.arch, license, run an office, won all kinds of wee little awards, published in pretty good journals both as academic and as professional architect.
and when it came down to it finding a teaching job was about who i knew. seriously. my qualifications mean that getting a job based on who know is much much easier - but last year when i was seriously looking to teach for jobs i applied to cold i was still not particularly qualified. there are a LOT of exceedingly talented and bright people out there.
as far as part time gig, i am doing that now and sorry to say a license and a phd were pre-requisites. and i still had to go up against another candidate. in the end i was asked to take the job because i had a very good recommendation.
its a hard-knocks life. doesn't mean you shouldn't try, just don't think it is going to be easy. book lover's path is actually the most common way to get in amongst friends. also, teaching at your alma mater is quite common. then move on from there. expect to spend 5 to 10 years searching for a good wage.
mespellrong,
I don't mean to disparage the teaching profession-- the studio simply benefits from the occasional instructor who really knows how a building goes together. I think there should be more of them.
I agree with jump. All good points, especially the one about teaching at your alma mater. Or at least get one of your one of your old prof's to put in a good word for you at a local college if you no longer live close to where you went to school.
I started teaching part time where I went to college, hired back by one of my professors while also working at a local firm. When I moved to a new city one of my other professors told the chair at a nearby college about me (without my asking which was nice.)
Almost all the people i know who teach also have their own small practices. It seems to be rare that architects working as employees (unless they're principals) get hired. First step might be to establish a small practice, and produce a body of work. No need for this to be extensive -could be a few competitions or small projects. Just enough for people to get a sense of what you're about.
I don't think you should wait too long. If you want to teach start working towards that. Sure if you become a star architect someone will ask you to teach. But getting on the academic ladder is just another track- not unlike working at a firm. You don't want to wait too long to get started. Most tenure track faculty are in their 30's or early 40's. As someone else mentioned it takes time to learn how to teach, and it takes at least six years to get tenured.
Of the folks I went to graduate school (MArchs & MLAs) with, there seem to be three typical paths into teaching.
1- a one or two exceptional classmates were hired directly upon graduation by my alma mater.
2- a few classmatess went to work with professors and were soon asked to co-teach studio with them. (these are folks now teaching at the gsd).
3- a few classmates pursued teaching in other cities. It helped that most of us had strong networks with both professors from grad and undergrad, along with had extensive (5+ years) of practice before we went academic.
In hindsight, there are some similarities between all the folks that went into teaching. Most pursued independent research, either a thesis or other project, while in graduate school. Most were in their 30s. Most had extensive professional experience before going back to grad school. (I had 7+ years of practice & filmaking). Several pursued publishing work from grad school or placed well in competitions.
It is not accidental that these folks wound up in the classroom. I certainly took proactive steps to have this opportunity. My network (including archinect) has been the most valuable asset in getting to teach.
It's been said already to an extent, but I cringe at the idea of an un-or under-employed recent MArch grad/intern saying to themselves, "well I guess I could teach a studio...". That's narcissistic and naive.
I'm with jump on this one. I live near my alma mater and was asked to return by the dean to teach studio after years of practice. I have pre-arch professional teaching experience, have been published, am licensed, etc. etc.
If you snag a studio job just because you were a star student and have an in with an old professor, enjoy the experience and learn from it. It won't last. And please don't introduce yourself as "faculty" at cocktail parties.
gosh small potatoes, nothing narcissistic about that statement. when you say you've been published, is that in reference to the picture of you on the rocking horse?
I also find it ridiculous to view teaching with a “well, I’m unemployed, I have nothing better to do with my time, I have a masters degree, I might as well teach” attitude.
That is naïve and these types of people should not (and probably will not) be studio instructors.
Other young designers look at teaching as a goal to work towards.
Like SmallP’s goal of coming off like a dick, everyone has goals they hope to reach at some point.
Young designer/interns do not all reek of entitlement and superficiality.
Some of us are good/ genuine people. That’s more then we can say about SmallP.
Ok, it's time for a reality check here. MattArnold has published some pretty complete visualizations of general statistics about the climate of architectural education, which I’ll gloss as saying that half of the professorate is not licensed and more than half of them don't have a PhD. Obviously these aren't uniform statistics (and it would help if he had numbers to go with his pretty charts), but I certainly know more than a handful of people who are teaching who don't have a masters degree.
What they have is clear expertise, in a format that peers in other academic departments are likely to recognize. Not architects, I mean the regular faculty – biologists, sociologists, and philosophers. That is, in peer-reviewed publications, books from reputable scholarly presses, regional, national, and international competition victories, and reviews of their work by notable critics. They didn’t just churn out some stuff, they did it in public and scholarly forums, and came out with a positive evaluation. I can guarantee you that any reputable school is calculating a specific factor for every candidate. Want to know how? Ask a librarian.
LML — I'll agree, someone who really knows how a building goes together would be a big benefit to an architectural education, provided they could communicate what they know clearly and effectively. I would be surprised to find an architect who really knew that kind of hands-on process oriented information, and who wouldn't be dismissed by their peers as a developer or contractor. And even if you did, where would they fit in a NAAB accredited program?
But for the rest of us – there are two reasons these folks think that they can walk in and teach a studio. First, university policy typically requires a public advertisement of any teaching job, so half of the jobs they are seeing right now are for teaching positions (the other half are for healthcare planners with 10+ years of experience). Second, like most of us, they had one or two recent grads as adjunct instructors who couldn’t teach their way out of a paper bag (we’ve forgotten that there were an equal number of tenured faculty we felt the same way about).
If this sentiment bugs you, do something about your institution using recent grads as cheap curriculum filler and giving tenure to people who can’t teach. But my feeling is the moral of this story is that you should only take a teaching job if you are likely to be good at it, and you should only stick with it if you actually turn out to be good at it. And if you think you will be good at it then figure out what you would like to teach and become an expert in it so that someone will give you a shot at being in the classroom.
i can't say i know a single professor without an m.arch. Of those who i do know without a phd the pressure is on for them to get one asap or stay in the same position without tenure (a few of my old teachers are currently doing phd for this reason). this does not hold for folks who got tenure awhile back, and yes there are a few who did such amazing things a phd was not necessary (in all fairness they did the work of a phd without going through the process so would not say it was much of a shortcut).
but im canadian and we only have a handful of architecture schools so somehow the standards are maybe higher than in the usa?
here in japan phd is normal though not always required. a license is also pretty common. most of my profs in japan had both.
teaching is something you learn, like anything else. you should expect to be bad at it for awhile, but you will get better. it is hard to recommend as a profession unless you are committed because it is a LOT of work for relatively low pay. It makes little sense to pursue it as a career simply because you can't find anything else. though it can be fun for those looking for a rewarding job regardless of pay.
An interesting claim about the credentials of Canadian faculty. I just went through the faculty at Toronto. Of thirty full-time faculty, three have PhDs, and three only have a bachelors degree.
well there you go. proof that anecdotal evidence isn't worth much ;-)
i didn't mean it as a claim, but as a question. although 90% with m.arch or better, and 10% with phd is not a particularly low bar come to think of it...
...hm, i just checked my old school and the numbers are about the same.
My sense, based on who schools hire and based on conversations i've had with those responsible for hiring, there are basically 4 tracks to become an instructor.
1) Teach at your old school with your MArch. This will usually be an adjunct position. You will be poorly paid. Teaching alone won't allow you to pay your bills. You will be a poor teacher, but you will be cheap and allow the program to keep costs down. You may do this for years without going anywhere. You may start a small 'vanity practice' that churns out small and insignificant work, but you will try and wow your students with it. They will not be impressed. You will not be hired on full-time.
2) Become a star architect. High caliber schools will woo you and throw money and professorships at you. You will 'teach' one studio, and show up two times in a semester since that is all your busy schedule and practice allows. You will be a terrible teacher. You will either give completely mundane and/or nebulous advice on reviews, or biting criticism. You will be listed under permanent staff and even have a dedicated office even though you haven't set foot in the school where you supposedly teach for years. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Rem and Jaques.
2) Get a Ph.D. You will research uninteresting topics, but which have funding. Like making courthouses terrorist proof. Maybe 'Green' technologies. You will get a job. You will be a poor tecaher. You will get tenure because you are bringing money into the program.
3) Get a Ph.D. Something interesting, but with little funding. You will struggle with grant proposals, but will eventually carve out a niche with interesting thoughts and publications. You will become a good teacher. Eventually you will get tenure, but won't get the highest paying full professor jobs because you don't bring in enough money.
le bossman you know I only allow my image in the most prestigious of publications...the things that I have written have a much lower status.
Sounds like there is a lot of defensiveness out there about being "qualified" to teach. What I was trying to say was that it's naive to think that being teacher is somehow the back-up plan when you have trouble landing an office job. This discussion becomes more complex depending upon if you wish to teach "a" studio for experience' sake or if you fancy yourself a career educator. Which is it blah? If it's the former than I refer to the last paragraph of my previous post.
book lover, you have me pegged. I'm a total dick. my work is done here [stretches and leaves to gaze into the mirror].
Jan 5, 10 1:57 pm ·
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Teaching Positions
Does anyone know how to get a teaching position for design studio?
How I did it:
Step 1. Offer to be a guest critic at a local Uni.
Step 2. Be a good/ enthusiastic/ helpful critic.
Step 3. Get introduced to other profs. at the school.
Step 4. Meet the head of arch. department and make a good impression.
Step 5. Cross your figures and hope they liked you enough to offer you a class or studio.
Or just know someone who is already teaching and have him or her skip you past steps 1-4.
Good luck and happy new years
alternately, check the websites of schools you are interested in for announcements of open positions. Submit requested materials. Make sure they are excellent.
blah,
there are about 100 previous discussion threads that go into great detail the various ways people have 'broken' into academia. do a little searching through and you should get as much information as you can.
What is worth discussing here, is what is required to be a good candidate to become studio instructor?
I doubt that somebody fresh from grad school who can only mimic their favorite professor is ready to run a studio. Being a critic isn't enough either, a studio needs a specific angle or hook - otherwise you're just a body.
The more in touch you are with emerging memes, the easier it will be to find a gig - but only at places where the department chairs are invested in staying relevant to the new decade and are not just sentimental for their youth.
even offering a specific studio might not happen..... and watch out for other professors that snake your proposal only to offer that same studio and teach it.....
keeping up on the memes is one approach, but as that blog post implies, ultimately a bore. another thing you might work on is just being a great fucking architect. I would have killed for studios w/ more of those.
Ultimately here is only one thing that is going to get your foot well in the door to academia: publishing. I don't mean a vanity press book of your renderings; I mean several substantive pieces of thought in a peer reviewed context. There is a reason people have been talking about publish or perish for a half-century now.
Plus, most design programs are under a huge amount of criticism form the parts of the university that are solvent and graduating employable (read capable of building the endowment) students that anything that gets recognition outside of architecture and within the rest of the academy is worth its weight in gold. A book that is accessible to a non specialty audience can work, or exhibitions with ideas that can be understood by the marginally visually literate.
The second thing you need to do is teach. LEED prep courses. IDP review courses. AIA continuing education. anything where students fill out a form at the end to say you did a good job. Deans have taken too many chances on people who can’t communicate anything to be interested in giving anyone who isn't spectacular the opportunity to enrage a group of students.
That said, I’ll agree that Barry’s question is relevant, although I’ll rephrase it as, “what might make me into a better studio instructor?” If all you can do after a graduate degree is mimic your favorite professor then you wasted your time in grad school, never mind being a professor. With apologies Barry, the idea of “thinking critically” has been part of the educational lexicon for so many decades now that mimicry of what your professor thinks, favorite or otherwise, should be grounds for dismissal, not high marks. Engaging in a constructive dialogue with those ideas, on the other hand, is a great idea. Constructing expertise in a related — but understandably different — issue ought to be a great way to get a job teaching where you can keep inviting your favorite professor to come and give a guest lecture.
This is the thing to me: make yourself into an expert in something a dean thinks they need to teach, and then figure out how to teach it. At minimum, you should be prepared to give at least 90 hours of lecture on the topic to a literate and interested — but not necessarily knowledgeable — high-school graduate on the topic before you propose a course in it. That’s twice the amount of lecturing necessary for a 3 credit lecture course, or four times the amount of pontificating you should do in a studio. Think of it as dressing for the job that you want.
The “memes” link is potentially a good example (Although if it were me, I’d skip the snarky comments on what’s not hot). Any one of those topics could get you a job if you really were an expert in it. The first bullet is a perfect example: I’ve seen at least four advertisements for someone to teach a studio on parametrics in the current academic job cycle. If you had started publishing about parametrics four years ago, you could pick between them. And if you had done Flash too you could get a job in media arts, which pays better, is hiring more faculty, and has grads that get jobs…
In a pinch, I’d say get another degree, and not necessarily in something related. I think Aranda/Lasch have been working on a PhD in underwater basketweaving for the last few years.
As to being a great fucking architect, I thought it was generally understood that being an architect meant you are great at fucking, especially figuratively. It’s worth remembering in this context that the only thing that professors are allowed to fuck is each other, so if you can’t identify a colleague you want to fuck, then you probably don’t want to become an academic.
Seriously, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we figured out that becoming an academic is a different career from being a practicing architect. The flip side of the aphorism that, "those who can't do, teach" ought to be, "those that do, can't teach." If you happen to be a great architect and love teaching, bully for you. But just as becoming a great architect requires a seven year educational investment followed by ten years of practice, it generally takes ten years to figure out how to teach well, regularly, to different kinds of students with different aspirations (and in compliance with the relevant federal, state, and local laws as well as institutional guidelines).
And most of us have fourteen years of education to your seven.
mespellrong - well said. Expertise (or at least the facade of expertise), is what has gotten me into academia. Getting published also has been useful. being a licensed practitioner is also useful. The closest parallel between teaching and practice for me has been project managing - the skills of a PM are very similar to teaching - coordinate a dozen consultants, staff members, and dealing with the client and stakeholders is similar to engaging the students and keeping ahead of the workflow of teaching.
I'd add to the list of things to do to become a better teacher: get involved. Not just at the local college or aia chapter, but with community groups/public projects, reviewing abstracts for conferences, writing letters to the editor, writing a blog, curate an exhibit, or anything else that requires communication with the public.
Oh is that all?
You just need to publish a book, practice architecture for 15 years, be active in community groups, hold a teaching position already, curate exhibits, FAIA, have 14 years education, and be an expert on parametric modeling to be a good teacher?
I don’t mean to be snarky, but I really think it is easier then that.
I’m not saying that the above mentioned methods for becoming a good teach are wrong, I just think they are a bit much.
Maybe these are the techniques for being a fulltime academic but for someone who wants to teach one studio class while continuing to practice, these methods seem like over kill.
I think it comes down to being good at what you do, showing your ambition (in whatever form you feel fit), and being good with people (being both a good teacher and a good person to be around.)
These things are what helped me get my foot in the door.
book lover, the competition to teach is directly proportionate to the number of under-employed architects. Most arch graduates seem to think they can teach studio. so you don't have to do all of those things, but one or more will help break out of the crowd.
yeah no kidding.
for those of you who think shmucks become teachers and the competition is lite, you need to think again.
i have phd in urban planning, m.arch, license, run an office, won all kinds of wee little awards, published in pretty good journals both as academic and as professional architect.
and when it came down to it finding a teaching job was about who i knew. seriously. my qualifications mean that getting a job based on who know is much much easier - but last year when i was seriously looking to teach for jobs i applied to cold i was still not particularly qualified. there are a LOT of exceedingly talented and bright people out there.
as far as part time gig, i am doing that now and sorry to say a license and a phd were pre-requisites. and i still had to go up against another candidate. in the end i was asked to take the job because i had a very good recommendation.
its a hard-knocks life. doesn't mean you shouldn't try, just don't think it is going to be easy. book lover's path is actually the most common way to get in amongst friends. also, teaching at your alma mater is quite common. then move on from there. expect to spend 5 to 10 years searching for a good wage.
mespellrong,
I don't mean to disparage the teaching profession-- the studio simply benefits from the occasional instructor who really knows how a building goes together. I think there should be more of them.
I agree with jump. All good points, especially the one about teaching at your alma mater. Or at least get one of your one of your old prof's to put in a good word for you at a local college if you no longer live close to where you went to school.
I started teaching part time where I went to college, hired back by one of my professors while also working at a local firm. When I moved to a new city one of my other professors told the chair at a nearby college about me (without my asking which was nice.)
Almost all the people i know who teach also have their own small practices. It seems to be rare that architects working as employees (unless they're principals) get hired. First step might be to establish a small practice, and produce a body of work. No need for this to be extensive -could be a few competitions or small projects. Just enough for people to get a sense of what you're about.
I don't think you should wait too long. If you want to teach start working towards that. Sure if you become a star architect someone will ask you to teach. But getting on the academic ladder is just another track- not unlike working at a firm. You don't want to wait too long to get started. Most tenure track faculty are in their 30's or early 40's. As someone else mentioned it takes time to learn how to teach, and it takes at least six years to get tenured.
Of the folks I went to graduate school (MArchs & MLAs) with, there seem to be three typical paths into teaching.
1- a one or two exceptional classmates were hired directly upon graduation by my alma mater.
2- a few classmatess went to work with professors and were soon asked to co-teach studio with them. (these are folks now teaching at the gsd).
3- a few classmates pursued teaching in other cities. It helped that most of us had strong networks with both professors from grad and undergrad, along with had extensive (5+ years) of practice before we went academic.
In hindsight, there are some similarities between all the folks that went into teaching. Most pursued independent research, either a thesis or other project, while in graduate school. Most were in their 30s. Most had extensive professional experience before going back to grad school. (I had 7+ years of practice & filmaking). Several pursued publishing work from grad school or placed well in competitions.
It is not accidental that these folks wound up in the classroom. I certainly took proactive steps to have this opportunity. My network (including archinect) has been the most valuable asset in getting to teach.
It's been said already to an extent, but I cringe at the idea of an un-or under-employed recent MArch grad/intern saying to themselves, "well I guess I could teach a studio...". That's narcissistic and naive.
I'm with jump on this one. I live near my alma mater and was asked to return by the dean to teach studio after years of practice. I have pre-arch professional teaching experience, have been published, am licensed, etc. etc.
If you snag a studio job just because you were a star student and have an in with an old professor, enjoy the experience and learn from it. It won't last. And please don't introduce yourself as "faculty" at cocktail parties.
gosh small potatoes, nothing narcissistic about that statement. when you say you've been published, is that in reference to the picture of you on the rocking horse?
I also find it ridiculous to view teaching with a “well, I’m unemployed, I have nothing better to do with my time, I have a masters degree, I might as well teach” attitude.
That is naïve and these types of people should not (and probably will not) be studio instructors.
Other young designers look at teaching as a goal to work towards.
Like SmallP’s goal of coming off like a dick, everyone has goals they hope to reach at some point.
Young designer/interns do not all reek of entitlement and superficiality.
Some of us are good/ genuine people. That’s more then we can say about SmallP.
Dude seems like a dick.
we don't need to go into name calling
small potatoes i was just messing with you
Ok, it's time for a reality check here. MattArnold has published some pretty complete visualizations of general statistics about the climate of architectural education, which I’ll gloss as saying that half of the professorate is not licensed and more than half of them don't have a PhD. Obviously these aren't uniform statistics (and it would help if he had numbers to go with his pretty charts), but I certainly know more than a handful of people who are teaching who don't have a masters degree.
What they have is clear expertise, in a format that peers in other academic departments are likely to recognize. Not architects, I mean the regular faculty – biologists, sociologists, and philosophers. That is, in peer-reviewed publications, books from reputable scholarly presses, regional, national, and international competition victories, and reviews of their work by notable critics. They didn’t just churn out some stuff, they did it in public and scholarly forums, and came out with a positive evaluation. I can guarantee you that any reputable school is calculating a specific factor for every candidate. Want to know how? Ask a librarian.
LML — I'll agree, someone who really knows how a building goes together would be a big benefit to an architectural education, provided they could communicate what they know clearly and effectively. I would be surprised to find an architect who really knew that kind of hands-on process oriented information, and who wouldn't be dismissed by their peers as a developer or contractor. And even if you did, where would they fit in a NAAB accredited program?
But for the rest of us – there are two reasons these folks think that they can walk in and teach a studio. First, university policy typically requires a public advertisement of any teaching job, so half of the jobs they are seeing right now are for teaching positions (the other half are for healthcare planners with 10+ years of experience). Second, like most of us, they had one or two recent grads as adjunct instructors who couldn’t teach their way out of a paper bag (we’ve forgotten that there were an equal number of tenured faculty we felt the same way about).
If this sentiment bugs you, do something about your institution using recent grads as cheap curriculum filler and giving tenure to people who can’t teach. But my feeling is the moral of this story is that you should only take a teaching job if you are likely to be good at it, and you should only stick with it if you actually turn out to be good at it. And if you think you will be good at it then figure out what you would like to teach and become an expert in it so that someone will give you a shot at being in the classroom.
i can't say i know a single professor without an m.arch. Of those who i do know without a phd the pressure is on for them to get one asap or stay in the same position without tenure (a few of my old teachers are currently doing phd for this reason). this does not hold for folks who got tenure awhile back, and yes there are a few who did such amazing things a phd was not necessary (in all fairness they did the work of a phd without going through the process so would not say it was much of a shortcut).
but im canadian and we only have a handful of architecture schools so somehow the standards are maybe higher than in the usa?
here in japan phd is normal though not always required. a license is also pretty common. most of my profs in japan had both.
teaching is something you learn, like anything else. you should expect to be bad at it for awhile, but you will get better. it is hard to recommend as a profession unless you are committed because it is a LOT of work for relatively low pay. It makes little sense to pursue it as a career simply because you can't find anything else. though it can be fun for those looking for a rewarding job regardless of pay.
An interesting claim about the credentials of Canadian faculty. I just went through the faculty at Toronto. Of thirty full-time faculty, three have PhDs, and three only have a bachelors degree.
well there you go. proof that anecdotal evidence isn't worth much ;-)
i didn't mean it as a claim, but as a question. although 90% with m.arch or better, and 10% with phd is not a particularly low bar come to think of it...
...hm, i just checked my old school and the numbers are about the same.
no idea what that means.
probably nothing.
My sense, based on who schools hire and based on conversations i've had with those responsible for hiring, there are basically 4 tracks to become an instructor.
1) Teach at your old school with your MArch. This will usually be an adjunct position. You will be poorly paid. Teaching alone won't allow you to pay your bills. You will be a poor teacher, but you will be cheap and allow the program to keep costs down. You may do this for years without going anywhere. You may start a small 'vanity practice' that churns out small and insignificant work, but you will try and wow your students with it. They will not be impressed. You will not be hired on full-time.
2) Become a star architect. High caliber schools will woo you and throw money and professorships at you. You will 'teach' one studio, and show up two times in a semester since that is all your busy schedule and practice allows. You will be a terrible teacher. You will either give completely mundane and/or nebulous advice on reviews, or biting criticism. You will be listed under permanent staff and even have a dedicated office even though you haven't set foot in the school where you supposedly teach for years. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Rem and Jaques.
2) Get a Ph.D. You will research uninteresting topics, but which have funding. Like making courthouses terrorist proof. Maybe 'Green' technologies. You will get a job. You will be a poor tecaher. You will get tenure because you are bringing money into the program.
3) Get a Ph.D. Something interesting, but with little funding. You will struggle with grant proposals, but will eventually carve out a niche with interesting thoughts and publications. You will become a good teacher. Eventually you will get tenure, but won't get the highest paying full professor jobs because you don't bring in enough money.
le bossman you know I only allow my image in the most prestigious of publications...the things that I have written have a much lower status.
Sounds like there is a lot of defensiveness out there about being "qualified" to teach. What I was trying to say was that it's naive to think that being teacher is somehow the back-up plan when you have trouble landing an office job. This discussion becomes more complex depending upon if you wish to teach "a" studio for experience' sake or if you fancy yourself a career educator. Which is it blah? If it's the former than I refer to the last paragraph of my previous post.
book lover, you have me pegged. I'm a total dick. my work is done here [stretches and leaves to gaze into the mirror].
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