Community Engaged Design Education

COMMUNITY ENGAGED DESIGN EDUCATION 2012 FELLOWSHIP for social and Institutional change - FINAL REPORT

ENGAGED CORNELL FELLOWSHIP FOR SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

PUBLIC ENGAGED SERVICE & LEARNING+ CENTER RESEARCH

Š Gilad Meron The 2012 Fellowship for Social and Institutional Change Final Report was researched, written and designed by Gilad Meron.

The Fellowship for Social and Institutional Change at Cornell University is jointly supported by The Public Service Center and Engaged Learning + Research

PUBLIC SERVICE CENTER

ENGAGED

LEARNING+

RESEARCH

ENGAGED CORNELL FELLOWSHIP FOR SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

FOREWORD

Across the Country, Design Education is Changing.

As Cheryl Webber put it in a recent article in Residential Architect, “A dedication to social justice propels today’s young design professionals.” She goes on to clarify that although young people have always been attracted to humanitarian causes, the current trend is fundamentally different. Webber explains that today’s young professionals grew up in a time of climate change, economic unrest and unparalleled global awareness, leading them to see socially conscious design less as an idealistic goal, and more as the third leg of sustainability; environmental, economic, and social.

This shift in perspective is not merely theoretical.

Already there are dozen of young designers proving this approach works; proving that design has a role to play in addressing the world’s most wicked problems. Firms like MASS Design, Catapult, Rebar, Greater Good Studio, Civic Center, and D-Rev, alongside organizations like Project H, IDEO.org, HealthxDesign, Public Workshop, DSGN AGNC, D-Impact and so many more. These pioneers have helped bring the terms “public-interest” and “social-impact” to the forefront of design. Their projects, publications, exhibitions and conferences have helped spread the word and bring visibility to this emerging area of practice. Most importantly, their work has demonstrated the real impact design can have on human life.

Students, more than anyone else, have paid attention.

For the first time they have real validation that their dreams of a career in public interest design might not be so crazy after all. Along with that though, comes the realization that they will need skills outside of what a traditional design education provides.

“Students used to want to see beautiful projects, but now the first question is, how do the finances work?” said Sergio Palleroni, Professor at Portland State, “It’s a huge change from when I started to teach 30 years ago.” Despite the shift in what students want and where the professional world is headed, design education remains largely unaffected… but a sea change is coming.

Across the country design education is beginning to shift. Universities are building unprecedented partnerships with cities, towns and governments in order to teach young designers how to not only solve problems, but to identify them as well.

Professors are pioneering new community-based programs that embrace civic engagement and social activism, and students are experiencing a new type of multidisciplinary design education. This has already begun. Across the country design education is changing.

The following report aims to document some of the most successful and replicable programs out there today, specifically those in the fields of architecture and planning. In the process this report will provide an analytic framework, a tool for strategic planning, and a collection of insights from program directors around the country who have spent years (and in some cases decades) developing and refining their models. It is our intent that this report will serve as a tool for faculty and staff around the country who are currently building new programs, and it is our hope that this report will help those faculty and staff to forge forward and establish new programs. In the words of a great man, we hope that this report will help design education to Proceed and Be Bold!

CONTENTS

Fellowship for Social and Institutional Change 2012 Fellowship Final Report

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COMMUNITY ENGAGED DESIGN EDUCATION 9......... Executive Summary: The Purpose and Aims of This Report 13....... Part One: Community Engagement in Design Education 31....... Part Two: Five Best Practices in Community Engaged Design 47....... Part Three: Case Study of the Sustainable Cities Initiative 57....... Part Four: Case Study of the Public Interest Design Program 63....... Part Five: Perspectives on Community Engagement at Cornell 71....... Part Six: Insights and Recommendations: Next Steps at Cornell 75....... Appendix: Resources and Reflections

• Fellowship RFP: Goals and Objectives for this Fellowship • Research Proposal: 2012 Accepted Fellow’s Proposal Essay • Reflection 1: The impact of the Fellowship • Reflection 2: Engaged Learning as a Model for Design Education • Working list of community engagement courses at Cornell

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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As the world begins to face a multitude of problems related to the built environment, design is uniquely positioned to address them. The role of design in the world must change, and so too much the nature of design education.

THE PURPOSES OF THIS REPORT

RESEARCH METHODS & OBJECTIVES

The following report was written by Gilad Meron, the 2012 Fellow for Social and Institutional Change at Cornell. The fellowship aims to engage recent graduates in research that uncovers opportunities for increasing community engaged learning and research at Cornell. Each year the fellowship supports one recent graduate to explore how this goal could be accomplished in their field of study, and then propose a new program or initiative based on their findings.

Research by the author included; attending and reporting on a community-based design program at the University of Texas at Austin, surveying all other similar programs at universities across the country, visited numerous programs in person, interviewing program directors, speaking with students, and reading reports, articles and publications produced on the subject of community design pedagogy.

The 2012 fellowship focused on design education and the opportunity to better integrate community engagement into design curriculum. Cornell sees community engagement as a key aspect of education and design as an area with great potential for the future in this respect. The growth of “public-interest” or “social-impact” design practices in recent decades have brought this issue to the forefront at Cornell, resulting in numerous events, student organizations, and courses, which have led to a growing discourse on campus around what might be possible in the near future.

These efforts have been spearheaded by Engaged Learning + Research (EL+R), a center at Cornell designed to advance academic service-learning, community-based research, and public scholarship across the university. The 2012 fellowship was created to help EL+R better understand how other universities around the country have successfully built community engagement into design curriculum.

It is important to note that the research conducted for this report is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of all programs in the country, but rather a representative sample. The programs highlighted in case studies and profiles were chosen for their diverse models, reputation for excellence, and potential for providing key insights. The author acknowledges that the numerous programs mentioned in Part 1 represent only 40-50% of all programs in operation today. This approximation sheds light on the great need for continued research in this area. As new programs continue to emerge each year there is a growing demand for information; this report represents merely a first glance at the strategies, models and approaches being used today.

The primary goal of this report is to help faculty, both at Cornell and other schools, move forward in the process of creating new programs around community engagement and design. With that goal in mind, the report presents an analytic framework, a tool for strategic planning, and a collection of insights from program directors around the country.

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PART 1 Part one describes the various types of programs that currently exist and outlines how the extent to which a program is formally integrated with curriculum plays a key role in both how the program engages students and what that level of integration means for its approach to new projects. A “spectrum of integration with curriculum” is presented as an analytic framework for discussion, which provides a useful metric for comparing and contrasting programs and examining mechanisms for engaging students in community-based design efforts.

This spectrum is valuable because it was found to be a telling indicator of a program’s underlying purpose and approach. Therefore, the spectrum can be used as a framework to facilitate discussion amongst faculty who are looking to start new programs, to help better understand how early decisions about level of integration with curriculum will have significant impacts on the future of their programs.

Part one continues by reviewing each of the six types of programs found on the spectrum; Degree Programs, Programs with a Culture of Engagement, Studios or Courses within a Program, Institutes Initiatives and Centers, Student-led Initiatives and Competitions, and University Funded CDCs. Each type is discussed in detail and multiple examples are given for each. Part one concludes with four major insights about how successful programs have been constructed, each of which were found to be consistent across the spectrum, as well as a final analysis of potential implications.

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• First, building community engagement programs around faculty research interests is critical to the lasting success of programs.

• Second, fostering a faculty culture that values and respects community engagement, as part of both teaching and research, is crucial to the sustainability of any new efforts or initiatives.

• Third, it is important to identify and support a small group of champions who are passionate about the program and are willing to become leaders and spearhead efforts both on campus and in communities.

• Fourth, it is important to document all work that is done because documentation of success can help overcome common institutional barriers and aid in the development of course material.

PART 2 Part two profiles five different programs, chosen for both their diverse approaches to integrating community engagement in design education and their reputation for excellence. A “Program Intentions Scale” is presented as a strategic planning tool for program directors and faculty looking to build or grow programs.

The scale is valuable because it was found that underlying intentions play an increasingly important role as programs develop and mature, often acting as the driving force behind key decisions that must be made. Therefore, the scale can be used as a tool

“An emerging generation of architects has been reflecting, for some years now, professional values that move toward a global awareness and social consciousness; and a concern with local conditions as part of a more holistic approach to sustainability.”

-Cathleen McGuigan

for strategic planning to help program directors and staff identify their primary intentions early on, and thus provide clear direction and guidance for future conversations and critical decisions.

Part two continues by presenting five profiles of programs around the country, highlighting the unique model that each uses, and explaining how each integrates all five of the key intentions; Training, Education, Research, Impact and Engagement. Part two concludes with four key insights about what is needed to construct a successful program in community engaged design.

• First, there must be a champion of the program, an individual who will go above and beyond to ensure the program’s success.

• Second, programs must be crafted around the needs and issues of a community first, and aligned with faculty interests second.

• Third, there must be collaborative ownership of the program between the university and the community.

• Fourth, the program must gain visibility through local media coverage, university publications, and scholarly journals.

PART 3 & 4 Parts three and four take an in depth look at two programs, the Sustainable Cities Initiative at the University of Oregon, and the Public Interest Design Summer Program and the University of Texas at

Architectural Record, Editor in Chief

Austin, both of which provide many valuable lessons.

Each of these case studies provide an inside look at a leading program; examining their origin story, organizational structure, funding model, key mechanisms, and impact on both communities and students. Furthermore, the director of each program provides numerous insights and lessons about how they overcame challenges, what they would do differently, and where they think the future of design education is heading. Both case studies are highly descriptive and aim to provide a transparent view of how successful programs are run.

PART 5 & 6 Parts five and six relate specifically to Cornell University and its potential opportunities in the near future. As previously stated, a key part of the Fellowship is for the fellow to propose a new program or initiative at Cornell based on their research. Part five outline the perspectives, thoughts and recommendations of faculty, deans and department chairs at Cornell and highlights key areas that must be addressed in order for any future program to succeed. Part six concludes this report with recommendations from the author on next steps to be taken at Cornell; immediate, shortterm and long-term. These recommendations were later incorporated into a presentation to a select group of faculty at Cornell, and strategic planning for the development of a new program is currently underway.

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PART ONE Survey of University Programs Merging

Community Engagement and Design Curriculum

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Community Engagement In Design Education:

Survey of the types of programs currently in operation at universities across the country

Introduction Universities across the country have developed programs aimed at bringing community engaged learning and research into design curricula. This report examines the various models that are in use today and discusses the different approaches each employs. Programs are grouped into six major categories, defined by the degree to which each is integrated with curriculum at its respective university.

Integration with curriculum is the lens through which each program is analyzed because the larger goal of this report is to shed light on opportunities for faculty at Cornell University to better integrate community engaged learning and research into curriculum, therefore discussion of curricular models is highly relevant. The aim of this section is to highlight the various types of programs currently in existence and identify opportunities for Cornell, to build off of precedents from other universities .

Research Methods The information and data in this section of the report come from two primary sources; program websites and interviews. The process of surveying programs began with a broad search of all accredited architecture programs at U.S. universities. Each program’s website was reviewed, as well as the website of the department or college in which it was housed. After a detailed search for any communityengaged programs or initiatives, program coordinators were contacted to verify that the identified program was still running, and additional information was requested.

The second primary source for gathering information came from phone interviews with professors and program directors at the various universities surveyed. These interviews included questions about the origin of the program, its size and strength within the university, its perceived effectiveness, its organizational structure, its funding model, and the impact it was seen as having for both students and faculty. Although these interviews presented somewhat subjective perspectives, they nonetheless provided key insights that would be otherwise unavailable. In an effort to encourage honest and transparent feedback, each interviewee was promised anonymity.

This initial method does have flaws; there are undoubtedly numerous schools that do not have accredited architecture program but do have community-engaged programs, which therefore were overlooked. In addition, programs in landscape architecture, graphic design, urban design and interior design were not surveyed. As a result this report can not claim to be a comprehensive overview of all programs. Instead this report aims to provide a representative sample of the types of programs currently in existence.

Other similar reports include “University - Community Design Partnerships: Innovations in Practice” by Jason Pearson, produced by the National Endowment for the Arts, and “Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice” by Ernest Boyer and Lee Mitgang.

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Spectrum of Integration with Curriculum For the purposes of this section, programs are presented on a spectrum from most integrated with curriculum to least integrated with curriculum. This spectrum is not meant as a tool to assess the success or validity of programs; there are highly successful and robust programs at both ends of the spectrum.

The spectrum is intended to function simply as a framework for discussion, it provides a useful metric for comparing and contrasting programs and examining the mechanisms each uses for engaging students.

Level of integration with curriculum is an important metric because it was found to be a telling indicator of a program’s underlying purpose and approach.

In addition it was often found to be reflective of how each program emerged and sustained itself within its individual university system. Each of these factors were important because the goal of this report is to provide information that can help faculty at Cornell navigate the process of creating new programs at the intersection of community engagement and design. The spectrum is presented here as a tool to aid in that process, specifically to highlight the finding that level of integration with curriculum is a key determining factor in the way any new program positions itself within the larger organizational structure of a university.

It is important to note that the large majority of programs do not fall exclusively into a single category on this spectrum. In fact, the most successful 14

programs combine multiple categories and form collaborative efforts (for example, a degree program that works in parallel with a research institute and collaborates with a student-led initiative). It is also important to note that this spectrum is only one form of analysis, and is used here to compare and contrast types of programs broadly. The section following this one will utilize a different tool and will focus more specifically on individual traits and priorities of programs. The rest of this section will discuss each type of program on the spectrum and highlight how its level of curricular integration impacts the way it engages students by looking briefly at examples from each.

Degree Programs Within the past ten years, there have been a growing number of graduate degree programs that are oriented towards social impact through design, most of which are rooted in principles of community engagement and public outreach. A number of these are MFA and MA degree programs, such as the School of Visual Art’s MFA in Design for Social Innovation, Maryland Institute College of Art’s MA in Social Design, and Parson’s MFA in Transdisciplinary Design. Alongside these, there have also been a growing number of schools that offer an MS in Sustainable Design, notably the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Minnesota, and Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a similarly focused MS in Design and Urban Ecologies at Parsons The New School for Design.

MFA Programs

Master of Fine Arts

MA Programs Master of Arts

MS Programs

Master of Science

MDes Programs

Master of Design Studies

MS-Arch Programs Master of Science in Architecture

Art Center College of Design- MFA in Media Design Practices (Field Track) Maryland Institute College of Art- MFA in Community Arts Parsons The New School for Design- MFA in Transdisciplinary Design Pacific Northwest College of Art- Collaborative Design School of Visual Arts- MFA in Design for Social Innovation American University- MA in Social Entrepreneurship Antioch University - MA in Whole Systems Design Maryland Institute College of Art- MA in Social Design Michigan State University- MA in Environmental Design Minneapolis College of Art and Design- MA in Sustainable Design Northern Arizona University- MA in Sustainable Communities Parsons The New School for Design- MA in Theories of Urban Practice Savannah College of Art and Design- MA in Design for Sustainability Arizona State University: MS in Built Environment Carnegie Mellon University - MS in Sustainable Design Catholic University of America- MS in Sustainable Design City College of New York- MS in Sustainability in the Urban Environment Georgia Institute of Technology- MS in Urban Design Kansas State University- MS in Community Development Parson New School of Design- MS in Design and Urban Ecologies Philadelphia Univerity -MS in GeoDesign Philadelphia Univerity -MS in Sustainable Design Texas Tech University- MS in Environmental Design University of Idaho- MS in Bioregional Planning and Community Design University of Texas at Austin - MS in Sustainable Design Boston Architectural College- MDes in Sustainable Design Harvard University- MDes in Risk & Resilience and Energy & Environments Iowa State University- MDes in Sustainable Environments Northeastern University- MDes in Sustainable Urban Environments Kansas State- MS-Arch in Ecological and Sustainable Design New Jersey Institute of Technology MS-Arch in Sustainable Design University of Michigan- MS-Arch - Design Health University of Minnesota MS-Arch in Sustainable design

Other Graduate Programs

University of Florida- Masters in Sustainable Design University of Illinois- Masters in Sustainable Design & Development University of Pennsylvania- Masters in Environmental Building Design University of Southern Florida- Master of Urban + Community Design Yale University- Masters in Environmental Design

Undergraduate Programs

Boston Architectural College - Bachelors of Sustainable Design Cornell University- B.S. in Design and Environmental Analysis Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute- B.S. in Design, Innovation and Society University of San Francisco- B.S. in Architecture + Community Design

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On the previous page is a more complete list of degree programs that incorporate both design and community engagement. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all programs in existence, but was compiled as a means to highlight the growing prevalence of such programs in recent years (a majority of the programs listed have been founded during the last decade). It should be noted that the large majority of these are nonprofessional degrees.

Currently there is no accreditation board for these emerging “social impact design� programs, nor any means for graduates to pursue professional licensure. This is a significant challenge to address in the near future, which reflects a larger gap in the development of design education, particularly in architecture (Brain 1991; Cary 2011; Fisher, 1994).

There are however, degree programs in planning that focus on training students in participatory methods, social justice and community development, but these generally involve little design training and thus fall outside the scope of this report. As somewhat of a hybrid between architecture and planning education, numerous Urban Design degree programs have gained popularity in recent decades. Depending on the school, the curricula of these programs have varying levels of community engagement. Below is a list of American universities currently offering the Masters in Urban Design degree (MUD).

MUD - Master of Urban Design Programs Arizona State University Ball State University Columbia University Carnegie Mellon University Harvard University Iowa State University Kent state University Lawrence Technological University Pratt Institute Savannah College of Art and Design University of California Berkeley University of Colorado Denver University of Michigan University of Miami University of North Carolina Charlotte Washington University in St. Louis

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The rising generation of design students are sending a clear message that they want more formal educational opportunities in socially-oriented and community-based design practice.

The growing prevalence of degree programs such as these, as well as those previously mentioned (Beck 2011), demonstrates a growing demand by students for education around community based practices in design. Students are sending a clear message that they want more formal educational opportunities in socially oriented design.

Although Cornell may be far from creating a new degree program, the prospect of a minor in social design, sustainable design or urban design seems like a plausible long term goal. Not only is there a gap in curricular opportunities on Cornell’s campus, but such a program could also act as a bridge to help build stronger ties between the architecture department and the other design disciplines. In looking at precedents from other universities, the creation of a formal minor or concentration in urban design within both the planning and architecture departments has been a common successful inroad.

This approach allows a curriculum to develop slowly and organically around the interests of professors, which is typically a key factor in the sustained success of a program.

Programs with a Culture of Engagement

There exist a number of programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels that maintain a strong culture and history of community engagement. Both faculty and students are drawn to these programs specifically for this reason and as a result the programs develop a culture and reputation for commitment to community engaged learning and research. In programs such as these there are multiple faculty members pursuing communitybased research initiatives and multiple studios and

seminars being taught that focus on teaching both the theory and practice of community engagement as part of the design process. Although the official degree students receive in these programs is in architecture, planning or another design field, these programs train students in communitybased practices and proudly publicize this defining characteristic.

Although many faculty claim the spark for such a ‘culture of engagement’ is elusive and multifaceted, it appears as though there have historically been three primary catalysts. The first is the result of a university-wide tradition of community service and public outreach, often stemming from a school’s mission as a land grant institution, or its religious affiliation (such as the numerous Jesuit schools with rich traditions of public service). Many of these institutions have a long history of service to their state and appoint numerous faculty to non-teaching positions connected to extension offices and public outreach programs. For schools such as these, community engagement is valued throughout the university and recognized as a source of great pride for faculty and students alike.

The second primary catalyst for building a ‘culture of engagement’ stemmed from the civil rights movement of the 60’s and 70’s. During this time the community design movement emerged (Curry, 2004), partly as a result of the mainstream prominence of civic activism (Comerio 1984), partly as a response to the failure of urban renewal efforts of the previous decades, and partly sparked by harsh criticism of the design profession’s “complete irrelevance” in social and civic contributions (Young, 1968). Community design emerged as “an alternative to the traditional practice of architecture and planning… defined by a commitment to building local capacity and providing technical assistance to low- and moderate-income communities through participatory means” (Rios 2003). Several seminal pieces were written during this time, such as Paul Davidoff’s “Advocacy and Pluarlism in Planning,” Sherry Arnstein’s “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” Paulo Freire’s “Pedagaoy of the Oppressed,” and Jane Jacob’s “The Death and

Life of Great American Cities.” Although these were written by planners, their critiques focused on the failure of architecture in addressing larger societal challenges, despite the profession’s clear potential to do just that and have a positive social impact.

There are many more articles and texts that were critical to the emergence of community design in America and a study in far greater depth is essential in order to understand both the rich literature and the numerous professional, social and economic factors that led to its birth (see the author’s bibliography of PID available at: http://issuu.com/giladmeron/ docs/pid_bibliography). Because this report aims to focus on programs that are currently in existence, the history of the community design movement will not be discussed further here. It is important to note though, that any curriculum in community-engaged design should include a thorough exploration of how and why the community design field emerged, and how its birth played a crucial role in the development of current pedagogy.

As a result of the birth of community design, (coupled with the sentiments of the civil rights movement), a generation of impassioned young design students emerged, accompanied by a strong cohort of professors who pioneered new programs. In many cases those early efforts have led to design programs which are now nationally recognized for leadership in community engagement such as Carnegie Mellon University, Yale University, North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon.

The third primary catalyst for building a culture of community engagement has been the response to natural or economic disasters. In recent decades there have been a growing number of design programs heavily engaged in cities and regions severely affected by the rapid de-industrialization of the American economy, such as Pittsburg and Detroit.

Schools such as Syracuse University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have initiated programs working towards community revitalization in towns and cities of the Rust Belt Region.

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The past few decades have also seen a rising number of natural disasters, which have led various schools to develop programs to engage students in the process of responding to post-disaster community needs, notably Mississippi State University, Tulane University, the University of Minnesota and Louisiana Tech. These efforts are sometimes criticized as being pedagogically linked to the notion of ‘imperialistic humanitarianism’ but contrary to these critiques, many programs have established highly nuanced and contextually sensitive responses to working with communities affected by natural disasters.

These examples have shown that building a strong faculty culture of engagement is not a one-size-fitsall task. Each university must build its own unique culture based on the sum of its parts; its history and tradition, its geographic context and proximity to cities and communities, and the interest of its faculty and staff. Program directors should carefully assess the resources their universities provide, be they financial, geographic, or institutional. The key lesson is that there is no clear model for building a culture of engagement, but with careful planning and strategic partnerships, it can be accomplished in nearly anywhere. It is also clear that support from a Dean or Provost can greatly aid in the process by send a clear message to other faculty the engagement is something to be valued university-wide.

not mandatory for students, but in some cases a community design studio is a first year requirement or one required studio in a multi-year sequence.

Studios and Courses Within a Program

Much more prevalent (and more difficult to document) are studios and courses within design programs that have a focus on community engagement. As opposed to universities that have degree programs or cultures of engagement, these universities have only one or two professors who have chosen to align their research and teaching with community engagement.

Although in some cases such courses and studios are publicized, they are often simply mixed in with the other course offerings. Courses such as these range widely in type, from design/builds, to community planning workshops, to research studios and seminars. Generally such courses are

Research and Education The first type of centers are those committed to educating and training students in the theory and practice of community engagement through research projects, hands on experience and academic discourse. Their sentiment is aptly described by the late Samuel Mockbee, founder of Rural Studio, who defended his pedagogical intentions in an essay, “Our mission is to get these architecture students out to deal with the social and physical issues of a community… the fact that we end up building houses, that is the homework” (Bell 2008). This unapologetic focus on students’ education, as opposed to the needs of the communities they work in, drew significant criticism at the time.

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In building towards new programs or larger initiatives, often it is the professors who are teaching such courses who spearhead efforts and gain institutional support by demonstrating the effectiveness of the courses they’ve already taught. For this reason, many faculty and department chairs believe that studios and courses are one the most effective inroads for formally integrating more community engagement into curriculum. Because studios and courses within a program seem to have the highest potential for acting as a catalyst to spur on further curricular integration, they will be discussed in greater length and detail in the following sections of this report where multiple such programs will be profiled.

Institutes, Initiatives and Centers The broadest part of the spectrum - Institutes, Initiatives and Centers - can be separated into two major categories based on the primary intent or mission of the entity; research and education or impact. In many cases centers and institutes aim to fulfill both of these goals, but for the purposes of this report it will be useful to differentiate between the two.

As a response to the criticisms that such a pedagogical approach presents the risk of teaching students at the expense of communities, a number of centers adopted new approaches that re-focused their efforts towards participatory research in communities (Reardon, 1993; Sanoff, 2000; Dorgan, 2008; Palleroni, 2004; Hendler-Voss 2008, Quraeshi, 2008). These approaches repositioned programs so that professors were leading long-term communitybased research projects, and thus developing trust with community leaders, while still involving students on a semester-by-semester basis without jeopardizing the trust of the communities.

Syracuse University’s School of Architecture’s UPSTATE Center is a prime example of this, working with the city of Syracuse and integrating the research interests of various faculty members as a means to continually provide assistance to the city and other stakeholders around an agenda of design innovation.

Other notable examples include the University of Oregon’s Sustainable Cities Initiative, the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Urban Research, CUNY’s Center for Human Environments, Carnegie Mellon’s Remaking Cities Institute, and the University of North Carolina Charlotte’s Design and Society Research Center. By bringing various research projects together under one center, directors are able to build strong reputations with local communities and cities, and through the process of conducting research, engage hundred of students in projects without the risk of their education coming at the expense of the community.

Impact The second major category of centers are those focused primarily on impact in local communities, many of which are now recognized as Community Design Centers (CDCs). CDCs emerged alongside the community design movement, which began in the late 60’s and early 70’s, brought on by the civil rights movement (Comerio, 1984 & 1987). Although the earliest CDCs were independent nonprofits, many universities soon began adopting the model as well, particularly land grant institutions that had long histories of community service.

Today over 40 University CDCs are in operation (Haar, 2012), and vary in focus and structure, from university-based firms and community advocacy centers, to extension agencies and umbrella organizations (Forsyth, 2006). Because these impact focused centers operate in diverse contexts and vary widely in focus, it is difficult to compare their work, but there are a number of centers that have become nationally recognized leaders, such as Pratt Institute’s Center for Community Development, Virginia Tech’s Community Design Assistance Center, and Montana State Univeristy’s Community Design Center, among many others.

Centers, Institutes and Initiatives provide a unique model for integrating community engagement with curriculum somewhat indirectly. Rather than building whole programs within a department’s curriculum, these entities are able to coordinate a number of projects without the restrictions of curricular initiatives. This provides the major benefit of sidestepping common institutional barriers, such as academic review boards, but in turn requires far greater time commitments by individual faculty.

Currently at Cornell there are a number of initiatives that focus on community engaged design and planning, but they are not united under a single center. If a community design center were created, it would allow professors greater opportunities for collaboration and support of one another’s initiatives, as well as increased visibility for this type of work.

Additionally, it would provide full time staff who could help manage and coordinate various efforts on campus , thus taking some of the heavy time burden off individual professors.

Student-Led Initiatives and Competitions This category moves entirely outside of curriculum, and is generally instigated by students who desire more community engagement than their programs offer. These initiatives and competitions provide important opportunities for students to self-direct projects and are generally led by graduate students 19

or interdisciplinary teams of students. In some cases students may receive independent study credit for their work but in general these types of project are done on a volunteer basis by dedicated students who want more experience in communitybased practices. Although these are not connected to curriculum, their prevalence is often times an indicator that there is a demand for community engagement by students that is not being met by curriculum offered.

Examples of these at Cornell include; the Design and Planning Club, DesignConnect, Cornell University Sustainable Design (CUSD), Cornell’s Chapter of Design For America (DFA), Cornell User Experience Design (CUxD), and the annual Urban Land Institute competition (ULI), just to name a few of the most prominent examples. Exact counts on the number of students participating in these initiatives and groups are tough to pin down because their participants change on a semester basis, but from assessing each group individually, it’s clear that these six initiatives alone engage a minimum of 300 students each semester. (In a broader and more extensive survey done by the Public Service Center at Cornell, it was found that currently over 94 students groups exist at Cornell that identify themselves as having goals that align with community engagement).

These are mentioned to highlight the fact that in recent years there has been significant development in student-led initiatives, thus indicating the rising demand on the part of students for more curricular opportunities to gain experience and training in community-based practices. As a student who has been personally involved in many of these initiatives, it is the opinion of the author that Cornell is drawing very near to a “tipping point” of sorts; a prime opportunity to capitalize on the rising student interest in community engagement. Anecdotal evidence, compiled from speaking with students from over 30 design programs nationwide, points to a similar trend taking place at universities across the country.

Although the data needed to support this claim has not yet been compiled, it is my opinion based 20

on the research I have undertaken to write this report that the rising generation of design students will continually advocate for more opportunities to engage with local communities via the design process and will champion efforts to shift the focus of their studios to design challenges that address social issues. This is not merely a reflection of the personal desires of the Millennial generation, it is a foreshadowing of what is to come in the professional design world over the next three decades.

Design students will continually advocate for more opportunities to engage with local communities via the design process and will champion efforts to shift the focus of their studios to challenges that address social issues.

Students are acutely aware of the skills and expertise they will need to gain employment in the professional world, and their demands for community-engaged design courses (coupled with their desire for their education to train them to be able to address social issues through design) is very telling of where the professional design world will grow in the coming decades. There are many highly respected academics who would agree with this, such as Tom Fisher, Dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, who in an interview for Metropolis Magazine, had this to say on the topic of public interest design impacting the structure of higher education, “I think public-interest design points us in a new direction in higher education. The current generation of students seems eager to make a difference in the world and to address problems that are meaningful and important. At the same time, they seem understandably impatient with the academic exercises and made-up problems that have too often characterized design education in the past. Publicinterest design enables students – and faculty – to address issues of real value to communities and

within the constraints of time and money that can lead to innovative ideas.”

The important point to be drawn, both from Tom Fisher’s comments and the trends highlighted in this report, is that student interest has always been the driving force behind education reform. Since the very first design/build was formed at Yale, students have successfully advocated for the education they believe to most crucial to their future careers. The current rising demand for socially oriented design education is a sign of things to come, and if universities fail to respond, they will not only be left behind, they will become irrelevant to the professional world.

University Funded Community Design Centers

Finally there are Community Design Centers (CDCs), which operate entirely outside of university curriculum but are generally in some way tied to the university, either through funding or other type of resource. That’s not to say that these CDCs are entirely outside of the university structure, just that they are not directly connected in any formal way to design curriculum at the university. Although these centers are not directly connected to curriculum, they are in some cases run by faculty who also hold teaching appointments within a design department.

Despite being outside of curricular boundaries the staff of these centers often have influence in design departments and can create interesting opportunities for students, and in some cases even insert themselves into the curriculum by offering courses for design students through their centers.

These ties between the CDC and a university provide opportunities for those staff to, in some way, bring the work of the center into the classroom or vice versa. They also often provide opportunities for students to be involved with the work of the center, either through collaboration with a professor, or in some cases hiring current or past students. Although opportunities like these are not always integrated with curriculum they still represent opportunities for students to become involved in community design

“I think public-interest design points us in a new direction in higher education, it enables students and faculty to address issues of real value to communities and within the constraints of time and money that can lead to innovative ideas.”

-Thomas Fisher

and meaningful civic engagement during their academic years, thus CDCs still fall on the spectrum of community engagement in design curriculum.

CDCs also generally have broad networks within local communities and municipalities, and thus are able to present unique inroads for faculty and students to connect with local communities and develop relationships that may lead to future projects or collaborations. This means that despite being outside of curricular boundaries, CDCs provide unique opportunities for faculty to build new partnerships with local communities. In many cases centers are actually developed and launched within a university or out of a partnership or specific project with a university, but then grew larger and separate from the university in some respect. This is not always the case though, some centers remain closely tied to universities, through funding or staffing.

This process creates a mutually beneficial relationship; the center gains financial and institutional support during its founding years when it is most in need, while the university will later be able to publicize and take partial credit for the development and success of the center. Examples of these type of partnerships include the Austin Community Design and Development Center + The University of Texas at Austin, the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio + Mississippi State, Design That Matters + M.I.T., the East Tennessee Community Design Center + The University of Tennessee Knoxville, and the Detroit Collaborative Design Center + University of Detroit Mercey.

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Four Major Insights From Research In looking at other universities who have successfully built robust programs in community engagement in recent years, there are four primary insights to be gained.

First, building community engagement programs around faculty research interests is critical to the lasting success of such programs. In order for programs to have sustained leadership and develop lasting and trusting relationships with community partners it is imperative that the faculty members who are leading those programs are willing to commit to these initiatives for the long term. This is because building trust with a community takes significant amount of time and is a process that must be led by someone who will be a constant presence, i.e. not a student who will leave the university after just a few years. Building programs around faculty member’s teaching and research agendas ensures that they will remain committed over the course of many years and thus have the capacity to build robust and impactful programs.

Second, fostering a faculty culture that values and respects community engagement, as part of both teaching and research is crucial to the sustainability of any new efforts or initiatives. This point can not be stressed enough, a supportive culture is key to the growth and proliferation of community engaged programs. Far too often faculty have reported being looked down upon or even directly criticized for initiating or even just participating in community engaged programs. That type of atmosphere can be extremely detrimental to a budding program. In contrast, faculty at some programs have reported that a strong culture of support, as well as leadership from senior faculty members, has directly led to new projects and programs emerging. It is crucially important that faculty who support community engagement work together to foster a supportive culture within their departments and colleges in order to demonstrate to junior faculty that this type of work is valued and respected within the department, and thus are encouraged to follow suit.

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Third, it is important to identify and support a small group of champions who are passionate about the program and are willing to become leaders and spearhead efforts both on campus and in communities. This point is particularly crucial in the formation of new program and initiatives. Any new program will undoubtedly encounter obstacles and challenges in its early phases and it is important that there is a group of individuals who are willing to devote extra time, energy and effort to ensuring that those challenges are met and obstacles are overcome. This is crucial not only for the first year of the program but for the first few years, until the program has been firmly established and can run smoothly. As one program director put it, “You need people who are willing to put in more time than makes sense, people who will do whatever it takes to ensure the program is a success.”

Fourth, it is important to document all work that is done because documentation of success can help overcome common institutional barriers and aid in the development of course material. Publishing and documenting this type of work builds credibility for teaching and research efforts by demonstrating its viability to be recognized by the larger academic community. Documenting and publishing also help to spread knowledge to other universities, thus helping the larger goal of increasing engagement in universities and building greater respect within academia for this type of work. Lastly, writing helps professors and leaders reflect on their own work and practice, which allows them to think critically about their successes and shortcomings, and work to improve and further develop the project or program they are leading. In some cases faculty have reported that writing about their work has greatly aided them in the process of developing course material, which in turn allowed their work to engage more students and have a greater impact. Students can also be key players in this process. Writing assignments offer them the opportunity to reflect on their own experiences and gain deeper insights. Students can also help build visibility to getting articles they’ve written published in local newspapers, blogs and other media outlets.

Implications and Conclusions Using the spectrum of integration with curriculum as a lens for analysis has provided multiple insights and a useful framework for thinking through the creation of new programs. It should be noted that there are multiple new programs that work specifically to bring community engagement formally into design curriculum currently in development; at the University of Minnesota’s School of Design, led by Tom Fisher, and at the University of Detroit Mercy, led by Dan Pitera. Other related efforts include the establishment of The Center for Public Interest Design at Portland State University, led by Sergio Palleroni, and the Public Interest Design Institute, a program that travels to multiple universities to host 2-day intensive workshops, led by Bryan Bell. In addition, the University of Texas launched a new program in the summer of 2013 called the Design Futures Forum, specifically created to help students and recent graduates pursue careers in public interest design. Each of these programs have been created in response to the huge demand for community-based design education, which only continues to grow.

The larger implication of these developments is the potential for community engaged programs to provide benefits to the universities that start them.

The research compiled for this report adds to the growing evidence that students are increasingly interested in pursuing design degrees rooted in community-based work and social impact, which means that if universities want to attract the best and brightest, they must develop programs tailored to those interests.

The research compiled for this report adds to the growing evidence that students are increasingly interested in pursuing design degrees rooted in community-based work and social impact, which means that if universities want to attract the best and brightest, they must develop programs tailored to those interests.

this type of work, it will be a smart financial decision for universities to invest in the development of such programs, because they will help attract more students thus raising the amount of money that can be brought in through tuition dollars.

As mentioned at the start of this section, the spectrum is not meant as a tool to assess the validity or success of programs, but merely as a framework for discussion and for helping faculty to think about what type of program makes the most sense based on their own resources and interests. This section has helped to show that there are highly successful programs at every point on the spectrum. The following section will look more closely at specific “best practice” programs, and look into the specific mechanisms each uses and how those mechanisms have led to each program’s success. Please see the following pages for a detailed list of all community engaged design initiatives that were surveyed.

Right now we are seeing the earliest stage of a larger shift in design education. There is now a small but growing cohort of schools leading and pioneering a new community-focused design pedagogy and it is only a matter of time before more universities realize the value in moving in that direction. Doing so positions schools as thought-leaders and provides opportunities for greater visibility. Additionally, because there are so many students interested in 23

List of Community-Engaged Design Initiatives and Centers at Universities The following is a working list of schools, programs, centers and initiatives directly associated with universities in the U.S. with accredited architecture degree programs. All are aligned with and work towards efforts around community design, humanitarian design, public interest design, social impact design and other related areas. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and should serve merely as a rough sketch of what exists.

Arche-Works Chicago Independent School Arizona State University -Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family -Phoenix Urban Research Laboratory Art Center College of Design -DesignMatters Auburn University: College of Architecture, Design and Construction -Rural Studio -Urban Studio -Design Education Laboratory -DESIGNhabitat Ball State University: College of Architecture and Planning -Indianapolis Center (CAP:IC) California College of the Arts -Center for Art and Public Life Carnegie-Mellon University: School of Architecture -Urban Design/Build Studio -Remaking Cities Institute -Architecture Explorations Catholic University of America -CUA Design Collaborative City University of New York: School of Architecture -J Max Bond Center Clemson University: College of Architecture Arts and Humanities -a.line.ments Public Outreach Studio -The Restoration Institute -Clemson Architecture Center

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Columbia University: School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation -Center for the Study of American Architecture -Urban Landscape Lab Cornell University -Center for Community Engaged Learning and Research -Community and Regional Development Institute -Atkinson Center -Cornell University Sustainable Design -AguaClara Duke University -Duke Engage Integrated School of Building -Public Interest Design Studio Kent State University: College of Architecture and Environmental Design -Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative Lawrence Technological University: College of Architecture and Design -The Detroit Studio Louisiana Tech: School of Architecture -Habitech -Coastal Sustainability Studio Louisiana State University -Office of Community Design and Development Miami University -Center for Civic Engagement (at Hamilton) -Center for Community Engagement in over the Rhine Maryland Institute College of Art -Center for Design Practice

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: -Design That Matters -MIT DesignBuild -Special Interest Group in Urban Settlement -West Philadelphia Landscape Project -Center for Civic Media Mcgill University -Minimum Cost Housing Group Mississippi State University: College of Architecture Art and Design -Carl Small Town Center -GCCDS -Jackson Community Design Center -Design Research and Informatics Lab Montana State University: School of Architecture -Community Design Center -Integrated Design Lab New Jersey Institute of Technology: College of Architecture and Design -The Center for Building Knowledge New York University -Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship -Graduate School of Public Service North Carolina State University: College of Design -Architecture in the Public Interest -Community Design Initiative -Downtown Design Studio -The Center for Universal Design Ohio State University: School of Architecture -SERVItechture Parsons: The New School for Design -Design Workshops (a pro bono architectural program) Penn State: College of Arts and Architecture -Hammer Center for Community Design -Erasing Boundaries -American Indian Housing Imitative Pratt -Pratt center for Community Development Prarie View A&M University: School of Architecture -Community Urban and Rural Enhancement Service

Portland State: School of Urban Studies and Planning -Center for Urban Studies -Center for Public Interest Design -Green Building Research Lab -SWEET Lab Rice University: School of Architecture -Building Workshop Rutgers University: Business School -Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development School of Visual Arts -IMPACT! Design for Social Change workshop Southern University: School of Architecture -Urban and Rural Community Design Research Center Stanford University -d.school -Design for Extreme Affordability State University of New York: College of Environmental Science and Forestry -Center for Community Design Research Syracuse University: School of Architecture -UPSTATE Temple University: School of Environmental Design -Center for Sustainable Communities Texas A&M University: College of Architecture -Center for Housing and Urban Development -Mitchell Interdisciplinary Public Interest Design Studio

Texas Tech: College of Architecture -Architecture Research and Design Center Tufts University: College Citizenship and Public Service -Project Peris Tulane University: School of Architecture -Tulane City Center -UrbanBUILD -Tulane Regional Urban Design Center University of Arkansas: School of Architecture -University of Arkansas Community Design Center -Design/Build

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University of Arizona: College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture -Tejido Group -Drachman Institute

University of Illinois at Chicago: College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs -Center for Urban Economic Development -Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood

University of Buffalo: School of Architecture and Planning -Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access -Urban Design Project

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: College of Fine and Applied Arts -East St. Louis Action Research Project -Building Research Council

University of California Berkeley: College of Environmental Design -Center for Community Innovation

University of Kansas: School of Architecture -Studio 804 -Kansas City Design Center -Center for Design Research

University of California Los Angeles: Architecture and Urban Design -CityLab

University of Massachusetts Amherst -Design Center in Springfield

University of Cincinnati: College of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning -Community Design Center

University of Maryland: College of Architecture Planning and Preservation -Morgan State Center for Economic Development

University of Colorado: College of Architecture and Planning -DesignBuild Certificate -Colorado Center for Community Development -NASHI (College of Environmental Design)

University of Miami: School of Architecture -Center for Urban and Community Design

University of Detroit Mercey: School of Architecture -Detroit Collaborative Design Center University of Florida -Florida Community Design Center -Center for Building Better Communities -Community Outreach Partnership Program University of Georgia: College of Environment and Design -Center for Community Design and Preservation

University of Michigan: Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning -DETROIT Center -Detroit Community Partnership Center -MidMod -Urban and Regional Research Collaborative University of Minnesota: College of Design -Center for Changing Landscapes -Metropolitan Design Center -Center for Rural Design -Center for Sustainable Building Research

University of Houston: College of Architecture -Community Design Resource Center -Design/Build Studios

University of Nebraska-Lincoln: College of Architecture -Rural Initiative -Nebraska Lied Main Street Program

University of Idaho: College of Art and Architecture -Urban Research and Design Center -Integrated Design Lab

University of Notre Dame: School of Architecture -Center for Building Communities

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University of North Carolina: Urban Design Program -Design and Society Research Center

University of Nevada Las Vegas: School of Architecture -Downtown Design Center

University of Washington: College of Built Environments -Wright Neighborhood Design/Build Studio

University of New Mexico: School of Architecture and Planning -Design and Planning Assistance Center -Resource Center for Raza Planning

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee: School of Architecture and Urban Planning -Community Design Solutions

University of Oregon -Sustainable Cities Initative -Center for Housing Innovation -Community Service Center -Center for Community Arts and Cultural Policy -Energy Studies in Building Laboratory -Institute for Policy Research and Innovation -Institute for a Sustainable Earth -Center for Environment, Education and Design Studies University of Pennsylvania: School of Design -PennPraxis -Penn Institute for Urban Research -Plan Philly -Penn Program for Public Service -Storefront For Art and Architecture University of Southern Florida: School of Architecture and Community Design -DesignBuild

Virginia Tech: School of Architecture and Design -design/build LAB -Community design assistance center Washington State University: School of Design and Construction -Rural Community Design Initiative Wentworth Institute of Technology -Center for Community and Learning Partnerships Woodbury University -Arid Lands Institute -Architecture and Civic Engagement Center Yale: School of Architecture -Vlock Building Project -Urban Design Workshop

University of Tennessee Knoxville: College of Architecture and Design -East Tennessee Community Design Center -Institute for Public Service -Institute for Smart Structures -UPSIDE -Nashville Civic Design Center University of Texas at Austin: School of Architecture -Public Interest Design Summer Program -Center for Sustainable Development -BaSiC Initiative University of Utah: Graduate School of Architecture -Assist Community Design Center -DesignBuild Bluff University of Virginia: School of Engineering and Applied Science -EcoMOD -reCOVER

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PART TWO Five Profiles of University Programs in Community Engaged Design

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Five Best-Practices in Community Engaged Design:

Profiles of programs that take a unique approach to integrating community engagement into design curriculum

Community Engaged Design Curriculum

Program Goals And Intents

In discussions with faculty and staff at numerous universities, many agreed that individual studios and courses were often the most effective inroads for developing larger programs and initiatives in community engaged design. In various cases it was found that larger programs evolved and grew from a single course or studio within a department. This was credited to that course’s ability to build support and recognition based on its high quality work.

Therefore, in looking towards how Cornell might build more community engagement into curriculum, it is useful to examine several precedents at other universities that began as single courses or projects, and have grown to larger self-sustaining initiatives.

Each of the following five programs profiled here (as well as the two case studies of programs in the following two sections) are seen as best practices because they successfully accomplish multiple goals simultaneously and demonstrate attention to five key traits; education, training, impact, research and engagement. By examining many programs, it has become clear that all five of these traits are important to build a sustainable and holistic program. Balancing all five of these traits helps keep a program grounded, and ensures that directors continually reflect on the benefits of each trait.

The following programs are highlighted because each presents a unique model for integrating community engagement into curriculum. These five examples represent a variety of approaches to institutionalizing community engagement and provide insights into multiple organizational approaches that faculty have used to build robust community-based design programs and centers. Each of these programs demonstrates excellence not only in its approach, but also in the goals it aims to achieve and the high standards it holds itself to.

These five programs were chosen as profiles because each effectively reaches this balance, and each has developed a unique model for doing so. The primary insight to be taken from these profiles is that there is no single “best way” to develop a program, there are many ways that programs can be built, but they must be rooted in a deep understanding of the physical, political, and socioeconomic contexts that programs will be operating in. Each of the following programs demonstrate that building a communitybased program is not a zero-sum game; they’ve proven that there are a variety of ways to accomplish multiple goals at the same time.

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The Five Key Program Intentions Training: The core of training is giving students skills, both hard and soft skills, which enable them to practice community based design. Training can range from a design-build program that trains students in construction methods to a planning program that trains students in leading community meetings.

Regardless of what the skills are, the defining characteristic is the program’s focus on training students in real-world applicable skills that they’ll be able to use in the future as they build careers in community-based design practices.

Education: Often times professors comment on the balance between theory and practice in education. If the previous trait, training, represents practice, then education, as it is defined here, represents theory.

Education engages students in the theories of community-based design practice and focuses on building a deep understanding of the ethics and morals behind the practice. Education helps students develop sophisticated approaches to their work and gain an appreciation for how discussions about their work can often times be just as important as the work itself.

Impact: This trait characterizes an approach taken by many programs, one that focuses directly on having real measurable impact in the communities they work with. This can mean a broad range of result; from constructing built work, to producing planning reports that help garner funding, to leading meetings that build consensus and allow a process to move forward, to initiating new projects and guiding the community through its early stages. There are many methods for creating impact and equally as many methods for demonstrating that impact has been made. This trait is defined here by a program’s intention (and decision making based on that intention) to directly impact a community; therefore engaging in whatever activities or projects are most needed and necessary to have a meaningful impact.

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The Program Intentions Scale Low

High

Training Education Research Impact Engagement Research: This trait is defined by a focus on conducting rigorous research as a means to achieve some other goal, such as impact or training. This prepares students to understand how research methods serve as a tool for community-based practices and helps demonstrate their value by engaging students in the process. Research is defined broadly here, including both quantitative and qualitative methods and ranging anywhere from highly academic reports that use statistical methods to analyze issues, to onthe-ground prototyping in communities that works to build an understanding about what potential solutions work and what community members respond to.

Engagement: Engagement here refers to direct engagement with community partners. This means getting students out of the classroom and into the towns and cities they are working with; engaging directly with residents, community leaders, elected officials, and other key stakeholders. This can range from bringing in community members as speakers or consultants, to taking frequent field trips, to moving a studio’s physical space to a visible downtown location.

Regardless of the form, the key is that students engage directly with members of the community that they are working with. A key part of this process is students’ recognition for, and appreciate of how much they can learn and gain through this process, and how direct engagement can positively impact the depth, clarity and relevance of the work they’re undertaking.

Using the Program Intentions Scale The key finding related to these five intentions is that as programs develop, intentions end up playing an increasingly important role in decisions that need to be made. Often times when a tough decision must be made, program leaders come back to their primary intentions to answer that question. For example, “Is our primary goal to educate students in how community-based design work gets done, or is our primary goal to have a visible impact in our local community?” In situations such as these it becomes clear that the five intentions outlined on the previous page are critical factors to consider early on in a programs development.

It is also important to differentiate between a direct intention and an indirect intention. For example, lets examine a direct intention of impact vs. a direct intention of research with an indirect intention of impact. The first might mean leading community meetings, doing volunteer work hours in the community, or whatever else a program can do that will be most directly helpful for a community; i.e. having direct impact. In contrast, the second might mean orienting research towards potential projects that address pressing needs in a community in order to eventually have a direct impact. When discussing programs, it is important to make clear which intentions will be direct (or primary) and which intentions will be indirect (or secondary).

A brief example of this is the Action Research Illinois project. Its primary focus is impact in communities, research and engagement, and its secondary focus is education and training. That does not mean that education and training are not an important part of the program, it simply means that the program sees impact, research and engagement as their primary goals/intentions that they work towards most directly. Education and training come indirectly as a result of engaging students in that process.

By focusing on impact, research and engagement, rather that education, the program actually provides a better overall educational experience for students than it would if it focused directly on education.

This example is given to highlight how intentions should not be used to rank a program, because in this case training and education would not be ranked as the primary focus of the program, yet the program has proven year after year that it provides some of the best education in the country in community based practices. The point here is that this scale should be used as a tool to build a conversation around a program; what having certain intentions will mean for a program, how those intentions will impact a program, and what that means for the projects it engages in and the future of the program as a whole.

As stated at the beginning of this section, it was observed that conversations around these five intentions were often the driving force behind key decisions made during the early formation phases of a program, therefore this scale will hopefully provide a useful framework for faculty at Cornell and other schools to use in discussions as they work towards creating new programs.

It is important to note that, as stated in the previous section, the most successful programs do not fall solely at one point on the spectrum of integration with curriculum, but combine multiple efforts. In the following profiles, the spectrum will be included alongside each program, with the part of the spectrum it includes circled. An example is below.

It is also important to note that the decisions of how to assess each program are entirely the opinions of the author. Analysis of programs using both the intentions scale and the spectrum of integration with curriculum are both based on the author’s research and reflect merely the author’s own opinions.

PROGRAM A 33

Syracuse University UPSTATE: A Center for Design, Research and Real Estate

UPSTATE is a design, research and advocacy organization housed within the school of Architecture at Syracuse University. The center, founded in 2003, initiates, facilitates and showcases projects that apply design research to challenges - economic, environmental, political and social - faced by real world communities. UPSTATE provides students and faculty with a wide variety of opportunities to engage in both the discourse and practice of community development. Rather than focusing solely on formal integration with curriculum, the center utilizes multiple channels to infuse community engagement into the educational experience, thus sidestepping many of the common institutional barriers other programs face.

The history of the center began when the main building of Syracuse University’s School of Architecture was undergoing construction, its studios were moved to a location downtown. Although this move separated the architecture students from the main campus, it also provided a unique opportunity to engage students with local communities. The new downtown building became the catalyst for a larger redevelopment plan that partnered Syracuse 34

UPSTATE utilizes multiple channels to infuse community engagement into the educational experience, thus sidestepping many of the common institutional barriers programs face.

University with the city of Syracuse. This plan was part of a long-term commitment by Syracuse to work towards better connection between the university and the downtown by investing in public transportation, street infrastructure and pedestrian oriented planning. UPSTATE was born out of this partnership and played an integral role in the design, development and planning of this project, using it as an opportunity to engage students with the local communities through their design course work.

Although the School of Architecture returned to its renovated facilities on campus in 2008, the UPSTATE center remained in the heart of downtown, serving as an anchor for design faculty and students to engage with the local community.

UPSTATE is unique in its multifaceted approach to building community engagement into a design program. The center leads multiple design projects, both short and long term, many of which have been directly integrated into the curriculum of multiple schools and departments at the university. This is frequently done by partnering with passionate faculty who wish to use their courses as a venue for bringing real-world and contextually relevant issues to the students at Syracuse. With the help of the center, professors are able to coordinate courses that partner with local community leaders and give students the opportunity to explore how design can be used to leverage positive change in communities.

While professors may only be able to devote a single semester towards projects such as these, UPSTATE is able to sustain those efforts and continue those projects after the course ends.

The center also involves students and faculty in a number of other ways. UPSTATE helps to lead and facilitate long term research projects, such as a current initiative that investigates design strategies for shrinking cities in the American Rust Belt. In addition, the center helps build awareness and interest in this type of work by hosting social events that bring together like-minded students and faculty, as well as conferences that expose students and faculty to new ideas and help generate discourse at the university. The center also hosts exhibitions that highlight current projects going on both at the university and across the country in an effort to bring visibility to the social, political, economic and environmental issues that designers, developers and planners and working to address worldwide.

is one medium through which they achieve their mission. Essentially, the center works to integrate community engagement into design curriculum on a project-by-project basis. This approach allows the center to avoid the messy process of formally integrating community engagement into curriculum and instead, work directly with faculty who identify themselves as allies. This unique approach show great potential as a replicable model for other universities.

UPSTATE at Syracuse Training Education Research Impact Engagement

UPSTATE’s multifaceted approach allows for multiple mechanisms that provide design students with numerous opportunities to engage with local communities. By working towards design, research and advocacy simultaneously, and using their space as a physical and intellectual hub, UPSTATE is able to attract faculty who have a passion for weaving community engagement into teaching. It is important to recognize that the center’s mission is not specifically tied to curriculum, but rather curriculum 35

Clemson University a.LINE.ments Public Outreach Studio

The a.LINE.ments Studio was established in 2006 within Clemson University’s School of Planning, Development, Preservation and Landscape Architecture (PDPLA). The studio was created to offer opportunities for students to engage in servicelearning projects, provide research opportunities for faculty, and provide services to communities in need.

The studio operates autonomously but it is housed within the Department of Landscape Architecture, which allows the Studio the unique ability to work both within and outside of curriculum simultaneously.

The Studio’s unique hybrid model allows student work to feed into independent projects, avoiding the limitations of the semester schedule.

The a.LINE.ments Studio, led by Mary Beth McCubbin (ASLA, LEED-AP), works year round to manage multiple independent projects, many of which stem from work in design courses within PDPLA. The studio works by building relationships with local community leaders and helps them to identify potential projects.

Each year three to five of these projects are run, independent of the academic calendar, with the help of graduate students. These students work collaboratively on a wide range of community-based projects from research reports and feasibility studies 36

The a.LINE.ments studio works both within and outside of curriculum simultaneously, allowing student work to feed into independent projects, thus avoiding the limitations of the semester schedule. to park designs and neighborhood revitalization plans. Each project supports one graduate student a year through a teaching assistantship built into the contract that is signed by both the studio and the community partner. In this way, the studio functions like a small private firm, with each graduate student functioning as staff of that firm, responsible for the management and completion of their project.

Graduate students who become part of the studio gain the support and mentorship of experienced faculty who are dedicated to using design to make a positive impact in communities. The students gain valuable experience in all aspects of the community design process and learn skills such as grant writing, community engagement strategies and

participatory planning methods. At the same time communities gain experience in the analytic and conceptual stages of the design process by working closely with students and faculty. This experience helps inform community leaders and allows them to take final deliverables, (such as research reports, conceptual designs and planning studies) and use them to garner funding and support so projects can be brought to reality.

While graduate students in the a.LINE.ments Studio work year round on multiple independent projects in local communities, they also work to provide opportunities for undergraduate students to engage with local communities. During the process of vetting projects, graduate students identify several projects that present design challenges that are feasible for undergraduates to tackle, and also have the potential to educate students about the importance of community engagement in design. This learning objective is emphasized by professors throughout the semester. The a.LINE.ments Studio provides support throughout the semester and commits to taking on the project once that undergraduate studio is over. This arrangement is part of the contractual agreement between all three parties, the community partner, the faculty member, and the a.LINE.ments Studio.

A typical example of such a project would be the design of a park for a site design studio in landscape architecture. During the semester, students engage with the community in a number of ways including running workshops, holding charrettes, administering surveys, and conducting observational studies to inform their process. The designs that the undergraduate students produce at the end of the semester may or may not actually meet the needs of the community, but serve as an important contribution to the larger process for graduate students. Clients are able to view all the student designs at the end of the semester, and talking through these ideas with clients often provides graduate assistants valuable insights into the direction the client want the project to go. Over the next semester, the graduate assistant continues to develop the project and produce

materials that allow the client to either seek funding to realize the project or seek professionals who can complete the design process. Generally, the a.LINE. ments Studio works to provide lots of ideas, research, concepts and visuals that communities can use to hire professionals.

The a.LINE.ments model is unique because it creates mutually beneficial opportunities for students, faculty and communities. Students are able to engage with communities and learn the fundamentals of a community-based practice, while faculty are aided in building community engagement into curriculum, and clients gain the support of the university in improving their neighborhoods and regions. In this way, the a.LINE.ments model brings together two programs, one focused on the students education and one focused on community impact. This unique hybrid model is able to avoid the common limitations of the semester schedule and provide opportunities for mutually beneficial relationships between universities and communities.

a.LINE.ments at Clemson Training Education Research Impact Engagement

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Carnegie Mellon University Urban Lab + Remaking Cities Institute

The Remaking Cities Institute (RCI) is an urban design research center that grew out of the Urban Laboratory, a fifth year community and urban design studio at the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Together, the Urban Lab and the RCI work towards three goals; education in community-based design practices, research in urbanism, and economic impact in southwestern Pennsylvania. While the Urban Lab builds community engagement directly into curriculum, the RCI uses research as a link between academic work and urban development. This unique model allows the Urban Lab and the RCI to work in parallel, thus ensuring that students gain both experience and education in community-based urban design, while also providing research opportunities for faculty.

The Urban Lab is a community and urban design studio within the department of architecture that was founded in 1963. It was one of the first initiatives by any university to work to enfranchise local citizens by initiating public forums for collectively addressing urban design. The Urban Lab is fully integrated with the B.Arch curriculum, functioning as the fall semester studio for fifth-year students (the Urban Lab also functions as the primary basis for a one-year 38

This unique model allows the Urban Lab and the RCI to work in parallel, thus ensuring that students gain both experience and education in communitybased urban design, while also providing research opportunities for faculty.

Masters in Urban Design). The Urban Lab initiates projects that focus on the Pittsburgh region, working to create opportunities for students to use their design education as a means to address local and regional challenges in nearby communities. Typically students engage with government officials, design professionals, community groups, and concerned citizens in collective visioning processes. The Urban Lab studios are led by a diverse group of professors and practitioners from architecture, planning, urban design and policy, all of whom contribute to the rich experiential education that students take part in.

Crucial to the success of the Urban Lab is the fact that all students in the Urban Lab studio have already received at least four years of architectural training,

and thus have already received an education that prepares them for such work (supplemented by the fact that the School of Architecture focuses on teaching participatory methods as part of those four years). In addition, all students take an Urban Design Methods course that runs parallel to the Urban Lab, which helps equip students with project-specific skills and provides a venue for discussing issues and challenges they might encounter. The Urban Lab aims to create a mutually beneficial education experience for students and communities that works towards long-term collaboration, rather than shortterm technical assistance.

Urban Lab + RMI at Carnegie Mellon Training Education Research Impact Engagement

The Remaking Cities Institute (RMI) was established in 2006 to extend and build upon the Urban Lab projects beyond the time constraints of a semester and act as a facilitator both within and beyond the university walls. RMI is dedicated to extending and expanding upon Urban Lab projects as a means to help build the capacities of local community groups so that they can be their own drivers of change.

The RCI operates as an urban design research center and undertakes a wide variety to projects and supports students, faculty, and communities.

The staff of the RCI work with county municipalities, city government official and public agencies to build lasting relationships with partner communities before, during and after students are engaged.

Carnegie Mellon has a long history of community engagement, which plays a key role in the continued support and success of both the Urban Lab and the RCI. These separate but closely linked initiatives allow community engagement to be built into student education in a way that can provide sustainable impact in the Pittsburgh region. The partnership between the Remaking Cities Institute and the Urban Laboratory has allowed Carnegie Mellon to develop a robust curriculum-driven outreach approach that avoids the constraints of the semester time frame. The partnership has allowed both Urban Lab and the RCI to collaboratively access existing academic, institutional, and regional resources in order to provide a continuum of assistance to local communities.

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Action Research Illinois

Action Research Illinois is an umbrella organization that sustains three ongoing participatory action research projects, supports various courses related to community and civic engagement, and funds faculty to develop and implement service-learning curriculum. Action Research Illinois (ARI) programs engage with community partners and public agencies, addressing social justice, human and environmental sustainability, and development in distressed areas and with marginalized populations through service learning and action research. ARI’s projects have pioneered a model of community engagement based on rigorous faculty-led research agendas coupled with continuing opportunities for student education and involvement through participatory action research. This research driven-initiative engenders long-term commitment of faculty and rigorous indepth projects, which allow for the development of trusting relationships with local community leaders and an ability to creating lasting impact.

The ARI currently leads three action research projects; The East St. Louis Action Research Project (ESLARP), Illinois Global Action Research (IGAR), and the Metro East Citizens Air Quality Project (MECAP). In addition to these ongoing projects, 40

Action Research Illinois builds long-term commitment from faculty to work on in-depth projects, which allows for the development of trusting relationships with local community leaders and an ability to creating lasting impact.

ARI has helped to establish courses in multiple departments on campus that focus on teaching community engagement methods for enacting social change, which are chosen based on topics relevant to local issues of the region. ARI provides seed grants for faculty to develop sustainable service-learning courses that integrate interdisciplinary action research and public engagement with partners in local communities, thus ARI not only supports its existing initiatives, but also resources and cultivates expansion. ARI works with faculty to help develop robust pedagogies of community engagement that provide research and educational opportunities for students and faculty alike, which are sustained over long periods of time and thus create lasting change in communities in the East Central Illinois region.

ESLARP, the flagship program of ARI, which began in 1987 (led by former Cornell faculty member Kenneth Reardon) has received over 40 awards and recognitions for its work. ESLARP uses three mechanisms to engage students with local communities. Outreach weekends embed students in their partner communities for two days to work on highly visible and tangible projects that help bring students and community members together to meet in person and work on public projects together.

These weekends help to build trust and mutual understanding between the students and community members, while simultaneously providing a significant amount of much-needed volunteer work hours in those communities. Outreach weekends also serve as the kickoff for academic courses; professors leverage these weekend experiences as opportunities to connect students with the community leaders that they will be partnering with throughout the semester.

community organizations are able to build trust with the university and work collaboratively with students to improve their communities. ARI provides a remarkably robust and sustainable model for integrating community engagement into curriculum in a manner that benefits both communities and students, while also allowing faculty to build longterm research initiatives around projects.

Action Research Illinois Training Education Research Impact Engagement

As part of their course work, students will work in these communities continuously through the semester. As students learn, building relationships with locals is an integral part of the process because they often know how best to deal with their own challenges, but are in need of technical and logistical assistance in planning and implementing their efforts. Throughout the course, students develop projects that serve as the bridge between their academic knowledge and expertise and the community member’s local knowledge and expertise. The result is a robust applied learning experience that teaches students the value of relationship building and respect for communities, while providing useful work for locals.

By bringing together outreach weekends, semesterlong courses, and applied projects, ESLARP has been able to make significant contributions in assisting community-based organizations in chronically underserved communities. ARI’s model is one based on long-term commitment to a specific region, which allows faculty and staff to build partnerships with community organizations and identify challenges that students can make meaningful contributions to. Because of the dedicated commitment of faculty, 41

North Carolina State University College of Design – Program focus on Community Engagement

North Carolina State University has one of the oldest community design programs in the country, initiated over 40 years ago by Henry Sanoff, the school has developed multiple programs and initiatives which integrate community engagement deeply with design curriculum. The NC State College of Design currently runs four programs; the Community Design Initiative, the Downtown Design Studio, the Home Environments Design Initiative and the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program.

Each is housed within the College of Design and provides unique and complimentary opportunities for students and faculty to work closely with local communities to gain experience and education in community engaged design.

These four programs are reflective of the faculty culture within the College, which is strongly oriented towards working with the underserved communities of North Carolina. The School of Architecture in particular has a long history and rich tradition of working with rural communities throughout the state as part of its mission as a land grant institution. The first formalization of these efforts was a concentration in community development within the Masters 42

North Carolina State has developed multiple curricular programs embedded within, and responding to the needs of local communities, providing both education and impact for over 40 years. of Architecture program, which helped to build sustained support for emphasis on using education and research as a means to address issues central to the needs of individuals, families, municipalities and community organizations statewide.

Today the Architecture department leads the “Architecture in the Public Interest Initiative,� which runs two programs; the Home Environments Design Initiative (HEDI) and the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Program (AHSC).

These two programs work in tandem to provide opportunities for students to engage with rural communities around issues of affordable housing.

AHSC engages both faculty and graduate students through service-learning projects, long-term

research initiatives, and the production of valuable resources for communities such as handbooks, prototypes and workshops.

interests and thus build a strong yet diverse group of faculty who are all committed to community engaged learning and research.

HEDI supplements these efforts with support in seeking service and research grants, as well as promoting discourse around local housing issues among faculty, professionals and the local public via events. Together these two organizations are able to build contextually relevant community engagement into curriculum, and support the implementation of research and service-learning projects so communities benefit as much as students do from their partnerships.

This pervasive faculty culture has allowed the program to sustain itself for more than 40 years and build upon its long-term partnerships with communities. As a result the College is able to bring together a variety of rich educational opportunities for students and produce valuable resources for local governments, nonprofits and community leaders that have had significant impacts in local communities.

The College of Design is also home to two other initiatives that promote community engagement. The first is the Community Design Initiative (CDI), which functions much like a Community Design Center, developing and advocating effective design practices and decisions to improve the quality of life in North Carolina’s rural communities. The CDI partners with NC Cooperative Extension, NC Rural Economic Development Center, NC Main Street Center, and multiple local and regional political bodies and citizen groups to accomplish this work.

College of Design at NC State Training Education Research Impact Engagement

The second initiative is the Downtown Design Studio, which is located in downtown Raleigh. It works to develop knowledge and public awareness about the physical environment’s connection to design and development issues. The studio does this through practice-based research, discussion forms, exhibitions, lectures, exploratory design charrettes and community workshops. This unique studio incorporates students, faculty and professionals through courses, research and design services.

NC State’s College of Design has become a leader in community engagement through design by building multiple programs that provide opportunities for students and faculty to become involved in a variety of community-based practices and literally become a part of the communities they are working with.

Because the college leads multiple programs, it is able to attract professors with a variety of research 43

Insights and Conclusions These five precedents vary in both level and type of curricular integration, and are often highly dependent on their regional context and university culture, but there are four characteristics they all share, which appear to be hallmarks of successful programs. Not all of these characteristics have been explicitly called out in the profiles in this section, so it is important to describe each here.

First, there must be a champion of the program, an individual who will go above and beyond to ensure the program’s success. In some cases a single leader, but more often a small group of faculty members who passionately believe in doing this type of work and who will work tirelessly to bridge student education with community engagement. In looking at programs across the country it appears as though it is essential to have both a professor who is devoted to the program as well as at least one full time staff member who handles the development, management and survival of the program. For more on this please read the second case study in this report, profiling the Public Interest Design Summer Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Second, programs must be crafted around the needs and issues of a community first, and aligned with faculty interests second. If a program is to work then it must be rooted in real needs of a real community that the students can engage with in real life.

Additionally, if the program is to survive it must have the vested interest of faculty members who stand to gain from the success of the project by fulfilling either their teaching or research agendas. Both of these are crucial to the sustainability of a program;

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without long-term vested interest by professors and a program rooted in real needs of the community, it will difficult to sustain efforts over many years or produce work that is of real value to the community.

Third, there must be collaborative ownership of the program between the university and the community.

Communities must become stakeholders in the program by investing their time and energy, and in some cases, financial capital as well. It is absolutely crucial to avoid the “drop-in” strategy in which designers who are not part of the community come in and propose solutions. The key to avoiding this, and its negative impacts, is to incorporate community members into every step of the process, thus ensuring they have equal stake in the end result and will continue to support the work long after students have left.

Fourth, the program must gain visibility through local media coverage, university publications, and scholarly journals. Building awareness of the program’s existence and success will work to garner institutional support and attract other faculty to become involved. Similarly, publicizing a program’s community impact will help the program to attract funders and future community partners. For more on this please read the first case study in this report, in the following section, on the University of Oregon’s Sustainable Cities Initiative.

Finally, it is pertinent to re-emphasize the importance of the five intentions used in this section.

In discussing programs with various directors across the country, it become clear that all five intentions

were important aspects of a program. These five areas were not predetermined, but rather picked out after re-reading through interview transcripts.

Each of the five were mentioned again and again, each in reference to key decisions that had to be made and defining characteristics of each program.

Regardless of the type of program, each of these five characteristics were key parts of the discussions that led to the formation of each program.

In looking towards future programs at Cornell based on the conclusions drawn here, it will be critical to identify a group of champions, form the program around those champions’ interests as well as the real needs of a community, build collaborative ownership of the project with that community, and make their work visible. But before any of that happens, during the early planning stages of the program it will be essential that leaders discuss their intentions and how they will structure the program around the five key intentions outlined in this section. There is great potential for new programs at Cornell, and hopefully this tool can help bring about a robust and longlasting community-based initiative.

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PART THREE Case Study of the University of Oregon’s Sustainable Cities Initiative

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A Value-Added Proposition:

Developing a New Type of Collaborative Community Engagement For Multiplying Impact

Introduction

In the process of exploring the various university programs around the country that build community engagement into design curriculum there were a few that stood out as best practices, namely the five profiled in the previous section. Although each of these university programs stood out by presenting a unique approach, there was one program that was in a league of its own, The University of Oregon’s Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI). This program has pioneered a radically new approach to community engaged design curricula, which has already proven effective over the past four years and has tremendous potential to be scaled nationally.

The following content comes primarily from the phone interview with Schlossberg, which has been edited to eliminate the interviewer’s questions and remove fragments and repetition in order to present a clear narrative. This case study provides insights into an emerging area of design curriculum, its common challenges and barriers as well as its potential to provide transformative experiences for students, faculty and communities alike.

The following case study is the result of a phone interview with the co-founder and co-director of the SCI, Marc Schlossberg, a Professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy, and Management at the University of Oregon. Through the conversation, Schlossberg describes the founding of the program, the factors that led to its creation, explains challenges that were overcome early on to ensure success and he breaks down the key elements of the program.

He also walks us through the application process in order to highlight how students and faculty interact with communities that they work with, and speaks about the impact that has taken place in those communities.

The Sustainable Cities Initiative really all started with a Request For Proposals (RFP) for a grant from the University of Oregon. The RFP asked for proposals for a multidisciplinary project between faculty members and students that would partner with local communities and work towards positive impact in those communities. The grant was the incentive that brought together the five faculty members who were the founders of the program. Although we were a mix from landscape architecture, planning, and architecture, we all shared a passion for working with local communities to address issues of sustainability, as well as a passion for training students in community-based practices. We all

How It All Began: The Founding of The SCI

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already knew one another and had relationships with each other, so the idea emerged slowly from multiple separate conversations, but eventually we all got together in the same room. The five of us sat down and started discussing how we could build a project across departments and colleges that would involve students in a meaningful way, but also provide real services and impact in local communities.

As we all sat around a table, we started talking about the students at the university and what they were capable of. We spoke about how we have thousands of students at our university who have so many good ideas; students who are eager to make a difference in the world and have the skills and ability to do so, and yet we are wasting all those ideas by keeping them inside the walls of the university. As the conversation progressed, we started talking about what would happen if a local city government was somehow able to tap into all those young eager mind. What if somehow a city’s staff could have access to all those thousands of ideas generated every semester! The more we discussed it the more we began to realize how much potential impact there would be if we could somehow direct the energy of an entire university towards a single town, even for just one semester.

The idea was brilliant, but the problem was that we knew there would be so many institutional hoops we would have to jump through to get a program like that approved by the university.

Then somebody threw out an idea; what if we each just voluntarily chose to point all of our separate classes to the same city over the next academic year? We wouldn’t need to get approval from anyone, we would simply all choose to focus our courses on the same city. Suddenly it became very clear to us that we had stumbled upon the perfect solution; something that had really never been done before.

Not only did this solve the problem of overcoming institutional barriers, but it also meant that we would not have to create new courses or new curriculum; we could get a city staff person to help identify issues that would match with the content of the courses we were already teaching.

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Then somebody threw out an idea; what if we each just voluntarily chose to point all of our separate classes to the same city over the next academic year?

Everything seemed to fall into place and we all felt very confident that we could make it work, which it did. Ironically, we didn’t even get the grant that had brought us all together in the first place. I think we might be the most successful thing that never got funded.

After that first meeting, Nico Larco (Professor in the Department of Architecture) and myself took the lead on the project, and eventually became the co-directors of the Sustainable Cities Initiative.

Nico and I weren’t getting paid to do this, we simply believed in the idea and we were both committed to seeing it through. At the time though, we were just the ones who volunteered to go out and meet with our potential partners in the city of Gresham. We had chosen Gresham for the first year because we already had a connection there; the City Manager was an alumnus of my department and a big supporter of the university. Because we had a personal connection with him we knew that we could get him to at least listen to our strange idea. We told him that we had a proposal for him that could potentially provide some great resources for the city, and he agreed to meet with us.

The basic idea we laid out for him was that we were going to take a bunch of classes that already exist, that already have an applied learning component, and ask professors to voluntarily point their course projects towards real issues in Gresham. We described how the process would work and we asked him if he would agree to work with us, knowing that something like this had never been done before and that there was a possibility that the whole thing could fail. Although the idea was a little strange, he could tell there was some real potential, and he was interested enough to invite us back to speak with a few other city staff members. Nico, myself and the

other founders worked quickly to identify a wide variety of projects that we could propose to the city staff people of Gresham that would make sense for the city and also align with courses we were already teaching. A few weeks later we sat down with the City Manager and the heads of various city departments; economic development, parks and recreation and a few others. We presented the fifteen project ideas that we had come up with and expected that they would hesitantly pick out two or three that they thought might have the potential to work.

As we went through our list they kept responded by saying things like, “Oh yea, we could do something like that,” or “Yes, we’ve been meaning to get into that but we haven’t had time,” or “Oh wow, you do that thing at the university, we could use that too.”

They basically said yes to everything, and then went on to list a few more related ideas that they thought we might be able to help them out with. This was more than we could have ever asked for, and from there we were able to engage them in a back and forth process to identify the projects that would be best for them. From there we began recruiting more professors who we thought might want to be a part of this project and we got quite a few. What started out with five people sitting around a table volunteering one of their classes, ended up resulting in fifteen professors teaching nineteen different classes, all simultaneously working on real applied projects in Gresham.

Getting Professors To Sign On: A Value-Added Proposition

Often times when I tell professors that story, that in our very first year we had fifteen professors who signed on, they seem shocked. They say that something of that scale could never work at their university because it would be impossible to get fifteen tenure-track professors to commit to a program like this. It’s no secret that many tenuretrack professors are discouraged from developing community-engaged curricula. This type of work tends to be very time intensive and generally does

not translate into publications or grants, and thus does not reflect well with tenure review boards.

But the majority of the original five founders were tenure-track themselves at the time, so we knew this problem very well and knew that the program would not work unless we could find a away to avoid it.

Often times when I tell professors that story, that in our very first year we had fifteen professors who signed on, they seem shocked.

Once we had laid out the basic structure of our program, we spoke with a lot of people at other universities trying to do things like this and we learned where other programs got hung up in the past. They got hung up by trying to force this type of work into curriculum, or by trying to get too many faculty to agree to doing it before it even starts. They got hung up trying to infuse engaged learning into people’s classes who didn’t want to do it, and they got hung up asking for permission or support from a department head or dean or provost. In contrast, our program essentially doesn’t require permission from anyone. It works within the existing bureaucracy and administrative structure, the same structure that exists at nearly every university. As we learned more and more about the common stumbling blocks, we designed a few key mechanisms that were built into the program from the start, which allowed us to avoid all those common barriers.

First, we use classes that are already being taught, so participation in our program doesn’t detract from other scholarly work or research that is required of tenure track professors. As a result, it’s not a question of a professor spending too much time in the classroom or too much time developing a curriculum when they should be doing research. Our proposal to professors was simple; if you teach a class that already has an applied project in it, just orient that project towards a certain city. They wouldn’t have to change their course, or their syllabus, or even their 49

assignments, all they had to do was use a certain city as the focus of their class.

Second, we hired a program manager whose job it was to help each professor. The program manager’s job was to act as a liaison between the university and the city. We recognized that even though courses were not being radically altered, it would still take a certain amount of time and effort develop the specifics of the project and make all the necessary preparations. The program manager helped each professor with all of that and made the whole process run more smoothly.

Third, and most importantly, it’s a voluntary opt-in program, so it’s self-selecting. We get the professors who want to be doing this anyway, and then we make it as easy as possible for them to do it. All the professors who have signed on already believe strongly in the value of community engagement and have a passion for it. For them, participation in our program was actually adding value to their teaching: it allowed them to use their courses as a means to have a real impact in local communities. These three aspects were really the keys to getting faculty members to participate - we make it really easy for them to plug in, we make it cost them as little extra time and effort as possible, and we provide added value. This is why we believe our model works so well.

There are two small caveats of extra work for the professor though. First, we ask the professors to familiarize themselves with the city they are working with in order to provide broader context for the project. This means reviewing things such as a specific set of related policies, or understanding the city culture or simply developing a good relationship with their main contact person in the city. Second, professors have to agree to travel to the city, so there is some extra travel time for these projects, but the amount of travel ends up depending on the class and the professor. Aside from those two things, which in some cases are already the norm for these professors, we try to make it very easy for them to plug in.

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Most importantly, it’s a voluntary opt-in program, so it’s self-selecting. We get the professors who want to be doing this anyway, and then we make it as easy as possible for them to do it.

A big part of making it easy is having that fulltime program manager. The goal for the program manager is to act as a liaison between the city staff and the professor, and make it as easy as possible for faculty to find potential projects that would fit into a class they are already teaching. The way this works is that the program manager helps identify projects that the city wants, then he or she helps identify a city staff person that would be the contact person for that project, and finally helps gather all of the data and materials that the professor will need.

Essentially, whatever the professor would need in order to reorient their class towards a certain city is gathered by the program manager.

The program manager is key for all the reasons I just described, as well as being able to put out any fires that might occur, or prevent fires from happening simply by being aware of everything that’s going on. That being said, as the projects move forward, a city staff person is matched with a professor and they are put in direct contact with one another. From there, they are given the freedom to collaboratively develop the project scope and set the expectations for deliverables. The program manager is key for all the work behind the initial contact and for getting all the data and the background information, but then the scope of work is negotiated directly by the city staff person and the professor.

One of the perks of this process is that the faculty member gains a city contact person, which provides two additional benefits. First, that city staff person has an entire network of stakeholders throughout the community; from the public, private and nonprofit sectors who are all potentially relevant. So if the students or the professor want to engage a larger cross-section of people in the community, it’s not all

on the professor to find those people and congregate them. Instead they have a city staff person who already has those contacts and can bring them to the table. The second benefit is that it’s great for the professor to have a new contact person in the city who might be able to collaborate on other research projects or might just be an informant for how things work or for vetting other potential future projects.

These benefits are part of our approach and both are integral to the success of our program. We continue to have faculty engage because we are able to make it very easy for them to participate and because we are able to provide added value.

Having students excited about course work can be a powerful incentive for professors, and that helped us expand to even more departments on campus.

Since then, we’ve continually seen more and more professors decide to become a part of the program.

Letting The Dominos Fall: Success Leads to More Success

The second domino effect came in the middle of the first term of our partnership with the city of Gresham.

Word got out of what we were doing, and we started getting contacted by other cities in Oregon. They said more or less, “We want to be Gresham next year, how do we do that?” So we put together an RFP and before the first year was over we already had multiple cities applying to become the recipients of the program for the second year. That RFP required essentially three things from the applicant; buy-in, identification, and payment.

We knew in the first year that if we wanted our program to be a success we would have to make it as easy as possible for faculty members to plug in, but I’m not sure any of us realized just how successful the program would become. We’ve seen tremendous success over the past four years, so much so that we’ve now already held our first annual leadership training conference and have five universities who are planning to pilot the program in the next year, but I’m jumping ahead, let me get back to the first year.

After the success of the first year we experienced two domino effects that catapulted the program forwards and upwards.

The first was the number of faculty members who wanted to participate. The first year we had nineteen courses and about fifteen faculty involved in total. The second year we had thirty courses and over twenty faculty, in addition to a separate group of about ten faculty who agreed to serve as the review board for applicants, which is part of the second domino effect that I’ll get to in just a minute. In the second year all the faculty that were involved in the first year wanted to continue, and so did other faculty with whom they spoke. At the same time, students started spreading the word that this was a great educational experience and as a result more and more professors became interested.

Word got out about what we were doing and we started getting contacted by other cities in Oregon. They said more or less, “We want to be Gresham next year, how do we do that?”

First we said there needed to be buy-in from the top; the city manager, the city council, and multiple departments within the city. A key goal for our program was to make sure that the work that students put together would have real impact, so we knew we needed to have buy-in across the local government so that everyone was in on the program from the start. Second, the city needed to be able to identify a range of projects related to sustainability and the built environment that were feasible within a ten-week time frame so they would fit within a semester. They also had to identify other individuals or organizations for each project in the public, private and nonprofit sectors who could be potential partners or stakeholder groups. Third, we required that they pay for the program, which was both a way to cover our costs of running the program, and a way to ensure that governments had a vested interest in the success of the projects.

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It was somewhat difficult to calculate how much the program would cost, but at that point we were starting to foresee this program becoming successful and running every year so when we were putting together the RFP, we had to figure out what the costs would be to run it professionally. First, we had to pay for the salary of a full time program manager, a communications director, and a full time accountant (which we quickly realized we needed).

We also hired two graduate research assistants to help out with day-to-day matters, and we paid for travel to and from the sites for faculty. Then at the end of each semester we hire one or two of the top students in each class to take all the ideas that their classmates came up with and compile them into a professional report, and produce both a print and digital version.

We also give each professor that participates a $1000 stipend to supplement his or her course. (This is not money for them, this is money they use to create more learning opportunities for their students, such as; bringing in guest speakers, helping to offset transportation costs for students, paying for printing and material supplies, or to fund side projects like case studies.) Lastly we have a big launch party at the beginning of the year and a big wrap up event at the end of the year, which help increase our visibility both within the university and the region.

When we factored everything together, that came to about $250,000, which we set as our minimum.

Beyond that, we determine the cost each year by the number of projects we’re going to do in a city. That money doesn’t come in one lump sum from a single city department though, we receive small chunks from various different city departments, which again helps to build buy-in across the board. All of this gets discussed during the application process, because during that process we work very closely with each applicant. It’s not as if we just send out an RFP with a $250,000 accepted application fee and wait for proposals. Our model only works because of the partnerships we build. There are a lot of conversations that go on and a lot of relationship building in the beginning of the process. We help the 52

City governments are paying us to run this program because they are confident that we are going to provide a high return on their investment, and now that we’ve been doing it for a few years we have a reputation for ourselves, to prove that we can do what we say we can do. city to identify projects that they are already struggling with, projects they need to address but just don’t have the time or capacity or expertise to take on. We make it clear from the start that what we’re offering to the city is a lot of potential solutions to those problems by giving them access to the minds of hundreds of students and professors and some of the latest and greatest thinking on issues and challenges that they are already struggling with. We emphasize that we take the projects and the whole program very seriously, and we want cities to as well.

We build trust with them and convince them that we will be able to facilitate useful community dialogues and produce good ideas that they will be able to run with, but there is no guarantee. A critical part of the application process is setting those expectations from the start in order to make sure they understand that this is a leap of faith for the city. They understand that what they’re getting is access to a lot of ideas.

Some of which are going to be absolutely brilliant, some of which are going to be complete rubbish, and a majority of which are going to be somewhere in between. They are getting all these ideas and lots of insights about them, and they basically have to take a leap of faith that there will be enough good ideas across all the different projects that will add up to make the investment worthwhile.

So essentially, communities and city governments are paying us money to run this program in their city because we have built a level of trust with them and they are confident that we are going to produce something that will provide them a high return on their investment. Now that we’ve been doing this for

a few years we also have a reputation for ourselves to prove that we can do what we say we can do, and that helps a lot in the process of relationship building.

For example in the second year when we worked with Salem, one group project in an industrial ecology class came up with an idea for how to take the waste outputs of certain local and regional industries and feed them into other local industries in order to consolidate waste, which allowed the city to handle its industrial waste in more ecological and financially efficient ways. That was just one project from one of the thirty courses we ran that year, and it has since been put into practice by the city of Salem and is saving them $400,000 per year and reducing their impact on the environment. That was only one idea, and they have about 150 other ideas that are slowly working their way into city plans. So this is real stuff, the city is getting real return on their investment.

Generating Real Impact: SCI’s True Potential Our communications director also plays an important role in our success. He coordinates with media outlets both at the university and in various cities and towns in Oregon, which help generate publicity and increase our visibility both on campus and regionally.

We’ve emphasized visibility from the start, even as we were developing our program we were giving lots of talks around the state and making sure word got out about what we were doing, both to cities and academics. We were also very committed from the start to work closely with university communications, as well as with key people working in the media in our partner cities like local community leaders and prominent organizations. If you go on our website you’ll see about 100 articles that have been written in local and national press over the last few years.

A lot of the benefits of what we do in terms of communications and publicity play directly into the projects students are engaged in. As young outsiders, students are able to put ideas out in the public domain and advance community conversations in

ways that city staff and professional consultants cannot, mostly due to political risk. Students can float ideas that city staff might feel uncomfortable proposing, but might actually resonate very well in communities. So students can put out these risky ideas, and then the city staff are free to dismiss them as naïve and idealistic if they don’t resonate with the community. On the flip side, when those risky ideas capture the public’s imagination and spark interest in the community, the city can support them and take credit for funding the research that explored them.

Local press and publicity are really key for getting those ideas out into the community and starting those conversations.

That was just one project from one of the thirty courses that year, and it has since been put into practice by the city and is saving them $400,000 per year while also reducing their impact on the environment. That was only one idea, they have about 150 other ideas that are slowly working their way into city plans.

A lot of that happens through the midterm reviews (which we hold in communities and invite community members to attend) or through other types of community forums, or even through students knocking on doors and talking to people. Regardless of the method, press is key and we are very conscious of that from the start of every project and we always make sure to collaborate with local press outlets. For us, press is simply another means of outreach, and what SCI is really focusing on is expanding outreach.

We believe that outreach has a real impact on both the students and the communities.

Through our program we have now engaged over 500 students in local communities who have collectively contributed about 80,000 hours of effort, a lot of which is spent physically in that community. Just think about that… 500 people running around a community 53

in one semester. 500 young, enthusiastic, want-tochange-the-world-now people, running around a community asking business owners and city staff and residents what they want in their town and what issues they’re having and what change they want to see. Think about that, 500 people running around a city… it creates a real palpable buzz, way more than a single class ever could.

We’ve also been approached in recent years by professors and community leaders who would like to see this program in their city but are hesitant because they’re not sure if their problems would fit within a design studio. What I think is most powerful about our model is that it does not have to apply to design. Yes, all the projects SCI engages with tie back to sustainability and/or the built environment, but that’s simply because that was our mission from the start.

Yet even in our program, its not just design studios, we work across many different disciplines. Just to give you an idea of the diversity of disciplines that are involved, we have; planning, architecture, landscape architecture, public administration, law, business, journalism, arts administration, product design, economics, statistics and a few others. We’ve been able to develop an open model so anybody can plug in, and it turns out there are all these different disciplines around campus that deal with aspects of cities and the built environment that can contribute in very meaningful and valuable ways, not just planning, architecture and landscape architecture.

For example we have a public administration class in statistics that teaches masters students how to assess quantitative analyses. They could care less about sustainability and cities, I mean they’re not opposed to it but the class is simply about teaching statistics and quantitative analysis, and the professor is a statistician, not an urban planner. But to run a good statistics class you need a really robust data set, and if you have an interesting underlying question behind that data set then that’s even better because it allows students to understand the application of their work. Today cities are really good at having lots 54

of data, but not good at having time or expertise to analyze it, so what a great opportunity to match a city to a course! The city provides a great data set for the professor and helps identify what the underlying question is or what the problem is that they think the data can help solve. The students, through all their struggles of having to learn statistics against their will, know that at the end of the day, when they crank out some kind of statistical answer, it will have an audience and they’ll see how its useful for that audience, thus it actually provides meaning to the learning experience. So by creating partnerships like this we expand the number of people who are engaged without having to expand the number of courses focused on community engagement.

I’m convinced that there’s nothing else that exists like what we’re doing. I know that’s a bold statement, but after giving talks around the country for the past few years and winning a number of awards, including national higher education awards, I know that we’ve solved a lot of the riddles that most universities confront when they’re trying to build community engagement into curriculum. I think we’ve just found answers to most of the common problems.

What I hope is becoming clear from hearing about this program, which is the reason why we were so passionate about making sure the program happened, is that we felt that we had stumbled upon something brilliant yet radically simple. Something that could create real change in the world and make an impact on the future of what higher education is at the national scale. We want to permanently change the way universities interact with communities; that’s the real goal, and it’s not an unrealistic one. It can happen, we’ve shown it can work. You just need champions, you need people who believe in it and will work for it.

Marc Schlossberg, is a Professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy, and Management at the University of Oregon and he is the co-founder and co-director of the Sustainable Cities Inititative.

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PART FOUR Case Study of the Public Interest Design Program at the University of Texas at Austin

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Code Switching Civic Engagement and Academia: Establishing Community-Based Practices in a University Design Program

Introduction:

The following case study charts the history and evolution of an ambitious summer program at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture (UTSOA) called Public Interest Design. The program, which has recently completed its third year, is an initiative of the School of Architecture’s Center for Sustainable Development (CSD). The CSD is devoted to research, education and community outreach, and works to provide opportunities for architecture, planning and design students to develop communitybased practices.

The narrative that follows describes the emergence of the Public Interest Design Program through the voice of Dr. Barbara Brown Wilson, current Director of the CSD and Assistant Professor at UTSOA. Wilson recounts what led to the Public Interest Design Program and her intentions in its creation.

She explains how and why decisions were made and offers insights for creating successful communitybased university programs. The content comes from two interviews with Wilson, which have been edited to eliminate the interviewer’s questions and remove fragments and repetition.

This case study provides insights into an emerging area of design pedagogy, its common challenges and barriers as well as its potential to provide transformative experiences for students. Looking

towards the future, this case study seeks to build a foundation of critical discourse around this emerging area of design pedagogy. That pedagogy and this report both seek to foster public engagement and train students to become future leaders of emerging community-based practices in design.

The Background: The CSD, the ACDDC, and the PhD The Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) was started in 2001 as an arm of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. It was decided at a faculty retreat that sustainable development was an important area of research and education that warranted support for new opportunities for funded research and community outreach. When I began working with the CSD in 2005 as a PhD student, the Center had already been doing some great work, but there was not yet a formal program for students interested in engaging with communities, it was simply done project by project.

As a Ph.D. student I helped develop the first institutionalized community-university partnership through the Center, a Sustainable Design and Development Workshop (SDDW). The workshop was set up by Dr. Steven Moore to investigate affordable housing and sustainable design opportunities in 57

Austin, which was already an area of interest with several of the faculty here. In the first year of this project, we were able to develop a partnership with the Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation (GNDC), a grassroots organization that was at the forefront of housing affordability in Austin.

In order to explain the project I need to tell give you a bit more background on the GNDC. In the 1920’s when sprawl was first affecting Austin, there were a number of racially and socio-economically unjust practices adopted by Austin’s government, which essentially pushed the majority of the city’s AfricanAmerican and Mexican-American residents into East Austin. In the 1990’s as Austin once again began growing outwards, East Austin became increasingly threatened by gentrification. Although the city adopted various plans towards ‘smart growth,’ they were often perceived as veiled attempts to displace longtime residents. So there was an inherent challenge, the city wanted to revitalize and further develop East Austin, but the residents were extremely fearful that this change would destroy the cultural character of their neighborhoods that they had fought so hard to preserve. The SDDW began in 2005 as a means to address this challenge.

GNDC was exploring various strategies for increasing density with new development. They were already building ‘alley flats’ and were interested in working with the students to identify opportunities for making them more sustainable. Alley flats are small, often garage apartments or one‐bedroom homes in the backyard of a property that provide affordable housing to one or two persons, while their rent subsidizes the mortgage payment for the property owner. Leadership was important from the start, so Sergio Palleroni was brought in because he had experience in running community design studios like the one we were proposing.

In the first studio, as well as studios in subsequent years, students designed prototypes for GNDC stakeholders to respond to, and in June of 2008 the first student-designed alley flat was built. The students did a lot of research and work, and their continued resilience allowed them to persevere through set backs, but the success of the project truly rested on the long-term partnership that was built with our local community group, the GNDC. From 2006 to 2010 while I was working on my PhD, I co-founded a nonprofit community design center— the Austin Community Design and Development Center (ACDDC)— which provided project management for the Alley Flat Initiative. ACDDC was (and still is) closely tied to the university, but officially it was separate, and as a result, was less capable of housing the type of educational programs I was most interested in facilitating and leading. Partly because I was focused on the daily workings of the ACDDC, I increasingly played less of a role with the educational activities of the Alley Flat Initiative during those years. Then, in 2009, the CSD brought in a new director who asked me help him run the center. Because the CSD was a more appropriate hub for the type of community-engaged research I wanted to do. I became the assistant director of the CSD, and about a year later when the Director left, I was appointed as the interim director.

That position functioned as a post-doc of sorts for me, and over the next year I was able to bring in a few big research grants for the Center and eventually was offered a position as a tenure track professor and the full directorship of the CSD. The Dean knew of my passion for organizational management and for convening like-minded people, so my appointment was intentionally created for me to serve as a bridge.

I know just enough of several related fields to be able to speak their language, and because I can

NOTE: I would like to also recognize the importance of the role ACDDC, and in particular the current director and co-founder Michael Gatto, continues to play in project management for the Alley Flat Initiative. Aside from being the sole reason that the alley flats actually got build, Michael’s team and others helped us vet all the PID resident-guided projects, which would end up leading to the Alley Greening Project that took place in the summer of 2011. Michael Gatto and ACDDC were invaluable to the success of these projects and deserve great respect, recognition and praise for their continued leadership, management and hard work.

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do that with a few key programs like architecture, engineering, and planning I can act as a translator between them. I may not always know each topic in depth, but I know enough to talk with both sides, so I try to be a code-switcher. The fact that I have this ability is not a necessity of being the director of the CSD, but it does help us expand our reach.

As a result of both my role as the director of the CSD and my personal interests in convening groups, I try to serve as a conduit to connect our faculty and students with the right people in other disciplines and in the community, so even if I’m not the person they want to work with, I’ve made it clear that I am here to help them. Often times in universities these types of collaborations are seen as more trouble than they were worth, and it’s important to understand why that is. Professors always have their own specific research interests, which is not a bad thing, but it often makes it hard for them to recognize where other areas of research might overlap with theirs. And to further deter them, the tenure review process does not really award cross-disciplinary collaboration, so professors have little incentive to take on this type of effort. Ideally, having a code-switcher as a faculty member can help create scenarios where productive synergies can arise without much time wasted in the collaboration-crafting process.

The Programs: Alley Flats, Design-Builds and PID I & II The Alley Flat Initiative was great because it accomplished three things; it allowed faculty and advanced students to explore their research interests related to sustainable community development in a meaningful and proactive way, it developed a longterm university partnership with a local community group, and it provided a great design/build experience for interested students. That win-win-win situation is the ideal for a program like this, and what we were really aiming for. But after four or five years of studios focused specifically on Alley Flats, faculty began to feel that we might need a new venue for engaged design education.

Our primary goal with the program had been experiential education, but it was no longer presenting new and interesting learning opportunities for our students, and the community partners frankly seemed a bit tired as well. Our Dean recognized that while the Alley Flat Initiative seemed to be winding down, there was a growing demand for this type of experience among students, so he asked me to create a new design/build program. We know there are students out there who are looking to public interest design as a legitimate career path, so we wanted to offer them a program that could really train them in not only the practice but also in the theory and ethics, which are arguably the most fundamental parts of a public interest practice.

My aspirations for the PID program, my hopes and dreams, were that it would be a venue for leadership building for those students. They would finish the program armed with enough knowledge to, at the very least, not be afraid to pursue a type of design practice outside of the typical firm structure, and be empowered to go out and start something themselves if they wanted.

The program was designed to do three things; introduce students to professionals who were practicing PID right now who could share lessons and stories, give students a build project where they could work through the process of public interest design first hand, and supplement their experience with a graduate-level seminar that cultivated critical reflection. In the first year of the program we had great leadership from people who are in the field today, real ‘do-ers’ who could inspire students, who also had a lot of institutional knowledge about setting up successful design/build programs—namely Bryan Bell and David Perkes. Together we were hoping to create a curriculum around PID theory and ethics that other programs could tap into as well.

Our approach was to work with the same community partner we had already built a relationship with, the Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation.

Although the Alley Flat Initiative had engaged students for only a semester at a time, the university 59

had built a longer-term partnership with GNDC so we had established a level of trust with those community leaders. This long term commitment and trust building is really crucial to any project like this, so it was extremely important to build off of the relationship we already had. The real challenge we faced was crafting a concise and consolidated program that could fit into a five-week summer session. The first tough decision to make was how early on in the project formation process we would involve the students.

Although that first stage of the process is often times the most challenging for students, it is also usually the one they learn the most from, but you have to be careful that their education does not come at the expense of the community they’re working with.

Because of that, involving students earlier on can be somewhat tricky, as it generally requires them to have some previous experience in community-based work. Luckily we had that sort of group of students in the first summer, but we recognized that we had taken a pretty big risk. It actually worked out well, but I think it was a unique set of partners and a unique set of students who were already very well skilled and well prepared. I mean thank god it worked, because it sure could have not worked. To try and take all of that on in one five week session was difficult and challenging, which is why we expanded the program to eight weeks in the second year.

This year we set up the potential projects further in advance and made sure all the projects that were presented as options to the students were ‘do-able’ in both scope and management. We also experimented with shifting the program to have a more academic focus. In the first year we had some real ‘do-ers’ from both the professional design world and the nonprofit world. They were all advocates for change and they truly empowered the students. Their determination to get things done and push through adversity really helped build a sense of urgency among the students, which was absolutely necessary in that first summer, but it also meant that there was less time spent in a rigorous academic setting, which was something we really wanted to create for students.

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After the first summer some students reflected that they would have liked if there were more opportunities to slow down and critically reflect on the larger issues that were behind the project they were working on. In response to that feedback we chose to experiment the second summer with a more academically based structure for the program, as well as extend it to eight weeks because we simply needed more time in order to truly accomplish that goal.

Specifically, we tried to incorporate more graduatelevel seminar dialogue in the program during the second year. We sought out professors who had many years experience leading graduate level seminars and who revelled in the opportunity to pick apart issues and ideas with students at a deeply analytic level. Additionally we had a faculty member very interested in the process of construction itself, who supervised the build project portions of the course. The real goal was to have a balance of both though, to have both the ‘do-ers’ that empower and inspire students and the academics that encourage students to reflect and critically analyze everything.

I’m not sure we’ve figured that out yet, but that would be a magical balance for a course like this if one could achieve it.

This all comes back to the foundational idea of transdisiplinary learning - that more minds are better. I don’t think any one person should be teaching a program like this. I think that in the future, the best versions are going to be collaborative in nature, because that’s the whole purpose. That’s the whole notion behind Public Interest Design, that the collaborative process is a valid one, and it answers lots of complex problems better than one mind alone ever could in a design studio.

Especially in these community projects, you need different types of thinkers and different skills sets contributing from both the community and the university, and having those multiple voices is especially important when teaching and training students. The ideal scenario is one where we’re convening leaders from different schools and from

different areas of practice who all have different perspectives, approaches and skillsets, and all can contribute to the learning experience for students.

The Future: Working With What You Have Up to this point I’ve been focusing on the program from the perspective of the students, but it’s really important to understand the program from the eyes of the faculty and administration as well.

What I haven’t mentioned is the somewhat implicit knowledge we gained through having an ongoing community-based project for the past eight years.

Coordinating multiple studios and workshops around the Alley Flat Initiative allowed us to slowly identify the professors and faculty who were supportive of these efforts and interested in programs like these.

Yet still, the program was in some ways imposing a specific agenda that did not always align perfectly with the interests of the professors teaching the course.

If I had the time and energy to start this all over and do it in the most productive way possible, I would craft the program around the strengths of existing professors, and pair them with inspiring do-ers, who are interested in engaging with communities on these “wicked problems.” I would utilize both as resources and allow the professors who teach the program to build their own research projects into it so they have a vested interest in its continuing success.

So far I’ve suggested a number of what I see to be key ingredients for a program like PID, but even if you have them all, you still need an overall champion of the program, which may be the most important part of its success. You need someone who is willing to put in way more time than makes sense, simply because they believe in it. This champion needs to not only be an unconditional supporter of the program, but they need to be able to facilitate university and community needs and effectively raise funds. The champion is the one who is going to make sure that everything happens in the way that it was conceived.

Even though I have some time to devote to this, and a genuine love for bringing multiple people together and facilitating this sort of thing, it was still a nightmare to handle all the logistics myself. I guess really what’s needed is a whole team of champions, a group of people who are teaching, organizing and directing the program who are all able to plug this work into their own interests or agendas, be it teaching, research, publishing, or service.

This is not a pipe dream, we know it can happen because we’ve seen it happen before at other schools.

If everything can be brought together, these types of programs can have a real impact. For example, the Alley Flat Initiative has led to some real changes in local government in Austin, and garnered research funding from the NSF (National Science Foundation).

Even though this was not the original intent, a clear research agenda has come out of that project, which is exactly what our provost is most excited about and why he continues to support community-based service learning programs like this one.

Part of this really goes deeper; it’s about changing peoples mindsets around where research comes from. Provosts commonly see a university as a business based around education and research, and often times they see those two goals as separate from service learning. But with more programs like ours, it seems increasingly clear that service learning can act as a springboard towards extremely relevant applied research. When that happens it not only benefits the university, but it also has a profound impact on the students who were a part of those projects and hopefully on the community they engaged. That’s what I really wanted from this program, to give students a meaningful experience by showing them what community-based practices and public engagement can lead to, for the university, for the community and for themselves.

Dr. Barbara Brown Wilson is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development and Assistant Professor at University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture.

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PART FIVE Survey of Cornell Faculty’s Perspectives of Engagement as Part of Curricula

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Perspectives on Community Engagement at Cornell Reflections, thoughts and key recommendations for future programs from faculty at Cornell

The following section of this report was compiled with information gathered from discussions with over 30 faculty members at Cornell, including both tenure and non-tenure track professors, associate and assistant professors, senior professors, lecturers, department chairs, deans and administrative faculty.

The purpose of these conversations was to gain the perspective of faculty and staff in design disciplines on four key topics: • Their opinions on the relationship between community engagement and curriculum; its merits, risks, importance, feasibility and impacts • Their perceptions of community engagement as part of design curriculum at Cornell, specifically any successful examples they’ve witnessed or taken part in as professors • Barriers they feel hinder the efforts of faculty at Cornell working to further integrate community engagement into design and planning curriculum, and why those exist • Mechanisms or opportunities which they believe could help facilitate new community engagement opportunities or support those already existing

The individuals selected were chosen because of previous commitment to, or involvement in efforts around community engagement at Cornell. In order to encourage honest and unbiased responses, all interviewees were promised anonymity. After reviewing transcripts and interview notes, several common themes emerged, as well as numerous novel ideas and key insights. Attention should be paid to how these various thoughts and suggestions collectively reflect the mindset of faculty in designrelated disciplines. These have been organized into topical categories. This section of the report is not intended to make recommendations or propose new initiatives, instead it is meant to presents the perspectives, ideas and suggestions of the faculty at Cornell in their own words.

The purpose of this section of the report is to build off of the precedents explored in the previous sections by sharing the many ideas and insights that are specific to Cornell. This section aims to examine what resources are available and what faculty collectively believe are the most feasible means forward. Ideally this section will allow readers to compare and contrast what has been done at other universities with what faculty at Cornell believe is most relevant as we look towards next steps here at Cornell.

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Perspectives on Community Engagement as part of Design Curriculum The large majority of conversations with faculty centered on perspectives specifically related to how community engagement could be better integrated into design curricula. From a theoretical standpoint, many of the faculty interviewed advocated for engagement because, as one professor put it,

“As the world begins to face a multitude of problems related to the built environment, design is uniquely positioned to address them. The role of design in the world must change, and so too much the nature of design education… Design pedagogy should be based on emerging issues in society that design is able to address.”

The prevailing theme that emerged in these conversations was that design, as a field of study, possesses multiple unique characteristics which position it particularly well as the medium through which students engage with communities.

Furthermore, with experience, design faculty are able to lead such studios in ways that can simultaneously provide real help to those communities.

Although it was nearly unanimously agreed upon by interviewees that design education has this potential, many also agreed that the process of integrating community engagement into design pedagogy presents numerous challenges and is often difficult to execute successfully. The most central preliminary question put forth by faculty was whether the primary intent of the program was oriented towards student education or community impact. All faculty agreed that in crafting new programs and courses, it be essential to specify from the outset which was the primary objective. Faculty pointed out that although both are legitimate approaches, there are often subtle yet crucial differences between the two in how decisions are made throughout the process.

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With regards to engaging actual communities, there were multiple faculty who expressed hesitation in putting students in direct contact with communities.

These faculty explained that because of the complex and delicate nature of community engagement, it is extremely difficult to compact the process into a 14-week course in which students (rather than professionals) are doing the majority of the work. These professors argued from a pedagogical standpoint that it is more effective and less risky to engage students in the challenges of communitybased design through seminar-style courses in which students could be exposed to a multitude of issues without potentially learning at the expense of the community. When this viewpoint was presented to faculty who were strong supporters of experiential learning, they agreed and noted that although they believed strongly in ‘outside the classroom’ learning, it is be absolutely crucial that students be primed and prepared for those experiences with seminars and discussion sections in which they can be introduced to the moral and ethical dilemmas of community engagement before going out into the field (in addition to taking methods courses to arm those students with contextually relevant skill sets).

“You can not simulate real world challenges in design studios. It’s simply not possible to recreate all the unforeseeable aspects of a real world design challenge within a classroom; students must learn experientially.”

Another common theme brought up by Cornell faculty was the need for more collaboration in this area. Numerous faculty expressed their interest in running courses and/or studios that either directly collaborated with another course, or informally worked in parallel. These professors noted that they would be happy and willing to engage in such partnerships with other faculty, but needed time to coordinate and plan such collaborations. On a related note, many faculty expressed interest in corroboratively-taught studios, and referenced

precedents at other high ranking universities such as Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and UC Berkley.

Professors in various departments expressed their interest in developing such collaborations, but lamented the fact that their departments would not support them with time, funding or respect, and therefore they did not feel such collaborations were very possible. This brings up the recurring theme and primary question; how can professors and students who believe in the value of community-engaged learning effectively advocate for their departments and colleges to provide institutional support and resources for the development of such courses?

A similar idea, which was raised a number of times, was that of integrated courses in which each course meets and functions separately, but makes use of each other’s work. This idea was suggested particularly with respect to planning workshops and architecture studios, again citing examples at other top tier institutions who had set successful precedents in which courses ran in parallel and students on both sides benefited. This was discussed as a means to circumvent the often complex and politically-charged challenges that faculty are forced to overcome in order to develop and implement collaborative courses based around communityengaged design and research.

The Need For Champions A central part of each interview was a discussion of strategies to encourage the development of community engaged courses and initiatives.

Although these discussion often began with a focus on the barriers and challenges faculty felt they faced, many faculty openly acknowledged their own ability to affect change. The most commonly reported method for this was by championing an effort that they themselves felt passionate about as a means to garner support from other faculty. Many faculty spoke about “the need for champions,� faculty who would spearhead efforts around topic issues that aligned with their own research interests and become leaders within schools and departments.

Individual faculty members have an immense capacity to catalyze change and garner institutional support simply by directly their own research and teaching agenda towards community engagement.

Despite the clear demand for greater support from departments, colleges and centers on campus, many professors expressed conviction that individual faculty members have an immense capacity to catalyze change and garner institutional support simply by directly their own research and teaching agenda towards community engagement; thus demonstrating their commitment and dedication as well as sending a clear message to department chairs, deans and other faculty that they value community engagement.

In further discussing this point with various faculty members, it became clear that there was a certain degree of static friction; a risk-aversion associated with pursing community engaged teaching and research because of the belief that tenure review boards would not look upon such work favourably.

There is no easy way around this challenge, it is simply part of a larger systemic issue in academia, but that does not make it an impossible roadblock, only a challenge that must be addressed.

The key point that emerged from these discussion though, was that many faculty members stated that they would be more likely to take the risk of engaging in community-based work if other professors in their department did the same. In this way it appears as though there is potential for a domino effect that could catalyze larger change in a department. This potential hinges on a few pioneers and champions who will take a risk and pursue community engagement. Through these conversations, the most important question that continually arose was how to help encourage champions to emerge. This is a question that few professors had and answer for.

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Preparation, Planning, Research, and Reflection As discussions with faculty shifted from their perspectives of community engagement to how community-based courses should actually be run, one area of discussion received considerable more time and focus than others. This was the various collaborations, courses, and follow-ups that should supplement any community-engaged design initiative. These comments can be separated into three categories; preparation / planning, research, and reflection.

The preparation and planning required for a community engaged design studio was commented on frequently as the part of the process that was most critical if the project was going to have a real impact in a community. Many faculty pointed out that in order for a community design studio to work it had to go through a detailed and sometimes lengthy phase in which relationships were established between the university and the community, and trust was built between professors and community leaders. One professor aptly explained that,

“As a professor, you have to design the problem before you design the solution, and you have the design the engagement before you design the problem.”

Although some professors cited the length of the preparation and planning process as the most prominent barrier, other saw it as an opportunity.

Multiple faculty perceived “designing the engagement” as a crucial part of the educational process, which students should be a part of. They recognized that running a course or studio that partnered with a community meant starting the project in the earliest stage of the design process; relationship building. It was commented by some that this phase has not be traditional included in design education, and if it were to be then there would be significantly less time allotted for the actual design phase. Professors, in many cases, openly recognized that in order for this type of “true” engagement to 66

occur, it required a significant time commitment on their part, something they would not be compensated for in many cases.

Several professors saw ways around this though, suggesting that this early stage be a separate course altogether, which could teach students valuable lessons related to building client relationships.

Furthermore, it was suggested that a course such as that, based primarily in research and relationship building, could act to inform and direct a future course; in essence bridging one studio to another by separating the project out over semesters.

Without prompting, multiple professors came to this same suggestion and expressed their belief that if professors were able to coordinate with one another and feed courses into one another, this could potentially be an extremely successful model that would allow for long-term commitment to a community and also avoid the limitations of the semester schedule.

The research tied to a community design studio was frequently highlighted as the portion most closely tied to the professor and potentially the element most able to ensure the long-term success of the project. Faculty often brought up the difficulties of balancing teaching, research and service agendas simultaneously, and many touched upon the potential of participatory action research (P.A.R.) as a means to merge all three. Other faculty commented on the need for initiatives and projects to stem from their own research interests, thus ensuring that there would be vested interest in the success of the project beyond the semester. Professors also said that community engagement would be more enticing if they felt it could lead to publishable research, and if so, then they would be more likely to invest their time in it. In sharp contrast, various professors felt unsure as to whether previous work they’d be a part of related to community engagement could be published in journals relevant to their field, and even went so far as to question whether community engagement could be a legitimate basis for academic publications, particularly in the field of architecture and engineering.

As a note to professors, I think it is important to mention here that through the course of my research in compiling this report, I have found numerous articles in highly respected publications in a wide variety of academic field that all focus on community engagement in some aspect or another. The idea that community engagement does not serve as legitimate content material for respectable publications is simply false.

Although long-term commitment, research and publications was of much concern for faculty, reflection was repeatedly emphasized as the most critical part of the process for students. Multiple professors stressed the crucial importance of reflection, suggesting mandatory reflection seminars for students involved in community design courses, or other requirements designed to catalyze meaningful reflection. These professors drew attention to the nature of experiential learning, explaining that often times students are very caught up in the process, and are not able to step back and recognize the important lessons they’ve learned unless provided with a supplemental course to do so through.

When this idea was posed to students in multiple disciplines, they unanimously agreed. Particularly students who had been involved in some form of community design experience in the past expressed strong feelings that they were often distraught over moral or ethical issues, and would have greatly appreciated a course either during or after to help work through those challenges. Other students commented that even more essential would be a preparatory seminar course that would introduce them to potential issues they might encounter, and help prepare them to handle such issues.

Key Issues for Successful Community-Engaged Design Curricula During each interview, faculty were asked what they thought were the key issues for building successful community engaged design programs. Although numerous aspects were pointed out, there were

four that were repeatedly mentioned: time, scale, client-interaction, and research. Given that nearly all faculty touched upon at least three of these when referring to “critical aspects of community engaged curricula,� each is briefly discussed below, and shold be considered important factors to incorporate into the planning of any future program.

Time Time is the most critical factor, it must be planned for and continuously adjusted for. The amount of time that is devoted to each phase of a course will make or break the success of the project.

Scale The typical downfall of community engagement is a scale too ambitious for a single semester. When students are thrust into project whose scale is too large for their level of education or time commitment, the project will fall short.

Client-Interaction For community engagement to be successful in a course, the students must be able to frequently be in contact with the client and with community leaders.

Without this interaction, the project loses direction.

Research Research should be an integral part of the preparation, engagement and reflection, and can increase the impact of each, as well as provide opportunities for professors to remain engaged.

Events, Visibility and Support Many professors commented on the immense influence of faculty culture in either deterring or enticing professors to develop teaching and research aligned with community engagement. When asked about mechanisms for shifting faculty culture towards community engagement many commented that the most feasible and direct method is through increased discourse around key issues. Various faculty felt strongly that more symposia, discussion panels, social events, presentations and exhibitions 67

could significantly help redirect faculty culture simply by sparking more discussions among faculty. This was seen as the most practical and realistic inroad, particularly in departments such as architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture, where faculty are often inclined to attend such events.

Many professors suggested that their own departments should be responsible for hosting at least one social event per semester, which could function as a venue for discussing key topics that faculty in that department were interested in exploring.

Faculty also reported that such events function as important social networking opportunities for likeminded faculty to share their current work and discuss possible collaborations. It was reported that these events tend to induce thoughtful and reflective mindsets, which in turn facilitate highly collaborative conversations among like-minded faculty, which are often the precursor to future initiatives. Faculty believe this tends to be the case particularly among professors in design related disciplines. Lastly, it was commented that these events can also be prime opportunities for professors to meet staff from CCE, CaRDI, BCTR, and other campus centers that have resources to support such new initiatives.

Questions to Ask at the College and Departmental Levels Faculty, chairs and deans similarly commented on the critical importance of departments and colleges sending clear messages to faculty that community engagement is of high value. Many feel it is key to have ‘public engagement’ mentioned on the college and department websites, specifically within their learning goals. This would help as a means to encourage faculty and draw prospective students.

It was also mentioned that part of the criteria for admission to any Cornell College should be analysis 68

of the student’s orientation towards public service and concern for the improvement of the human condition, primarily as a criteria while evaluating application essays. Lastly, at the college level it was remarked multiple times that faculty will be more likely to pursue community engagement if their dean is visibly and actively seeking donors and grants to support research, teaching and service in this area, particularly for those faculty who are already engaged in such efforts.

Institutional Support and Resources Numerous faculty would like to pursue more research, teaching and outreach around community engagement but voiced opinions that the lack of institutional support prohibits them from doing so. Several common ideas that were mentioned by multiple professors are listed below.

• Ability to apply for an additional graduate teaching assistant based on a proposal to develop a new community engagement project, curriculum, or program.

• Opportunities to attend workshops and seminars focused on methods and training to better build community engagement into their teaching and research agendas.

• Support in writing grants to secure funds for research, teaching and service related to community engagement.

• Cornell-hosted workshops and seminars focused on reflection, in order to encourage faculty to recognize the critical importance of building community engagement into their practices and its potential for transformative impact.

• Support from various centers on campus specifically geared towards developing courses and publications focused on community engagement.

• Financial and institutional recognition for professors who visibly demonstrate their efforts and work around community engagement.

• Semester-long fellowships to relieve professors of specific teaching duties in order to allow them to develop new community-based curricula

Organizational Management There were several common themes that emerged around the topic of the organizational management of efforts towards community engagement, many related to the orchestration of funding opportunities.

Repeatedly faculty and staff pointed out their eager willingness to do extra work in an effort to build community engagement into their research and/ or teaching agendas if that work could provide the prospect of receiving future financial support to ensure the long-term sustainability those projects. The other common suggestion in relation to organizational management was the need for program managers, in order to coordinate efforts within and across colleges.

Numerous faculty expressed frustration with the difficulty of finding and coordinating new efforts around community engagement in their college because there was no single person whom they could go to for advice and support. Nearly every faculty member interviewed suggested the creation of a new full-time staff member within their college to be the ‘go-to’ person for community engagement. As an alternative, multiple faculty brought up the idea of creating additional Engaged Learning + Research Faculty Fellows, such as Rebecca Stoltzfus, and having one for each college at Cornell who could function as this ‘go-to’ person.

Engaged Learning + Research and the Public Service Center

were unclear on specifically what resources Engaged Learning + Research and the Public Service Center could offer and what types of support they could provide. Additionally there was significant variance in how faculty interpreted the term ‘community engagement’ in relation to curriculum, and many were unsure of what exactly Engaged Learning + Research aimed to do in the near future. On a related note many faculty were unaware of the programs and initiatives connected to Engaged Learning + Research and the Public Service Center and expressed a desire to be more well informed. A number of suggestions were put forward to address these issues: • Printed material from Engaged Learning + Research explicitly stating their mission, agenda, goals, resources, with definitions and examples.

• A monthly publication from Engaged Learning + Research sharing current work and initiatives on campus, and publicizing events, workshops, and highlighting a different faculty member or research project each month.

• Weekend workshops that bring together students and faculty to discuss ideas for projects, research and courses in community engagement • Development of evaluation tools and assessment methods for community engagement in design as a means to assist faculty in developing curriculum.

• Connect graduate and PhD students interested in community engagement with like-minded professors through social gathering and roundtable discussions.

• Presentations at faculty meetings as a means to identity the faculty who are interested in community engagement.

One question asked of all interviewees was how Engaged Learning + Research and the Public Service Center could help to support faculty in their efforts to bring community engagement into curriculum.

Specifically many faculty touched upon the common barriers that professors encounter, and suggested novel ideas for how Engaged Learning + Research and the Public Service Center might support professors in their efforts. First and foremost, a majority of the faculty interviewed, despite being selected for their previous efforts towards community engagement, 69

PART SIX Insights and Recommendations for Next Steps at Cornell Based on Research

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Insights and Recommendations: Next Steps at Cornell Immediate, short-term and long-term recommendations based on the research compiled in writing of this report

Thus far this report has compiled case studies of programs that bring community engagement into design curriculum, profiles of programs that provide design and planning students opportunities to engage with local communities, and perspectives of faculty at Cornell. The following section will attempt to bring these three areas of research together, along with additional anecdotal evidence from students and faculty both at Cornell and other universities, in order to suggest immediate, short-term, and longterm goals.

These recommendations identify opportunities for certain university centers, organizations, and individuals, and it is important to note that the following suggestions are not meant to single out any group or individuals, they are merely recommendations based on the research that has been compiled to produce this report. These recommendations represent the perspective of Gilad Meron, the author, and should be taken as optimistic suggestions as Cornell looks towards a future in which all design students graduate with experience engaging with communities. Along with the Public Service Center and Engaged Learning + Research, I hope that these suggestions and this entire report help to catalyze conversations among faculty and students alike and help build awareness of the immense potential design education has to impact the world.

Immediate Recommendations • Continue efforts to convene like-minded professors to discuss opportunities for collaborative community engagement efforts through monthly luncheons.

• Continue interviewing faculty members on campus to build greater understanding of what faculty feel is the most effective means to move forward. Build list of insights, novel mechanisms and potential project ideas.

• Build database of all professors’ community engagement efforts, specific research/service interests, contact information and courses taught.

• ELR, PSC, CCE and CaRDI need to produce printed materials clearly defining what their missions are, what types of initiatives they want to fund, what resources they can offer, and how they define community engagement.

• Continue making presentations about community engagement at faculty meetings as a means to build awareness and identify like-minded faculty.

• Identify key faculty members who have high potential for collaborations and bring them together at project specific luncheons.

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Short-Term Recommendations • Build formal partnership between CCE, CaRDI, ELR and PSC in order to bring together a small group faculty and staff who collectively have rich knowledge of all resources available and can collaborative access them.

• Develop top-notch website that brings all community engagement efforts, resources, knowledge and information together in one place.

• Hold social events, discussion panels, forums, and speaker series to attract faculty and students interested in community engagement and catalyze conversations.

• Provide workshops for professors who are interested in community engagement but are unsure how to build it into their courses.

• Hold weekend workshops and seminars focused on reflection, helping to emphasize the monumental impact that community engagement can have on students if they are required to engage in critical reflections afterwards.

• Connect PhD students interested in community engagement with like-minded professors through social gathering and roundtable discussions, hopefully leading to mutually beneficial collaborations.

• Develop and host workshops for faculty and students on the theories and ethics of community engagement in design education.

Long-Term Recommendations

• Develop new seminar courses in LA, Arch, DEA, CRP, and ENG that focus on discipline-specific methods for using their field of knowledge, expertise and skillsets to effectively engage with communities.

• Start a Community Design Center at Cornell

• Mandatory Freshman Engagement Seminars (much like FWS)

• Develop a collaborative Design-Build course between CRP and Arch

• Create university-wide RFP for a collaborative multi-disciplinary community engagement project that will be financially supported by the university.

• Faculty Fellows (Like Rebecca Stoltzfus) for every college

• Expand CCE Internship to have a type just for PhD students that encourages them to build community engagement into their dissertations.

• Monthly engagement newsletter, highlighting what’s going on at Cornell and helping to build awareness among professors across campus

• Work with John Forester to create a writing program that helps professors who have already done community engagement or who are currently involved in it to write articles that can be published in academic journals.

• Semester-long fellowships for faculty who want to build new curriculum or projects around community engagement

• Develop fellowships for faculty who want to develop community engaged curriculum but lack the time or resources.

• A new college of Public Outreach and Community Engaged Research

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• A minor and major in community engagement

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APPENDIX

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Resources and Reflections

Supporting materials and additional resources

• Fellowship RFP: Goals and Objectives for this Fellowship • Research Proposal: 2012 Accepted Fellow’s Proposal Essay • Reflection 1: The impact of the Fellowship • Reflection 2: Engaged Learning as a Model for Design Education • Working list of community engagement courses at Cornell • Annotated Bibliography of Public Interest Design

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FELLOWSHIP R.F.P. The Creation of the Fellowship for Social and Institutional Change at Cornell

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The Postgraduate Fellowship for Social and Institutional Change at Cornell University is a collaboration between Engaged Learning and Research (EL+R) and The Public Service Center (PSC). Through their various efforts and initiatives on campus and in communities, the PSC and EL+R work to provide opportunities for students to enrich their academic experience through public service and community engaged learning and research.

Both Centers share a common mission to ensure that community engagement and public service are an integral part of higher education, with the goal of building a generation of civically engaged and socially responsible college graduates. Through this fellowship they hope to extend those efforts beyond the confines of the undergraduate education by supporting graduates in continuing the work around public engagement they took part in as students, and simultaneously preparing them for their futures.

The Fellowship for Social and Institutional Change is designed to act as a bridge between the college years and post graduate life for select students who have demonstrated continued dedication and excellence in public engagement. The Fellowship will provide a transitionary period for exploration, education, research, and personal growth, and will prepare the Fellow for their future work as a leader in public engagement.

Through the Fellowship the PSC and EL+R will jointly support one student each year who presents an innovative proposal for continuing the work undertaken during their time at Cornell. Though topics and methods will vary widely, accepted proposals will all address three primary objectives:

•Further both PSC’s and EL+R’s vision for the future: Proposals should align with the larger mission of community engaged learning and public service •Build towards social change: Proposals should look towards future work for the Fellow, either in graduate school, career preparation or personal development •Work towards institutional change: Proposals should directly address the university wide goal of student public engagement at Cornell Accepted proposals will detail how the Fellowship will provide an opportunity for the graduate to more fully develop their own ideas to support or facilitate engaged learning. The Fellowship will begin immediately following graduation and will continue until the start of the following semester. Each Fellow will propose a unique course of action for engaging in some form of educational experience, through a formal program, apprenticeship/internship, partnership with a mentor, or self-led initiative.

Proposals should explicitly state how the summer experience furthers the work already undertaken by the student, and how it will help accomplish the three primary objectives of the Fellowship.

The culmination of the Fellowship will be a formal report/document and/or presentation by the Fellow (specific details of final deliverables will be jointly specified by the Directors of both The PSC and EL+R).

If the Fellow does give a presentation it should occur at some point during the semester following their summer Fellowship. Fellows will be expected to present a draft or outline of their final report at the end of the summer for feedback from both Directors, and will produce the final before the end of the calendar year in which their Fellowship took place. In 77

their document and/or presentation the Fellow will outline a potential initiative or course of action that builds towards the University’s strategic initiative of Excellence in Public Engagement as part of the 20102015 strategic plan. Along with this final document/ report, and any other materials/deliverables specified jointly by the directors of the PSC and EL+R, Fellows will be asked to write a thoughtful final reflection on their experience as a Fellow.

In addition, each Fellow, alongside the Directors of the PSC and EL+R, is responsible for reviewing incoming applications for the following year’s Fellowship. Once an applicant is chosen, the Fellow is to assume a mentorship role, beginning with an in person meeting with the accepted Fellow to share advice, guidance and answer questions, and will remain in contact throughout the summer. Finally, each Fellow will be asked to return one year after the completion of their Fellowship to speak with the Directors of the PSC and EL+R as a means to reflect on their experience, discuss the value of the Fellowship in its impact on their life, and to discuss how the Fellowship might be altered or improved for the future.

A basic timeline for the fellowship is as follows; applications will be submitted during the month of May, and the accepted fellow will be notified before the end of May. The Fellow will then spend the summer preparing for, and engaging in the program or initiative they’ve outlined in their application essay. Each fellow is expected to complete their program or initiative by the end of August, and is encouraged to spend 1-2 weeks after its completion for self-reflection and planning. During this period, the fellow will draft a detailed plan of action with dates for deliverables and progress reports included.

Once this plan of action is submitted and approved, the fellowship will formally begin. The fellowship is designed to have a flexible time length in order to best accommodate the fellow’s work, but as a general guideline the fellow should plan for their fellowship lasting between one and six months.

The exact length and timeline for the fellowship will be dependant both on the type of research or 78

project the fellow will be engaging in, and any other commitments the fellow has to attend to during that time.

The timeline and plan of action must be outlined generally in the application essay, but will be discussed in much greater detail once the fellow has been accepted. Both the timeline and plan of action are flexible, so applicants should not worry about making specific commitments for timeline of deliverables at this time, instead application should focus on demonstrating in their application essay that they have thoroughly thought through their project and have clear expectations for how long their project/research should take to complete.

In addition to the application essay, each applicant should submit a budget detailing their expected costs. Budgets may include expenses for the following; cost of the summer program or initiative they will be engaging in, travel costs, material costs for research, workshops, publications etc. Cost of living expenses for the 1-6 months that fellow will be working on their research/project, as well as any additional expenses directly related to the project or research. This budget will be subject to review and change by the fellowship sponsor, but is necessary for the purposes of the application as a means to demonstrate that the fellow has thought through all potential costs and can give a general predication of total expenses. Based on the proposed project, the applicant’s predicted timeline and the scope of work, the fellowship sponsors will determine how much money the fellow will be awarded. It is strongly recommended that the budget not exceed $10,000.

The fellow should also make note of any additional fellowships, scholarships of financial awards they expected to receive during the time of the fellowship and how those might impact their work.

If the project/research budget is expected to exceed $10,000 then the fellow is encouraged to speak with the fellowship sponsors before reaching out to other institutions or individuals for financial support. In addition, the fellow is expected to be entirely honest and transparent about true cost os expenses and additional income acquired during the fellowship.

Prospective Fellows will submit an application comprised of the following materials: Application Essay: This essay should address the following points, and should not exceed three pages. Applicants may structure their essay in whichever form they prefer as long as it explicitly addressed each of the following: •Describe the previous work around public engagement that you’ve done as a student at Cornell •How does this work demonstrate your commitment and dedication to public engagement and the missions of the PSC and EL+R?

Letter of Recommendation: Prospective applicants are asked to have a faculty or staff member submit a letter of recommendation on their behalf, who has observed the students accomplishments and can speak to their personal qualities such as leadership, dedication to community engagement, and general orientation towards socially meaningful work.

Resume & Transcripts: Complete undergraduate transcripts from Cornell as well as any previous institutions attended, as well as a resume.

•Why is this work important to you and how do you plan to continue it in the future?

•In what way will this Fellowship assist you in working toward your future goals, either in graduate school, career development or personal growth?

•Describe in detail the program or initiative you plan to take part in during the summer, including contact information.

•Outline your course of action for the summer and state and define all proposed deliverables.

Deliverables may range greatly and can be somewhat flexible, accepted Fellows will meet with the Directors of PSC and EL+R to determine exactly what they will produce before the Fellowship begins.

•How will these deliverables will help advance the missions of both Centers and the University’s strategic initiative towards public engagement.

•How will these deliverables have the potential to create a significant social change, either at Cornell or nationwide.

•Why are you passionate about this work and how will the Fellowship help you to become a future leader in public engagement?

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL The 2012 Fellowship Proposal Essay

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Accepted Proposal for the 2012 Fellowship Gilad Meron- Department of Design and Environmental Analysis (DEA) ‘12 In less than four days I will be graduating from the department of Design and Environmental Analysis (DEA), a program that has irrevocably changed my perceptions of what can be accomplished through design. The department is grounded in a dual foundation of design and research; our focus is the built environment, but our framework for understanding it is the social, physical, cognitive and emotional environments that comprise it.

Multidisciplinary research, critical analysis, and evidence-based design form the core of DEA, but it is our College’s mission to “improve the human condition through community outreach,” that has truly changed my approach to design. Studio projects have given me experience in working directly with various populations, teaching me to design with, not for a client. I have been continually pushed by professors to recognize design as a tool for creating meaningful impact in communities, and thus expanding my perception of the work designers can engage in.

Although I’ve been able to explore these endeavors in studio courses and seminars, it has been my involvement outside of the classroom that has given me the opportunity to begin to tackle the larger social issues I feel design has the potential to address.

Through an organization called DesignConnect, I have been able to take part in this type of work on multiple levels; as a participant, a board member, and currently as the Co-President. DesignConnect is a multidisciplinary student-run service organization that partners with local municipalities, non-profits and individuals in upstate New York to provide design and planning services to communities without the means to hire professionals. DesignConnect pairs

student teams with clients and community partners, and strives to empower both through a collaborative process and a mutually beneficial relationship.

As a participant I was part of a team that worked with the town of Owego, NY to advise the redevelopment of a vacant lot on Main Street, a site of longstanding neighborhood contention. I gained a tremendous amount from participating in the project, but it has been my continued involvement with DesignConnect that I believe demonstrates my commitment to and leadership in public engagement. Last year I was asked to join the DesignConnect Board and I accepted in large part due to the transformative experience I had as a participant. The challenges that the project presented forced our team to confront some of the most fundamental questions of how design is practiced in the public sector. These questions soon began to pervade my work in other courses and throughout the semester I found myself reframing my approach to design through the lens of public engagement and social impact. The entire process shifted my perspective of what design could be used to do, and more importantly how I wanted to practice design.

I joined the board because I felt impassioned to help provide the opportunity for other students to have an equally transformative experience. This is the goal and the mission that I have continually worked towards for DesignConnect, both as a board member and president. I believe DesignConnect is a process, not a product, and over the past year I have pushed our board to recognize this. The organization has, and always will be, an opportunity for students to engage in community service and real world projects, but it 81

has far greater capacity. DesignConnect can change the way students think about their future careers by building within them an awareness of the potential they have to create a meaningful social impact through design. I feel it is both crucial and critical for students to have these experiences during their college years, when they are still imbued with a certain moral authority; a sense of what should be done.

in public engagement through design, outside of the university. This Fellowship will allow me to pursue this work by being a participant in a summer program that is focused on community engaged design.

DesignConnect’s model of engaged learning is one I believe can be applied to many educational settings, and deserves an important role in the pedagogy of higher education. I have worked to advocate for such change as a member of Human Ecology’s Educational Policy Committee and the Dean’s Undergraduate Advisory Council, and will continue these efforts as a graduate student here at Cornell. I also played a key role in the re-branding and re-birth of The Knitting Club (previously Student for Service Learning), and the organizing of an inaugural symposium, including moderating a panel on student engagement. The Knitting Club will continue next year and will work to connect engaged students on campus and build a network of student organizations interested in engaged learning. Most recently I was also awarded the Flora Rose Prize for Leadership in Public Service.

All of these experiences have led me to recognize the value of public engagement in higher education, and demonstrate my commitment and dedication to the missions of both the PSC and EL+R.

“The Public Interest Design Program connects advanced students interested in the built environment and public service with leading practitioners in public design, and equips them with the tools needed to create beautiful, sustainable, and community-enhancing spaces. In this program, students develop skills to leverage the practical and ethical complications of public service as a means to heighten the quality of their work by seeking innovative design solutions that positively impact larger social problems.”

This type of work has not only been an integral part of the college education, but will be an integral part of my future as well. I have been accepted to the graduate school at Cornell where I will be pursuing a M.S. in Human Environment Relations.

My thesis work will involve direct engagement with underserved and overcrowded public schools in New York City, with the goal of developing low-cost high-impact spatial pedagogies. I plan on using this thesis to build a foundation for future work that can demonstrate the potential design has for impacting both educational environments and teaching methods. I have chosen to defer from the program in order to better prepare myself and gain experience 82

The summer program is based at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture (UTSoA) and is called Public Interest Design and will run from late May until late July. As stated on their website;

The program also aims to contribute to the larger national discussion of how public design might be integrated into curricula. Faculty and staff of UTSoA hope that this program can serve as a hub for innovative thinking and will offer design students the opportunity to investigate firsthand what it means to be a public servant.

As an active student on campus in various organizations and initiatives around engagement, particularly related to design, I believe Cornell can work towards a similar mission. As part of this Fellowship I plan to investigate the Public Interest Design Program at UT Austin, and gather institutional knowledge on how the program was formed, what support it had and how it was all brought together, as part of a case study. I plan on staying in Austin after the completion of this program to accomplish this work.

This effort will include a critical analysis of the program after having completed it, assessing the organization and structure of the program as well as the process and final product and interviews

with the head organizers. This assessment will include a personal reflection on my experience in the program and provide recommendations based on my assessment, as well as examples of the work completed through the program by myself and other participants.

After leaving Austin, I will complete a broad survey of other universities who have similar programs, i.e. community engaged design. This survey will be used as a means for benchmarking and understanding what currently exists. Although it will not include highly detailed descriptions of each program, I will attempt to interview program coordinators from each university and provide and snapshot of multiple programs to give a sense of what else is out there currently.

design community as well, and has the potential to significantly change the way design is practiced. We must support the future leaders of that movement by giving them the opportunities to use design as a tool to engage with communities while still in school. This fellowship will allow me to more deeply and critically investigate opportunities to make this happen at Cornell and position Cornell as a leader in engaged learning through design. I believe that providing engaged learning opportunities for young adults while they are still in school and forming their perceptions of the world is the key to building a future in which the professional world is oriented towards not only financial gains, but social ones as well. I hope that through this fellowship I will be able to begin working towards this goal.

Finally I will return to Cornell for a short period of time during the Fall ’12 semester to do an inventory on campus. This will consist of cataloguing all the faculty/staff who might be key players in engaged learning and talking with each individually. I will also survey all related students organizations, key student leaders, and look into any grants or monies available, and any other resources that might help.

This inventory will be organized and compiled such that it can be used by PSC and EL+R in the future as a resource. Through the process of compiling this inventory, I hope to bring together a few new ideas about how engaged design can be supported and facilitated here at Cornell. All of this; the case study, broad survey, and inventory will be compiled in a final report and accompanied with a final presentation that will bring together all key stakeholders and potential resources for a meeting to discuss the future of engaged design at Cornell.

As both the PSC and EL+R are actively trying to increase public engagement among students, I feel this Fellowship will allow me to add to these efforts by looking directly at engaged design. I know that currently there are the beginnings of a shift in perspective of what design education should be, both at Cornell and nationwide. This shift is one that is taking place within the professional 83

REFLECTION ONE The Impact of the Fellowship

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Gilad Meron was selected as the recipient of the 2012 Post-graduate Fellowship for Social and Institutional Change at Cornell University. The following is a reflection written by Gilad one year after receiving the fellowship, discussing his experience, what he gained from it, and the impact it’s had on his future.

A little over a year ago I had no idea what I was going to do for a job. It was the end of my senior year and I was seriously questioning whether the idealism of my college projects could translate into a career. I had been involved in a number of community-based design initiatives on campus, and I knew that I wanted to work at the intersection of design and social impact, but didn’t quite know what my next step was. Although I had a strong intuitive sense that it was possible to build a career in this emerging field of “social impact design,” there were no road maps. The more I looked the more evident it became that there was still a lot I needed to learn about the field I wanted to pursue. Around that time, I discovered a program at the University of Texas at Austin called Public Interest Design: “The Public Interest Design Program connects advanced students interested in the built environment and public service with leading

practitioners in public design. Students will develop the skills to leverage the practical and ethical complications of public service as a means to heighten the quality of their work in seeking innovative design solutions that positively impact larger social problems. The program will offer design students the opportunity to investigate first-hand what it means to be a public servant and explore how public design might be integrated into university curricula nationwide.”

Although I still wasn’t sure what my next step would be, I knew that this program would help me find it. I applied for the Fellowship for Social and Institutional Change simply as a means to afford the Public Interest Design Program, but now looking back on the whole experience, I realize that I gained just as much from the fellowship as I did from the program itself. The fellowship truly had a transformative impact on my future. It gave me the time and space to develop the skills, knowledge and confidence I needed to forge my own career path.

The research I undertook during my fellowship allowed me to connect with many of the leaders in my field and gave me the credibility to doing so. I interviewed dozens of professors and practitioners and listened to their stories about what worked and what didn’t and why. I heard their perspectives 85

on what they thought was most important, and I gained valuable insights from each of them. What surprised me though, was that they were most interested in hearing what I had to say. They wanted to know what I had heard from others, and wanted to know what I thought about it all.

I began to realize that although the purpose of my research was to gather valuable information from my interviewees, I was simultaneously developing my own area of expertise. I began to see patterns and gaps, identify common barriers and strategies for overcoming them, and slowly test and refine my ideas. The fellowship not only provided me credibility in reaching out to leaders in my field, it positioned me as an emerging leader myself.

I quickly transitioned from a student who was interested in the field of social impact design, to a graduate who had unique knowledge about the field’s development and potential future.

The knowledge I gained and the network I built through the fellowship opened countless doors for me and provided multiple job opportunities, but it did even more for me personally. It put me in an incredibly autonomous position, one in which I was solely responsible for every aspect of my work. It forced me to hold myself accountable for all my work, and pushed me to higher standards. Most importantly, it helped me develop a greater capacity for self-discipline and confidence in my abilities.

The fellowship allowed me to develop these personal competencies, which in turn allowed me to forge my own career path, focused on exactly what I am most passionate about.

At the same time, the research I undertook helped further prepare me to pursue that career by arming me with knowledge. It allowed me to develop a deep understanding of how universities can partner with local residents and municipalities to engage in community-based design programs, and it gave me insights into how those programs can work to increase the capacity of individuals and communities by addressing issues such as social justice, public health and neighbourhood 86

revitalization, all through the design of the built environment. Maybe most importantly, it taught me that there is tremendous potential for community engagement to act as the catalyst for transforming higher education’s role in today’s society.

All of this; the expertise I developed, the knowledge I gained, the personal growth I experienced, all of it comes back to the simple fact that the fellowship gave me time; time to research exactly what I was most passionate about. Those six months shifted my perspective about how to approach my future career. It gave me the space to become comfortable with risk and uncertainty, and I was able to realize that not having a road map was actually a good thing because it forced me to become independent.

Looking back on the past year, I can trace everything I’ve done back to the fellowship and what it provided and engaged me in, and I could not be more thankful. This fellowship literally changed my life, and I hope it will continue to do the same for every future fellow.

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REFLECTION TWO Engaged Learning as a Model for Design Education

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This reflection stemmed from the following prompt by Professor Paul Eschelman:

responsibility and a passion for using design as a tool to do good in the world.

There were several intentions/learning outcomes Gary and I hoped students would gain from the collaborative studio. For me an important component of the experience was to learn more about the power of evidencebased design. I wanted students to grow in their appreciation for and understanding of the role valid and reliable information plays in the formulation of innovative ideas. Did this growth actually occur for you and for others?

To the extent that this growth did occur, reflect on what aspects of the course structure and process enabled this growth. Conversely, if growth did not occur, or it occurred at a lower level than you hoped, what were the obstacles?

What were other unanticipated positives and negatives for you in the experience? What suggestions can you offer for improving the educational nature of the experience? To what extent do you feel the DEA 2500/3301 collaborative studio is a useful model for other courses in our department and other interior design, interior architecture, or architecture programs beyond DEA and Cornell?

I believe that often times teachers feel somewhat disheartened and discouraged at the end of a semester when their students fail to fully demonstrate a complete understanding or appreciation of the core lessons they were trying to teach. From the students’ perspective, your studio was a prime example of this; we felt as though we had just barely finished our project and felt like we were not really coming away with anything from the semester. Yet over the course of the next three semesters, we continually referred back to practices we had learned from your studio. By our final semester, I think most students in my studio would openly acknowledge that although your studio was one of the most frustrating and challenging (in ways we had not been challenged before) it was ultimately the studio that had the greatest impact in directing our education, and did in fact build within us an understanding of evidence based design (although we may not have fully practiced evidence-based in your studio). The experience allowed us to see how powerful information can be to the design process. It forced us to think about how design and research are truly interdependent, a lesson that stayed with us. In that way, I feel that your studio is the first in the eight studio sequence that actually teaches our department’s philosophy.

Response and Introduction First of all, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to candidly share my thoughts and opinions. Your studio was one of the most influential (not only for myself but for others in my studio as well) in developing a practice of design that acknowledges research and reliable information as the primary means to inform the design process. More importantly, the experience of working with an organization dedicated to helping underprivileged children was pivotal in awakening within each of us a

In many ways I see similarities between the process my class went through in your studio and the process participants go through in the student organization I’ve been leading called DesignConnect. Primarily, I’m referring to the fact that in both there have been significant “failures” but often times students report that those were the experiences they learned the 89

most from and the experiences that had a real impact on their lives and futures. The second major similarity I see is the necessity to end the failures. Although students learn from experiences regardless of their outcome, they are often disheartened and discouraged (at least in the moment) when they recognize that a project is not going to turn out the way they had originally envisioned. As a result, students lose motivation and fail to sustain a dedicated work ethic. This, in turn, actually results in the final deliverable being of a lower quality than it could have been.

Recognizing this as a shortcoming of DesignConnect, I’ve led our Board to critically assess the entire organization, from project selection and schedule, to board composition and faculty involvement. This needed to be done because although DesignConnect was functioning, it was in no way performing to its true potential. We had to recognize that as a responsibility to our student participants and our community partners, it was time to take a step back and reevaluate what it was we were actually trying to do and how we were going about doing it. As a past student, passionate supporter of design education, and a perennial critic of everything I am a part of, I see DEA 2500/3301 in a somewhat similar position as DesignConnect. Although Studio V is a progressive model of what design education can be, it fails to perform to its true potential.

I want to preface the following reflection by reiterating that all my comments are meant as constructive criticism. I believe that Studio V has the potential to be the guiding force of the department; the studio through which students first grasp what DEA is really all about. I provide this reflection as a means to help push the studio in that direction.

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Overarching Theme: Rigor From my experience as a student there is one constant that I have come to recognize as the single most important attribute of a great teacher, a continued dedication to a culture of rigor- continually high expectations and demands. I believe it is only through this type of educational environment that a student can rise to the occasion and show their full potential. Moreover, as an ‘insider’ I can report that students want to be pushed, and generally have greater respect for teachers who do so. It is in the nature of the student to complain and push back against demands and do as little as possible. But on the inside, they know what they’re being forced to do is good for them and they finish the semester feeling satisfied and with a sense of accomplishment.

This type of relationship is similar to that of a parents and child; the parent must be harsh with the child at times, reprimand them and force them to do things they may not want to do or things they may not see the value in doing like eating spinach or doing chores. Regardless of what the child thinks at the time, the parents does what he or she believes is best for their child. I feel the relationship between student and professor should be somewhat of a parallel. This is not to say that a professor should be expected to unendingly attempt to motivate students who are simply unmotivated.

Instead a professor should simply be setting continuously high expectations for all students and demand high quality work across the board, it is then up to the student how much or how little they choose to engage. In this way, the professor is encouraging the students to function at the boundaries of their capabilities and to expand beyond what they are already capable of, a sort of indirect scaffolding.

I know there are sound arguments to this type of pedagogy, but I firmly support it and would openly defend it, particularly in design education where so much of a student’s growth and development depends on their ability to self-motivate and exercise self-discipline in their work.

Studio V requires a higher level of rigor in order for students to understand and appreciate the critical role information and research play in design. This is extremely important when looking at the studio chronologically. It is the first of junior year, and as such should be a clear delineation between underclassmen and upperclassmen. There should be an expected dramatic increase in quantity, quality, and depth of work done by students. This is the only accredited program in the Ivy League, and as such students should be held to an extremely high standard. More importantly, such an increase would send a message to the students that, from this point on, they will be expected to think, analyze, design, and evaluate at a higher level than ever before. This push towards greater rigor, towards higher expectations and higher standards is the underlying message in all of the following reflections.

1 - Evidence Based Design If the goal of studio V is for the student to “learn more about the power of evidencebased design…. to grow in their appreciation for and understanding of the role valid and reliable information plays in the formulation of innovative ideas” then I think there needs to be more direct education addressing this, particularly in the form of lectures, readings and discussions. From my experience, the

concept of evidence-based design (EBD) was loosely explained at the start of the semester.

Although a fair amount of students had already been introduced to the term, there was never a clear explanation of it addressing it from a deeper and more analytic and academic level.

One of the principles of EBD is the interdependence of research and design; the iterative process necessary to integrate the two are the critical component of developing an interdisciplinary practice. As such, I believe it is important to better integrate the two courses from the beginning of the semester.

By conveying to the students that this will be a dynamic process of collaboration between the two courses, they will be better prepared for what is expected of them. More importantly, an innovative model for a class like this will excite students and invigorate them, particularly at the start of the semester. There were efforts towards this with the collaborative class in which we built towers out of newspaper and donned badges or sunglasses to show if we were Warriors, Visionaries, Critical Thinkers, or Nurturers. This was an excellent ‘kickoff’, and was extremely important for building social ties between the classes and getting us to feel comfortable working with one another, but there was no follow-up and the planned collaboration seemed to end there.

In looking at how this might change in the future, I feel there should be more participation on the part of 3301 in the process of research and development of design guidelines, and there should be more participation on the part of 2500 in the process of design development.

In short, it is important for the students in both class to actually develop relationships around their shared work, and be willing to give one another critical feedback. I elaborate more on 91

how the two classes could be better engaged in a collaborative process in the third section titled “Collaboration Between Classes.�

In looking more directly at the structure of the semester for students in 3301, I have a few suggestions for alterations to the curriculum, first of which would be the addition of a series of lectures on evidence based design to be given in the first three weeks of the semester, supplemented with related readings and seminar-style discussions. I can presently identify three primary topics for lectures; introduction, analysis, and case studies.

An introduction to the topic and emerging field of evidence based design will set the tone for the semester. This lecture should elaborate on various definitions of evidence based design and what they mean in there respective contexts as well as in the broader philosophy of design. In addition, there should be emphasis on why this discipline is important and how it is the core of what DEA believes in. The goal of this first lecture should be to convey both how and why evidence based design should be students’ primary lens for approaching the design process during the semester.

A second lecture would go more in depth into what evidence based design is by reviewing the various methods and techniques that have been developed and used by firms and designers.

The lecture should take an analytic look at methods that have been used in the past and give a broad survey of various tactics employed in the practice evidence based design. The goal of this lecture should be to begin building a toolbox or set of techniques with which students can begin to use in approaching design challenges through the lens of evidence based design.

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A third lecture would review multiple realworld case studies of evidence based design with a focus on breaking down each example; analyzing, critiquing and evaluating it. Both best and worst case practices should be reviewed and analyzed, thus the lecture will focus on highlighting both what works and what does not. The goal of this lecture should be to give students practice in critically assessing evidence based design and be able to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate practices.

These three lectures are what I would identify as a minimum for an introduction to EBD. I think there can be much more shared with students to further engrain the concept and allow them to better assimilate it into their evolving individual design practices. I would have one lecture per week, as not too overload students at the start of the semester. To supplement these lectures, students should be given readings that build upon the concepts that lecture focus on.

Additionally, students should be required to do individual research and find examples of evidence based design that appeal to them, which they would then present to the class in seminar-style discussions. This would serve a dual function of engaging students by allowing them to find examples that interest them particularly, and by sharing these with the rest of the class each students is able to build a broader understanding of evidence based design.

Time will of course become a factor, as it is in everything, which is why I would critically assess the usefulness and degree of learning that results from the corner project. I do want to acknowledge the importance of the corner

project for multiple reasons; it provides the opportunity for an introduction to the woodshop and construction methods and power tools. It gives students the chance to design and build something themselves at full scale, and it is one of the projects that students have come to expect as a “constant” in the department and thus is something we all have done and can share common ground about. All that being said, in its present form, the project does not add to the education of and evidence based perspective or approach to design.

If evidence based design is to be the focus of Studio V, then it should be the focus from day one. This does not necessarily mean getting rid of the corner project, but it does mean adding a significant more amount of work at the beginning of the semester. There is quite a bit of literature out there on EBD and I think it would be great to have students read more of it in the first weeks of the semester. I think students should be given one reading for each class (two readings per week), which I think is entirely reasonable considering studio is a five credit course. Through these readings students should be asked to think critically about evidence based design and how it plays a role in the design process.

Also, throughout the semester each student should take a turn leading a once-a-week group discussion around the issue that was most relevant to them. I’m not sure exactly how this would work out but I think it’s very important for students to lead discussions around relevant topics and practice defending their points of view as a part of design education. Bringing in outside speakers can also be very powerful because typically studios become very inclusive, thus bringing in an outsider tends to signify a high degree

of importance and grab students’ attention.

I’m sure there are many people who practice evidence based design who could be brought in as a guest lecturers for a day and possibly even run a workshop.

Lastly, in trying to grow the students’ appreciation of EBD, they must be held accountable for actually accomplishing it. They should be pushed to incorporate research, information and data into their designs, and be asked to defend their designs and explain how they’ve done so. Although many students in my class did recognize this, it was more of an afterthought; we did not explicitly use the EBD process during the semester. I think in large part that was due to the fact that we were not asked to justify our decisions during the design process. I recognize that as part of design pedagogy it is very important for students to realize that no one is going to hold them accountable for anything and they need to do things on their own. But I feel these two lessons are mutually exclusive. Either you put student through a gauntlet, through which they actually practice evidence based design and thus gain an appreciation for it, or you give them the freedom to make their own choices and hope that they realize the power of evidence based design. In my opinion, the former is a more effective means of education.

All of these suggestions also fit well with the model of our department preparing students for work in the professional design world.

Evidence based design is arguable the most important discipline/skill for students to be trained in and can be applied to a broad spectrum of future work opportunities. If there is one thing that all students leave our department with an understanding of, it should be evidence based design.

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2 - Critical Reflection, Critiques & Growth For me, critical reflection is the single most important part of design education and the most effective means towards sustained and meaningful growth within students. More importantly, it is an aspect of design education that is not nearly prevalent enough in DEA. Although this applies to nearly all of DEA, I will frame this following in terms of Studio V, but it should be noted that I could describe a similar situation in many other courses in the department.

If a student does not use the EBD process, but over the course of the semester has gained some subtle or implicit awareness of what it is, a group discussion and/or written reflection has the potential to solidify in their mind that lesson. In design education in particular, critical self reflection is, and always should be, a crucial component the pedagogy. By facilitating a ‘studio culture’ in which students openly provide constructive criticism for one another while simultaneously reflecting on their own work, students will begin to understand the iterative nature of the design process. The practice of evidence based design is (not surprisingly) uniquely well suited to this type of iterative process. To address this directly, I would advocate for more critiques in a variety of forms; as a whole class in the traditional critique model, in small groups, as individual peer-to-peer discussions, and individually with the professor, all of which would be supplemented with written reflections and student-led group discussions.

Critique and reflection are especially important in the case of perceived failure. I’ve witnessed in DesignConnect multiple instances of student teams essentially failing in the project 94

goal, either because of lack of collaboration with the client, group dynamics or some other unforeseen circumstance. But when we engaged those teams in conversations about their experience and encouraged them to reflect on the semester, they openly voiced their conviction that they learned a great deal from the process, despite the perceived failure.

As a requirement of DesignConnect, they are forced to give a final presentation in which it is their job to stand up in front of a group of students and faculty and explain why the projects did not turn out the way it was intended to. But they are also given the opportunity to defend themselves, to explain why things went wrong, and how they’ve learned something from the project. The process of preparing for such a presentation is, in and of itself, a reflection and can build towards significant growth and maturation in a student. I believe that a similar type of mandatory presentation for a design studio should be the standard at the end each semester. By setting expectations from the first day of class, students will alter their work modes because they are forced to recognize that they will be held accountable for their work, not merely by a grade, but by a public presentation.

It is not only important for student to do this on their own, but to do so as a class as a means to facilitate peer group learning. Ideally critique sessions provide an opportunity (and safe and comfortable environment) for students to give feedback to one another in order to expose the shortcomings of a project as a means to help improve it. By doing this each student will be able to incorporate multiple perspectives into their design work. At the same time critiques are an opportunity for students to develop their skills in critical analysis and constructive feedback, as well as public speaking skills.

3 - Collaboration Between Classes Collaboration between 3301 and both 2500 and the client was, in my opinion, at a minimum for evidence based design, and could be significantly bolstered. There are multiple ways to address this problem, not all of which can be employed at the same time, but various methods could help, below are a few examples of things that could be done.

• The 2500 students should be more involved in 3301, design student should have to present to them and be critiqued by them. If they really are to play the role of “behavioral consultants” then the role should not end with creating design guidelines. Similarly, 3301 students should critique rough drafts of the design guidelines that 2500 students produce.

• There should be at least two lectures by Gary that are specifically geared towards both 2500 and 3301, and 3301 student should have to attend those. This goes along with the idea mentioned earlier about their being more lectures and education during studio time. The two courses overlap in time purposely so that the 2500 student can come into 3301 studio, why is this a one-way relationship? 3301 students should also go into 2500 a few times as well.

• 3301 students should also be doing research, and should play a role in the formation of the design guidelines. It felt strange that we were the designers yet we had no role in the design guidelines. Furthermore, because we were not involved, we ended up not trusting all the research given to us (2500 students should also be responsible for compiling a detailed bibliography of all sources used in creating their design guidelines, which should be shared with 3301).

• 3301 students should have more interaction with the clients- in this case that would have been the teachers at HeadStart. If the whole concept of the studio is evidence based design, then students should have to collect, sort, analyze and incorporate information that they’ve gathered, via site observations, interviews, measurements, and any other means to collect data. 2500 and 3301 should be equally immersed in this process of data collection as a means to ensure more integrated evidence based design.

• There should be two in-process presentations to the client by 3301 so that they can give critical feedback during the semester. This will build a stronger connection between the students and the client and better acknowledge the way in which real evidence based design should be practiced.

• Students should be encouraged to start exploring ideas early on; they should be given some optional assignments over the summer via email to encourage them to start thinking about and exploring evidence based design.

(Alfred did a good job of this with our studio by sending us a few emails over the summer that simply encouraged us to think broadly about the major themes that we were going to be asked to grapple with during the following semester) • There should be at least one session on group dynamics once teams have already formed.

Possibly getting an outside speaker to come and work individually with teams to help them develop modes for collaboration and parallel work. The goal of these sessions should be to help student teams establish their own unique model for working collaboratively based on individual personalities and work styles.

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4 - Collaborative Studio as a Model DEA often identifies itself as a department through which students get a truly interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary education, but that does not appear prominent in our studios and other core courses. Although some professors emphasize the potential that interdisciplinary design has, few lead studios such that students have the opportunity to practice it. Various courses touch, tangentially, upon other related disciplines such as landscape architecture, human development or green building systems, and while students are often encouraged to explore how their work may have reciprocal relationships with fields, it is extremely rare that a studio or course has a requirement to actively merge interior design with another discipline.

That being said, there are still multiple examples in the department of effective interdisciplinary design education and there is tremendous potential for more deeply interdisciplinary design studios that will simultaneously improve the quality of work students deliver, the process they go through to get there, the pedagogical structure of the department, and the resulting Education that the student receives. I will highlight five examples in DEA, not including Studio V, commenting on each and providing specific feedback aimed at improving the experience for students and professors alike. I will also offer suggestions of future collaborations. (Note: I am mentioning only studio courses but I believe there is potential for other courses to adopt similarly innovative models.)

DEA Studio III: Spatial and Lighting Design As the first studio of sophomore year, and as 96

such the first that moves beyond the learning goals of the ‘foundations year’, this studio is particular important for setting the tone for the rest of the studios. Various students and professors alike have acknowledged the lack of student dedication to their studios, often comparing them to architecture programs which in comparison are more time and work intensive. This commitment of time and effort are, no doubt, the decision of the student, but in an academic setting, the professor has the ability to set certain expectation, which in turn the students will in most cases respond positively to. Particularly in a case such as this where already-talented students are being brought into their second year of the only Ivy League interior design degree in the country.

As such, if professors demand a high quality of work and effort, students will respond, they will rise to the occasion.

As the first true interior design studio in the DEA degree, Studio III should be a broad introduction to theory and practice of design.

This means continuing the theoretical basis of the studio, but adding practical requirements, such as detailed construction drawings, and high quality presentations of their work. Some professors might criticize such high demands, citing the fact that as sophomores, most design students do not have the capabilities to produce such work. This claim is not only underestimating and undervaluing the students abilities and resourcefulness, it is undermining the very principle of a design education.

Designers should be taught to be problem solvers, in any way possible and by any means.

If students do not know how to complete construction documents, then it is part of their assignment to research the topic and figure it out. The professor would of course be there to aid them if they encounter a roadblock, but

the primary responsibility is on the student.

As a long time student I firmly believe that this method is effective and that students will in fact respond positively to these high expectations, as long as they are presented in a transparent manner. By transparent I mean explaining to students from the first day exactly what I have stated in the previous two paragraphs.

Although I do not believe that there is much room for Studio III to be run as a collaborative model, I do think there is room for greater acquisition of practical design skills, particularly construction documents; plans, elevations, sections and details. Not only will an early introduction to CDs give students a leg up for future studios, it will give them a better foundation as a versatile designer who understands the feasibility of the designs they produce, and can engineer innovative solutions through their designs. Furthermore, by introducing students to CDs at an early stage, they will gain a skill set early on that will help empower and enable them to do the type of sophisticated and detailed work that they will be expected of in future studios. In the context of the typical projects done in Studio III, this means requiring students to draw detailed theoretical construction documents for their wall dwellings and full-scale installations. I believe specific attention should be paid to each student’s ability to produce structurally sound designs and understand how their designs would hypothetically be built in the real world.

It should be noted that this approach is not untested, it is in fact very similar to a third semester architecture studio, in which students are required to produce copious amounts of drawings to prove their firm understanding of the design of the built environment. As our mission statement clearly stipulates, the department works to “inspire innovative design

that can improve the interior environments in which we live our lives.� In my opinion, a firm understanding of how those environments are constructed is essential to that goal.

DEA Studio IV: HealthCare Design Focuses in large part on healthcare design... meanwhile, there is an entire section of the required DEA 1500 course (Introduction to Human Environment Relations), which deals with research in healthcare environments, thus there latent collaboration between the two. Particularly with the Writing in the Major section of 1500, which presents an ideal partner course through which students could act as behavioral/design consultants for studio IV. This relationship would not only facilitate a more integrated design process, but would simultaneously prepare DEA students for working with behavioral consultant in preparation for studio V, and similarly benefit the students in writing in the major by enriching their educational experience through introduction to related disciplines, and give greater value to their work through its application in studio.

On a related note, I happened to take HD 1150 (Introduction to Human Development) at the same time as DEA 1500 and there were countless connections between the two which I feel demonstrate the sort of synergetic learning experience that our department prides itself on. I believe these two classes should not only be required, but be required to be taken in tandem. This concept of courses being taken at the same time whose material is parallel to one another is a model I believe should be adopted at various points throughout an education.

This integration and merger with other courses 97

in our college would, undoubtedly place greater demands upon professors, but they too will reap the benefits through a class filled with more engaged students. Our college so often prides itself on breaking free of the “silo approach” to education that so many others take, yet we ourselves do little to push this new integrated model forward. I propose that DEA takes the lead in this effort and demonstrates to the rest of the college and the rest of the university the power of engaged learning.

DEA Studio VI: Retail Design Part of this studio, at least while instructed under visiting professor Alfred Byun, was the design of a business model for a retail store.

The meant students gained an understanding of how a company would open its flagship store and all the decisions associated with it. Alfred really pushed our studio to think beyond typical retail and challenged us to design a “new retail typology.” This was a great prompt and really got the entire class to think more deeply about what retail was and what it could be. In the end nearly the all students in the class had projects that were oriented around some form of positive social impact, rather than purely commercial. All clearly demonstrated an attention to interior design as a critical factor in the success of the business.

This was an excellent experience and more importantly introduced many students to the idea of non-profit businesses and how design can play a role in the public sector. Not only should this be encouraged more in studio, but a collaboration with business student could help DEA students better flesh out their business ideas. Professor Deborah Streeter runs multiple courses that I think would align very well with Studio VI and I have the feeling she would be more than happy to collaborate.

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The future of design is a merger with business, and the department should be better training and exposing student to this merger while they are still in school. There are already a few courses that are bringing the two fields together and there will be many more in the near future. In the same vein, its very important that students are given an experience in designing contextually relevant projects. It has been my experience that potential employers would much rather see a design that took into account real world context than something beautiful that is entirely unrealistic. I think this can be a strategic approach on a departmental level. I recognize this is a somewhat radical progression from the approach DEA has taken in the past, but the department must continue to evolve and stay current with the design world if it is to remain a top program.

DEA Studio VII: Adaptive Re-Use Design As the second to last studio in the degree sequence, I feel it is important for students to expand their understanding of interior design and the larger context in which it’s practiced.

Rhonda has developed an excellent practice of selecting a real building and site for students to engage with. Unfortunately, students are given the freedom to design entirely ‘within a bubble.’

There are no realistic financial constraints or socio-geographic constraints, or any other factors that would play into a real world adaptive re-use project. If the department wants to give students practical experience in adaptive re-use design, then Studio VII should have a significant focus on urban planning and the real-world factors that come into play when developing, designing and building in an urban context. The type of background research that would be required can significantly direct and impact the design process and lead students to projects that are contextually relevant.

That being said, this type of research takes a significant amount of time and energy, and Studio VII is already quite work intensive. Thus, there are potentially great opportunities for collaboration with multiple City and Regional Planning courses. CRP students could act essentially the same way 2500 students do with Studio V, but rather than playing the role of behavioral consultants, they would play the role of urban redevelopment consultants. This would be a great experience for students in both courses because CRP students would have the chance to see their recommendations realized in design, and gain an appreciation for working with designers. At the same time DEA students would be producing much more contextually relevant designs, and thus have a better understanding of real-world adaptive re-use projects. Currently the adaptive re-use studio is an opportunity for student to freely explore and design whatever they want, and there is no reason why it can not remain that way, I am simply suggesting that it be done within the confines of real world constraints.

DEA Studio VIII: Client Focused Design The final studio in the degree sequence, rightfully so, acts as somewhat of a transition into the professional world. I know from consulting with many recent alumni that I speak for all when I say that Lecturer Leah Scolere has brought a real-world sensibility and practice-based mentality to Studio VIII that has been extremely well received by students. Most recently she implemented a “practice-based studio model� which has both invigorated students and better prepared them for professional careers. I believe the model should be further developed and continued in future semester, as well as critically assessed by someone other than students.

Despite its success, I believe there are still areas for improvement in this model. First, there is a continual tension among students as we are constantly unsure whether or primary goal is to learn or to serve our client.

I’m not sure which is correct, despite many long conversations with fellow students, but regardless the issue must be addressed and resolved. Second, if Studio VIII is to continue with the quantity of work that was required in the spring of 2012, then future classes should be strongly advised to not take more than 9 additional credits beyond studio during their final semester. Third, we were instructed to act as a traditional practice and work with our client, yet we were not given total transparency on the project, which in turn led to miscommunications at times and certain unnecessary difficulties on our part that could have been avoided if the relationship was better planned and the deliverables agreed upon before the start of the semester.

Despite any shortcomings, this studio was an extremely valuable educational experience, in multiple respects, and should be continued in future years. I would personally recommend that the department reach out to Leah Scolere to help design a more permanent course structure for future professors to build off of and add to. In terms of it functioning under the collaborative studio framework, I believe it is a slight evolution. Rather than a studio that provides collaboration with an outside course or entity, it focuses on internal collaboration between classmates. This is an undeniably important skill to learn, particularly in the transition from school to work. I believe in future years there should be greater emphasis and time placed upon efforts to teach students how to work collaboratively in efficient and effective ways.

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Working list of Community Engagement Design Related Courses at Cornell *Note: This is a working list, there is currently an ongoing effort to compile a list of all courses at Cornell related to community engagement, for information please contact Engaged Learning + Research.

Design and Environmental Analysis DEA 1110- Making a Difference By Design DEA 2500- The Environment and Social Behavior DEA 3301- Interior Design Studio V DEA 4300- Furniture as Social Art DEA 4530- Planning and Managing the Workplace DEA 4590- Programming Methods in Design DEA 6420/6421 - Design Immersion City and Regional Planning CRP 2000- The Promises and Pitfalls of Contemporary Planning CRP 5072- Structural Barriers to Equity in Planning CRP 6430- Affordable Housing Policy and Programs CRP 5170- Economic Development: Firms, Industries, Regions CRP 5090- Community Development Seminar CRP 6640- Economics of Financing of Neighborhood Conservation and Preservation CRP 5074- Economic and Community Development Workshop CRP 5300- Neighborhood Planning Workshop CRP 6311 – Consulting for Nonprofit and Government Organizations CRP 5610- Preservation Workshop: Survey and Field Work CRP 5640 - Building Materials Conservation CRP 5660 - Preservation Workshop: Work Weekend CRP 5670- Measured Drawings CRP 5450- Inferential Statistics for Planning and Public Policy CRP 5130 Introduction to Planning Practice and History Human Ecology HE 4080 – Fieldwork in Diversity and Professional Practice HE 4800 – Participatory Action Research HE 4903 – Community Participation and Service in North Brooklyn HE 4922 – Action Inquiry in Service with Community HE 4923 – Service, Professional Practice, and Leadership Horticulture HORT 2200 – Practicing Sustainable Landcare HORT 2400 – Exploring the Small Farm Dream HORT 3200 – Experiential Garden-Based Learning in Belize 100

HORT 1110 - Collaboration, Leadership, and Career Skills in the Plant Sciences HORT 2410 - The Art of Teaching HORT 3200 - Experiential Garden-Based Learning in Belize HORT 3320 - Educational Programs in Agricultural Science HORT 4040 - Engaging Students in Learning HORT 4050 - Engaging Students in Science Learning HORT 4400 - Restoration Ecology Landscape Architecture LA 4860- Place making By Design LA 1420 – Grounding in Landscape Architecture LA 2020 – Medium of the Landscape LA 2620 – Laboratory in Landscape Archaeology LA 4020 – Integrating Theory and Practice : Community Design Studio LA 6010 – Integrating Theory and Practice I LA 6020 - Integrating Theory and Practice II Architecture ARCH 3402- Architecture as a Cultural System ARCH 3409- Undergraduate Investigations in Architecture, Culture, and Society ARCH 3402- Architecture as a Cultural System ARCH 6308- Urban Forms of Plurality ARCH 6819- Architectural Urbanism Human Rights ARCH 6819- Design For the Crowd ARCH 4509- Special Topics in Theory - Praxis: Community Design Civil and Environmental Engineering ENG 4550 – AguaClara: Sustainable Water Supply Project SYSEN5700 – Cornell University Sustainable Design Communications COM 4560- Community Involvement in Decision Making COM 6660- Public Engagement in Science Education EDU 2200 – Community Learning and Service Partnerships EDU 2400 – The Art of Teaching EDU 3350 – Youth Organizations and Leadership Development for Agricultural Science Education EDU 4040 – Engaging Students in Learning EDU 6680 – Narrative Inquiry in Social Science and Action Research EDU 6820 – Community Education and Development Anthropology ANTHR 3462- Democratizing Research

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Thank you to all those who contributed to this report.

For any questions, comments or feedback, please contact: Gilad Meron gzm2@cornell.edu

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