The Evolution of Architecture Education at the Boston Architectural College

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast where we find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. I'm your host, Evelyn Lee, an architect who spans tech as an angel investor, start up advisor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're a seasoned architect or just starting in the field, this Hello, disruptors. Welcome to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. Today on the podcast, we're delving into the history and enduring legacy of the Boston Architectural College to talk about where education is headed through the lens of my guest, Bethany Lundell Garver, AIA, Dean and faculty of practice at the BAC, and founding director of Gateway Office, which is a community based design uncenter at the BAC. Beth leads college wide efforts to connect education with practice through distinguished reflective assessment and experiential learning initiatives. Her research and teaching focus on community engagement, professional practice, construction administration, and urban design. Beth holds a master of architecture in urban design with distinction from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, along with a bachelor of and a bachelor of interior architecture, both magna cum laude from Auburn University.

A She has served on several board leadership positions, including the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and most recently the American Institute of Architecture Students. Prior to joining the BAC in 2014, Beth worked with Rafael Vinoly Architects in New York and San Francisco, managing large laboratory and healthcare projects from design through completion, including numerous years of full time on-site construction administration supervision. Today, Beth runs a design consultancy studio in Somerville, Massachusetts where she resides with her 2 daughters, 2 cats, and her husband. She likes walking barefoot, playing board games, making funny faces, and turning the music way up. Hi, Beth. Welcome to the show.

B Hi, Evelyn. Thanks for having me.

A We were just talking before we turn on the mic that I think we met one another over LinkedIn, and it's it's always surprising to me how many of my guests I've kind of found and created these relationships on on LinkedIn, which I think is a a testament to you can have some type of connection through through the interwebs.

B Oh, absolutely. I have a BEC alumni who is very committed to the power of LinkedIn and changing lives and people getting jobs. And he has pushed me in LinkedIn, and I am so grateful because you're right. We we kinda knew each other

A Right.

B Before we knew each other from following and and getting into the same good trouble.

A Yes. Absolutely. So we like to open up each episode of Practice Disrupted with a bit of an ice breaker. We've gone over your formal bio. Is there anything that you want our audience to know about you that they might not otherwise know?

B Well, there's a lot of things. I think one thing that has kind of followed me throughout my life and is a little surprising is that I am a reincarnated cat. No. Not

A I'm not expecting that.

B I mean, my my mom had a cat that was a rescue cat and had one eye and a half a tail named Moshe and got hit by a car in 1979. And so my mom decided to then have a child. And so I'm the first born. And I'm a big time cat person. I have always had dear precious kindred spirit cats, and, actually, I lost a rescue cat that had been with me basically in my twenties and and part of my thirties and ended up naming my first born daughter after her.

A I was gonna say you you didn't get named after the cat.

B I didn't get named after the cat, but I I named my daughter after it.

A Oh, that's amazing. Named after

B your cat. So, yeah. There you go. Yeah. One one of the many things.

A But it also and and I don't know if it's we're gonna diverge down this path either. It also means you're a mother.

B I am a a mother in my forties. I have 2 incredible young girls, 53. I am late enough in my career. I'm I'm dean of practice, so I have some authority in my my role to feel comfortable being able to manage the demands of my job and all of the things at the same time as as being a mom and doing all the backbreaking things related to motherhood. But I know that the majority of moms in our field don't have that luxury. And so I'm really passionate about, first of all, just making space for all the women that are working with me to feel safe and open to, you know, not have to apologize at all for all the things that come up in the day to day, but really value their ability to manage multiple things at one time. Go from, you know, serious health concerns or, you know, traumatic issues at home to being able to kind of pivot and take care of the things that need to happen at work and in serving our students. So I feel very, very strongly about all the work that needs to get done to help elevate women in our field and in all fields.

B And so, yeah, I'm trying to live it, but it does it does kind of when I go to conferences at the Women's Leadership Summit in Boston this past fall, there was a session about motherhood. We were talking in some more or less predictable safe space about making sure that you ask for support from your manager and, you know, being open and not being afraid to ask for help. And a very, very courageous woman raised her hand near the end of the session and said, you know, I had a a miscarriage recently, and I did go to my human resources and my firm. And I was, you know, trying to kinda get leave, and I was told to, you know, that it wasn't something that was applicable for leave. And, you know, so you're telling me get support, but I'm not getting support. What do I do? And then at that point, it kinda started to get real. And I think, you know, I stood up and just said to the room of a 100 plus women, how many of us have had miscarriages? You know, and then more than half of the room raises their hand. And it's just kind of this example of having to live in the day to day in ways that really span the joys and the heartbreak of humanity, you know, going from losing all hope and, you know, losing feeling broken, feeling like your body doesn't work, to then, you know, having to kind of get in front of people and fight for jobs and get projects.

B And women do that every day, and it doesn't really go recognized. So I I try to recognize it every chance I get.

A Yeah. You're not only a mom. I think you're also a girl mom, so a part of me is fighting for a better future for my daughter and my son. I think this stuff tells well into what you consider yourself to be as an architectural advocate. Did you wanna talk a little bit more about your work in that space?

B Yes. This is kind of a new campaign for me and it's one that has stemmed from many observations about the state of professional practice in architecture. And right now, the normative system of our profession has unequivocally kind of met a state of loss of productivity. You know, we do not compare as a as a field well to any other sector in terms of growth and productivity. In fact, I think we've we've, become less productive as a as a global sector even with all of the advances in technology. And a lot of this, I believe, is related to our the dynamics of our profession having both these normative components that are what we more or less cover in professional practice class. You know, I teach professional practice and I'm in it every day. So things like, you know, getting work, firm structure organizations, programming, design planning, CA, construction administration, standards of care and ethics, project delivery models, these things.

B So the normative dominant conversation about projects and profession. I think our field is changing because the world is changing, and those more emergent aspects of our profession or progressive aspects of our profession include all these things that we really talk about. The it's like the majority of what practice disrupted is about, which is, you know, our failures, how our scope is shifting, what risk looks like and value proposition, practice futures. Things like human resources. We're just talking about being a mom, you know, and human resources and working with our people or intellectual property, social justice. So I feel like what's missing is that we don't have, as holders of this emergent practice anything to kind of call ourselves. In many cases, people who are really holding up the work of strategic planning or life cycle costing or social justice and the built environment, they may not be licensed architects, and yet they are architectural advocates. They are and, you know, I kinda have this this definition for my own little definition for architectural advocate, but you know, a person who's publicly supporting or recommending a cause or a policy that's relating to the art or practice of of designing or constructing buildings.

B And that even goes into deconstructing and reconstructing and spaces and and and buildings. And so I I feel like having an identity and having the ability to call all of the architectural advocates across the world together to join in a community of practice is really a very important step to being able to kind of connect and bridge our, in some ways, very disconnected networks. You know? There's sort of the people that are in artificial intelligence, you know, in the built environment space dealing with with codes. And and then there are people in in certainly the social justice or or planning or the public sector, more regulations and policy space. But we don't have a way to connect ourselves and we're all sort of that group, I think, in many cases feels like inadequate or, like, they don't belong. And, you know, right now, the term architectural advocate is a little bit radical in that it's not legal to call yourself that in our country unless you have a license, unless you have an architectural license. So I I hope to begin to have conversation with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which is my own state, about changing our regulations to be able to at least use architectural advocate as a term. I've talked to a lot of people about, do you think an architectural advocate is the same as a licensed architect? And nobody thinks that.

B And so, you know, I think the hope is that we need advocates. We need advocates in this work. And it's likely that they may have an architecture degree, but not have a license. And so I am an architectural advocate. I work with architectural advocates that study birth environments, that study trauma informed design. You know, Martin Luther King, doctor Martin Luther King Junior was an architectural advocate. He upheld fair housing rights and helped after his murder, you know, enact the fair housing laws. So this is for me, I think a way to help really transform our profession.

B And it's a title, but I think it's a lot more than that.

A It's a

B lot more than that. And then

A I think we often talk not just about how our buildings only influence the occupiers of our space, right? That our buildings influence entire communities. We create culture, but it's not just us in that process. Right? Anything we do involves so many different people, and for them to be able to share their space and hold that title in a way that is, for me, much more understandable than citizen architect, which is something that has been thrown around a lot. And I really love the idea of architectural advocate. I think we need to I don't know if you've put that in front of anyone in California yet, but I'm happy to happy to spread the word out here.

B That's what we're gonna that's I mean, I I think that's what we're gonna start to do. So I'll I'll get ready. I'm looking for for ins and, you know, getting on the the the slate for board of architect dockets for conversations. Yeah. So, you know, and I think it's a start to recognize that we have to have this work. We know I mean, I think the other thing is that being an architect, there's a this question about what does it mean to be an architect. It's a really as you said, it it's a influencer and creator of the built environment. It's a very public role.

B And public even in those that are doing residential work because you are you know, somebody is going to sleep and having their most intimate moments in a space and then going and and facing the world. And so being able to empower people to support and and recommend policies that inform that built environment and just acknowledging the kind of critical nature of that And the fact that it may be about designing and constructing buildings, but this whole reconstructing and reusing and, you know, shifting our mindset into architecture cannot just be about new construction anymore. And if our real role is protecting health, safety, and welfare, new construction has done so much damage to the world, to the people who have built it. I mean, thinking about the the labor who builds your architecture, I mean, you know, it can't just be about that anymore. I mean, really, urgently has to start being more about redesigning spaces or, you know, taking pieces apart and reusing them in ways that are different. And so architectural advocates can help us a lot with that.

A I really love the term. So for any of our listeners who want to spread the word about architectural advocate, reach out to Beth. Yes. Reach out to Beth.

B We'll put it on the docket of your state board. It's only 3 in my the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, only 3 words have to be added to the the regulation in order to make it legal. So right now, the only term that can use architectural without a license is is architectural intern or intern architect. So the regulation would just be changing it to architectural intern or architectural advocate.

A So you you mentioned kind of expanding the definition of architects, and and I've always loved talking to both students and people in education because I feel like they have the pulse on what the next generation is really interested in in doing, especially as they come out of school, or even what they're doing what they're interested in doing with their architecture degree. Because I feel like so many students even go into architecture these days, knowing they're not going to practice in a traditional sense. So as an educator, what is your role in helping them understand what is an architect? What is the practice of architecture and supporting the many different ways that these students want to apply their learnings after they graduate?

B Oh, man. This is it. This is I love this. I I have the most precious job at the Boston Architectural College. All of our architecture students are required as part of their degree to earn its it amounts to, in aggregate, a year and a half of full time work. And we don't just it's not just time. It's not just hours, but we really lean into what it is that you're doing and what skills you're developing and and where you're applying them. I mean, it's extraordinarily robust.

B And what it means is that every day, I am asking people, why are you here? Why do you want this degree in architecture? And what is it that you're hoping to do? And for me, it's not after you graduate. For me, it's as soon as you can possibly get started doing it because at the BAC, you jump start your career while you're with us, which is actually a really precious moment because I still I'm there to support students through all of the, you know, fears, quite honestly, of going out into the world and and finding a pursuit or work or professional practice and and, you know, starting to earn money. A big part of it is talking about how it doesn't just have to be in an architecture firm. A huge part. And at the BEC, our history, I think, a lot of times people step foot and and and think, okay. Well, the only valuable work is in an architecture firm. And it and just as we've talked about with architectural advocates, it is 100% not true. And so one thing that I did about 5 years ago was broaden how we ask students to reflect on the work that they're doing in practice.

B And so instead of just primarily very project delivery skills and competencies like planning and design development and construction administration and construction construction observations and and zoning and code regulations. Instead of those things, we kind of broadened it to 6 different categories of competencies. I love assessment, so I talk about competencies, but it's really sort of knowledge or skill level. And the 6 areas are conceptualization. We have one where it's sort of integrity, ethics, professionalism. There's another that is related to technical skills and representation and really kind of being able to communicate through platforms, both, you know, the fabrication, digital platforms about the work. We still have project delivery methods in there and the kind of traditional architecture skills and competencies. We have added entrepreneurialism and act as operations.

B So we've got about 15 different competencies related to that that include everything from stakeholder roles and team building and financing and budgeting and market support. And then we also have a area of competencies that we encourage students to to apply related to public interest design and teaching, mentoring, and research. So we say to our students, any of these areas or anything that's not here can be valuable for you. But, you know, what we ask is for students to reflect on what it is that they're they're learning, which in thinking about broadening the definition of architecture, we don't and, really, the workforce. Force. I mean, I think in general, the work force there's just not a lot of time dedicated to developing our workforce, to learning, to mentoring, to helping new employees develop into managers and and managers develop into owners. We kind it kinda just, like, happens, and it doesn't really happen well, which means that and I I'm maybe mostly speaking about our field, and a lot of this is a lot of this is from talking to professional practice faculty about just, like, what's taught in school. And there's this idea in our field that design is really when you're working on the design and construction of the building, when you're working on something that you see and it's related to design and construction.

B But a big part of capital d design has to be, you know, getting out your pro form a or your business model sheet or looking at your profits and losses or thinking strategically about, you know, being able to get revenue in new areas. I mean, every other sector recognizes the value of design in these areas. You know, McKinsey Consulting has a whole design branch that shows the value of design for, like, the top 100 revenue generating companies across the world. And yet in architecture, we are kind of like, oh, it's just Put ourselves in a box.

A Our own box.

B And we belittle the work of those that are designing with words or numbers or strategies or planning or thinking about, okay, we need to set aside 8 hours a week to letting our managers talk to our new employees to ask them what they're learning and what they could do better, what they're afraid of. I mean and then, you know, it gets into billing and how do we bill? And there's all of these things. So I just went on a big long thing. But It's fine. You know, there's so many ways to expand what it means to be an architect. I mean, one could just be really empower and validate those that that part of of being an architect that is wholly dedicated to operations, to cultivating relationships with clients, to thinking about the future, cultivating relationships with communities, to being the face or, you know, being the the support. I mean, that is design. That is not a inferior aspect of design.

B And I've been in in conversations about things, you know, being being able to pull work together for the Venice Biennale and trying to think about bringing in some of these components, which don't seem glorious, but you can certainly create design exhibitions for. And even in those conversations, it's kind of like, well, no. I mean, it really needs to be something aesthetic or something visually compelling. Well, it will be, but it'll be about the operations. Uh-huh. No. It's just it's not good enough. And I mean, I think it, you know, it just has to change, and it is changing.

B And I think, hopefully, this empowering the architectural advocates to seize design in their work and to be able to show how architectural thinking is applied to to more than just designing and constructing buildings is it's critical.

A You know, I would piggyback a little bit off of what you're saying. The struggle of the middle manager, I think, is prevalent, not just in architecture, but everywhere, especially coming out of the pandemic and having no idea really how to manage teams in hybrid well, right, in a hybrid work environment using new technology and trying to fit old ways of working without necessarily considering new ways of working, but just trying to not reinvent, well, we're not reinventing, but but cramming our old ways of doing things into these new ways of how we're, where we're working and who we're working with and how we collaborate, even with these new tools that we have. The biggest difference though I see between industries outside of architecture and architecture is that there's an emphasis on the professional development of those individuals as they progress through their career as leaders. Versus in architecture, as you said, we only continue to celebrate those skills, which are tied to the building. So, so much of our own professional development and architecture is around detailing and project management, or just the project itself. Right? And not all the leadership components that is required to be a decent manager.

B Yeah, there's a study that Lumina Foundation did with Gallup. Well, there's there's actually a number of them, but learning while earning is 1. But it kinda goes into workplace engagement and workforce engagement. And it's actually it's it's a longitudinal study of tens of thousands of recent graduates, not just in architecture. But it does it talks about how, as a society, and I think it's it's based in the United States, we are at about 30% engagement in in the workplace. 30%. And That's really low. Talk about lack of positivity.

B Right? With lack of engagement. Imagine elevating our engagement at work even to 50% or 60%, at some point, imagine all that we could do, you know, all that we could accomplish at being able to kinda solve so many of these challenges that we face every day. And it was interesting for me to look at how engagement at work is defined, and this is this Lumine Gal study. And it, it very much centers on the concepts of wellness, and engagement being sort of finding wellness through your work, and and breaking, and the study breaks it down into 5 different areas of sense of community or commune communal wellness, financial wellness, physical wellness. There's a one about sense of purpose and identity. In some ways, it really helps to it helped me to realize as a shepherd of I've got, you know, 600 students at the BAC that I'm asking to work in order to graduate, and I feel this responsibility for ensuring that that experience is a is a fulfilling learning experience. It's not just checking the box, but it's something that is improving their life. And so for me, workplace engagement is you know, I'm always trying to think about what can I do to help employers be better learning partners? You know, what can I do to help employers, even though they're not my students, be more mindful of how their teams and and their people are feeling like they're growing and thriving and engaged because, you know, it's having a effect an indirect effect or really a direct effect on my students? So there's lots of interesting stuff, but we're not necessarily alone.

B But I do feel like we're not doing all that well when it comes to financial. I mean, just even starting with financial wellness. I don't think we're known for strong community wellness. I do think we we benefit you know, sense of identity and purpose is a strength. However, there is so much disconnect with how that translates to, you know, the ability to support ourselves.

A I would say sense of purpose when it comes to usually the projects that we're building within the community, sense of purpose as an individual and a firm understanding how what I'm doing is contributing financially to the success of the firm is a different, maybe lack of workplace sense of purpose, but overall project sense of purpose.

B Yeah. Right. And okay. The the name of the study is Great Jobs, Great Lives, or Great Lives, Great Jobs. But, absolutely, I how we fit in to the broader, bigger space. It could be our town. It could be our neighborhood. It could be our our firm.

B It could be the how I fit into ark arkimombs. I mean, I think that how we see ourselves sort of serving those larger pieces of our society, we don't dedicate time to that. There's a lot of just business as usual doing, doing, doing Yep. And taking a pause and disrupting it for a for a good while and recognizing that we're not really actually succeeding. We're building our portfolios. We're building our Rolodex. We're getting more projects, but that's not necessarily success. How do we know that we're being successful in the work that we're doing?

A Right. So I've always kind of been a fan of the BAC and how it as an institution has, has been pushing kind of the evolution of architecture forward. I feel like the BAC is always the first to raise their hand to try some thing new in many ways. Do you want to talk about that? And I think why it's a good place for individuals like yourself who are interested in in changing the outcome of of their profession from an education standpoint? Because I feel like so much of we often talk about how changing the profession is needs to happen on the practice side, But I feel like you guys are trying to even change the profession from the education standpoint.

B The big picture goal is to try to transform the profession from from education and from our emerging leaders that are with us while also in their firms. And it's it's not just follow along and and get in line. It's while they're with us, we can say, you're experiencing that? Let's have a conversation about it. Let's challenge you to, you know, ask to do different work. I mean, we're really trying to transform the profession from the inside out. It's a really special institution. We were founded as a club in 18/89, and it's always been, since 18/89, a partnership between practitioners and educators and and students. It's always been that.

B It was a group of MIT faculty interested in in teaching. And at that time, we call it you know, they were they were poor draftsmen in offices that couldn't afford to go to Europe on the tour of the Le Col de Beaux Arts to get their professional architectural education. And so they took classes at night in watercoloring and drafting and in the kind of fine fine arts of, at the time, architecture. And it's remained. It's it's always been a bridge, and it's always been a place where kind of going above and beyond what the one job is. You know? It's not just going to school. It's not just working. It's doing both, has been the norm for us.

B And because of that, you know, yeah, we we're comfortable being the outlier, and it's all in the name of access. So it's all about just like enabling the poor draftsman to get an education while they couldn't afford to go to do a a travel study abroad in 18/89. It's about enabling people to make money while they're in school to offset their tuition and jump start their career and also get support to, you know, think about what it is that they wanna do and what kind of future they wanna change. So, yeah, I mean, the firsts in the name of access, 2009, we were the 1st accredited architecture degree. Our master's of architecture was the first accredited online degree in 2009, well before the pandemic. That's an incredibly strong program and continues to grow. We were a center. Ted Landsmark was our president, but we were a center when we became the the first non college or university to hold an accredited degree program, and that was our bachelor's of architecture program in the and actually Ted Lansbury.

B I wasn't the president then, but in in 1970s. And, you know, and we were the first one of the first group of inaugural integrated path to architecture licensure schools and now are definitely leading the flock in terms of the number of IPAL graduates. And, you know, we've got students with, I think we're at like 35 different states where our students are registered, who, you know, on the day of graduation, basically, were able to send in their check to the state board to get their license. We talk to people. You know? We talk to each other. We we don't have tenure. There's a level of competition amongst ourselves that isn't there. We are really just in it for the students and improving lives and and helping.

B We are scrappy. And so we really in fact, we do a lot with a little and we've kind of always done a lot with a little. But I do think the aspect of sense of identity and purpose and just how crucial that is really to a living system. You know, if you think about we're all, like, we're in these living systems, we're we're organisms and the living system of the the BAC, this incredibly strong sense of identity and purpose as being this bridge between practice and education and connecting students to learning out in the world where they're having to kinda make decisions for themselves about where they wanna be and what they wanna do and how much they wanna make and who they wanna be working with, like, the sort of agency of making those decisions, we're there. We're you know, we care. We're comfortable in that uncomfortable place. So I don't know. I my worry a little bit now is that there's a lot changing in our in our in education and in the profession.

B And I worry that we are it's, oh, the BAC is just different. You know, it's like the it's just different.

A You've positioned yourself as forever the outlier because you're just different rather than bringing the everyone else along.

B Right. I think that more and more lately, people have been coming to me and saying, you know, I didn't really initially think that the way that you were all doing things was the way that things needed to happen. But more and more I do. And a lot of it, you know, is just comes down to hardcore graduation outcomes, like the starting salary of our graduates. You know? Our starting salary of our Emer graduates is $75,000. Starting salary of our undergraduates is almost $68,000. And if you, you know, we all know or maybe we don't know. But when you look exponentially over the course of a lifetime, you know, being able to kind of get a starting salary that then continues to kind of grow and and elevate, like, raise.

B That that money ends up becoming over the lifetime an an increase of what could add up to, you know, 1,000,000 of of dollars over a lifetime. So it really does make a difference starting off on an important foot. And so, we try to do that with our students. And also, it does come, I will say, one of the biggest things and sort of I can think of some people who might be happy to hear me say this, studio culture and studio time, we have less of it. We do not require our students to be in studio for,

A you know 15 hours to 12 a week.

B End to 12 to 15 hours a week. Something's gotta give, and that is an area where we our curriculum gives. And, you know, we we're still getting very good outcomes and very high salaries, and that's a hard thing to let go of. And I know, you know, that's the biggest thing for for schools to let go of is that studio time because it's so precious and upheld. But doing more with less, I mean, for us, it's really helped our students understand that there's not a relation I mean, the the relationship between value and time is like, has to be considered. So if something is has turned out wonderfully, but you put 400 hours of time in it, that return on investment is diminished as if, you know, maybe something turned out really well with 40 hours of time in it. That return on investment is much more meaningful. And so I think our students are able to just do so much in a day, and it kinda blows people away.

B And it does mean that they're not, you know, spending 30 hours on kind of one detail of a project because, you know, they just they just don't have that to give and quite honestly the world doesn't need it. That is the probably more controversial aspect of this is that in asking our students to do so much, we do ask them to do less in Design Studio. And not in terms of outcomes, but in terms of time. We ask for less time.

A Right. We've covered a lot of ground, a lot, a lot of ground today. So as the BIC, as you look to the future and the challenges that lay ahead, where do you feel like the biggest challenges exist for your students or the profession?

B We were talking about salary. I'll just start there. Right now, I very much hope that the AIA and, you know, adds demographic and and gender data to their salary calculator because we do we do gather salary information for all of our students, both while they're working with us as students and then at graduation. And it's not a pretty picture what those salary distributions are. You know, if you if you were to run what the kind of average pay rate is for a woman or a man and then every ethnicity, and you you see the inequities there, our field is not immune from that. And if anything, from what I've seen, it it's worse than the average. And so I would just say that if we want our profession to be a diverse profession, it's not about removing education or eliminating, you know, the architecture degree so that someone can go from community college into the the profession, but it's about really getting capital d Designers into the space of the the business model of what it is that we do so that we are really being able to realize the gains of our time and the value of our designs so that we compare people well and promise livelihoods that involve being able to raise our families and stay in this and do this work. And so it's a it's that's one aspect of the future that is absolutely changeable, but people in firms have to dedicate time to making that happen.

B And it does actually go down to kind of time bound productivity and and value and just getting more done in in less time and maybe, you know, at a level that some might say it's not quite as good, but the client really would never even notice. You know? And so that's kind of one thing. The other thing is I think there's lots of different roles for us and lots of different roles for my students in the future. There's sort of this role of needing to continue to be a trailblazer and a pioneer and, you know, be the one leading these conversations. There's also the role of being an illuminator. So being able to shine a light on others like, you know, yourself that are doing this work and and kind of drawing people's attention to it. And saying that we really need to listen to what these pioneers and trailblazers are doing in order to kind of improve our profession for the future. There's another role which is about and this is a lot of this is sort of inspired by the work of Deborah Friese and and looking at systems change theory.

B But she has this role called the hospice worker, which is about tending to the really dedicating time and attention and resources to the people, the more seasoned practitioners that are really having a difficult time with the changing and with the fact that things are not going to be the way they always were. And so sort of helping to support.

A And the knowledge that all those individuals have that it's hard to capture right now as they're all looking or getting older in age and headed towards some sort of retirement.

B So yes. So, like, this hospice worker of, like, caring for that and thinking about how you you support a good death of of the fact that now with artificial intelligence and all things happening, we are just not it's just not ever going to be the same. And so cultivating that and in a nurturing, caring way, and then, you know, protecting. So the other piece that I encourage my students to be is, like, choose and this is all architectural advocates. But seeing the pioneers, seeing the illuminators, seeing those that are doing the kind of hospice work and supporting the seasoned professionals and practitioners who are just very much struggling with the change that's happening in our profession. And protecting the pioneers and saying, let them you know, give them space to change things. You know? Let them try this new thing, or let them go down this path to see what happens and experiment and make room. And this is I mean, again, I think it's it's you, Evelyn, but those protectors are embedded in large systems, national organizations and associations, and and have influence and power, and can say, we we need to protect these pioneers so they can keep doing this work and and, you know, help the the new future of our profession emerge.

A So, the demographics, well, it's hard to understand the demographics of any podcast, but we believe that it tends to skew younger towards like, newly minted leaders or individuals that are just starting off their firm. And then, of course, we get a lot of students and those earlier in their careers listening in. What words of advice do you have for these pioneers that are stuck in these systems right now in ways that they can be more entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial given where they are?

B Yeah. You know, I think one mindset that has really helped me is that there is always a different way to go forward, and it just might not be the way that you can see or, you know, it might not be the sidewalk. It might not be the road. And I think the other thing is it's hard. And in the conferences and the conversations I I go to, there is this and also with my students, there's sort of this sense of a little bit of despair about or maybe a lot of despair about the sense of helplessness and wanting to see change, but feeling like there's no path forward or not knowing how to like, not knowing what to do. And I think getting involved, you know, in committees, getting involved in your neighborhood, getting involved in your city council, getting involved in your state board, I argue just going ahead and getting your architectural license and then kind of joining us as architects in in transforming what it means to be a licensed architect, I think you do have to, in a way, just go above and beyond. It's not the sidewalk or the road. It's not the path that is evident and clear.

B It's more like going through the backwoods with the you know, with some kind of, like, axe chopping down trees, and that's okay. You know? I mean, that's where we are. And so that's a little bit of why I hope for the architectural advocate to feel connected. I I think there's a lot of us in the backwoods through the wilderness trying to find our way through to the future. Mhmm. And if we can just kind of all of us in our different interests come together in recognizing that in all of the different ways, we're trying to move our profession forward into the into the future with the very urgent demands that we have to face, it's gonna be a lot easier to to kinda clear it away. And so being able to find each other, you know, being able to to connect and have conversations and find each other so we can support each other through it, It's really it's really important. So, like, for a if you're a new someone starting a firm or a new student, I would say, find a friend or find somebody who you recognize and value, and reestablish a relationship with them so that you can call them up and say, this is really hard.

B I don't know what to do. I'm, you know, I'm not sure I'm gonna make payroll next week, or I don't know where the money is gonna come from, or I don't know if this is good enough work. What do I do? And just, you know, help each other, get someone who can support each other. These these communities of practice, I think, are really the key, and building one big community of practice through architectural advocacy is another key.

A Hi, disruptors. Thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practice of architecture.com/podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community at practice of architecture.com/community. Our social media handle is practice of arch. That's practice of a r c h, we'd love to hear from you. So feel free to drop us a DM and say hello. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.