Course Coordination

Course Coordination is a critical activity of the department, especially where a large contingent of the department’s instructors are part-time faculty. I authored and served as the coordinator for our first two building technology courses in our four course sequence since 2012. These courses are among the most challenging to teach in our department due to both the rigor of the courses but also their position in the first two semesters of the degree program. While they focused on technical skills development, the students were often unclear about the discipline in general and if they were sure it was the right path for them. The new students often lacked the skills and prior knowledge to be successful in these courses. As coordinator, I worked with the faculty cohort teaching these courses to adjust the curriculum, recalibrating it to give them the foundation they need.

Some of the adjustment of these courses were driven by the Provost’s request to identify opportunities to integrate General Education skills and learning in courses in the disciplines. This effort built on my growing expertise in Gen Ed integration through my two fellowships on the Living Lab Grant project as well as my continued involvement in Gen Ed initiatives across the campus. I worked to apply Place-based Learning and Reading Skills Development as integral parts of these courses.

From my perspective leading these courses, I proposed a more significant modification to address student struggles with these courses as part of our development of the BARCH degree program. I worked with the Accreditation Executive committee to adjust our curriculum and shift the sequence back one semester so that we could add a new course in the first semester of the program called Intro to Architecture ARCH 1100. This course now serves to help students understand the discipline and make a decision about pursuing the degree before they begin the technical sequence.

In addition, with our BARCH degree program development, we revised our technology sequence once more. I authored the new Building Technology I ARCH 1231. I also stepped down from authoring and coordinating the second building technology course as the shift in the course content to high performance wood construction would be better addressed by Prof. Aptekar who led our Solar Decathlon project, which serves as a case study for that course.

I am currently the course coordinator and author of ARCH 1231 Building Technology I ,a role I have served in since fall 2017.

For all of these courses, I took the initiative to develop rich OpenLab sites that provide a wide range of resources for both faculty and students, including a sample syllabus, lectures, case study base information, assignments, rubrics, textbook links, materials/supplies lists, e-portfolio startup info, Blackboard orientation, and examples of previous student work.

I also include resources for READING and NOTE-TAKING.

In my early years in the department, 2009-2012 I was also coordinating or co-coordinating the following courses:

ARCH 1100 Drawing I

ARCH 1140 Materials in Architecture

ARCH 1200 Drawing II

ARCH 1240 Methods of Construction

Evidence: 2011 Fall Coordinators List