by Tracy Ostroff
Contributing Editor

How do you . . . prepare students for the realities of practice?

Summary: With heightened awareness of the job market they are about to enter, architecture students are increasingly taking advantage of academic courses that broaden their practice management skills and business acumen.

“Having a successful practice is more than being a good architect,” says Brian Kenet, a consulting principal at EFCG, a boutique investment banking firm providing financial and strategic advisory services to architecture, engineering/consulting, and environmental firms. He also is a lecturer at the Harvard GSD, where he co-teaches “Leading the Design Firm,” an elective course supported in part by a grant from RMJM.

The RMJM program aims to encourage more architects to enter the profession by training them to integrate business management principles and knowledge of advanced technologies with design skills to improve project delivery, client satisfaction, and bottom-line results. The firm believes the leadership and business skills being taught in the program will be valuable to students in the current economic climate, says Neill Coleman, RMJM’s communications director.

Kenet says his course helps students respond to both the aesthetics and economics of practice. Some of the course subjects focus on creating a firm, setting up shop, and how to differentiate a practice from others. “It’s easier to be successful if you can integrate design skills with business management skills.” He says students leave with a knowledge of basic and strategic concepts of firm management so they won’t be learning for the first time on the job; will in time make better bosses; and have a greater understanding of what firm leaders are thinking, making them better team members and eventually more capable managers.

The Harvard course may be an indication that interest in practice management is swelling. When Kenet and his teaching partners first offered the class in 2006 it had 20 students. It doubled to 40 in 2007; 2008 enrollment was at about 60. Students gravitate toward the topic when there is a significant downturn in the economy, Kenet says. The program is not meant to replace an MBA degree, but is a sampler of the issues that emerging architects will face in their first years of practice and beyond.

Good design, good business
Kenet notes the investment in practice management skills, either during architecture school or later in practice through the GSD’s “Design Firm Leadership Conference,” set for September 23-25 of this year, is what can make or break a firm in difficult economic times, sometimes as much as common organizational paradigms, such as size or breadth of practice. “When times are tough, weaknesses make or break a firm ... It’s a good way to teach students that finances and good design are not antagonistic to each other.”

Scott Poole, AIA, director, of the College of Architecture + Design, at Virginia Tech, says: “Traditionally, professional practice classes have not been well received by students. That said, over the past decade, we have seen a big increase in the interest in professional practice. I couldn’t make a generalization for other schools, but I know how we changed students’ perception.”

He points to the work of a Virginia Tech colleague Kathryn Albright, AIA, to strengthen the link between practice and the academy. “Kathryn Albright, who is currently an assistant director of the school, tried to energize the course by bringing in practitioners to do case studies. For example, one of our Advisory Board members was brought in to do an exercise with students in which they presented a project to the board. She did this in a number of ways, bringing in practitioners from all over the country, who were as interested as the students.”

Chicago Studio: works two ways
Another one of Virginia Tech’s strategies is to sponsor a Chicago Studio that integrates education and practice for fourth-year design students. The semester is composed of alternating study and residence in the city and campus, including two three-week stays in Chicago’s Loop. Initially, each team of students creates a collective master plan for one of three sites. Then, each student designs one of the master-planned buildings.

In Chicago, where the firm has a large alumni base, a rotating roster of host firms, which have included Murphy/Jahn and Perkins+Will, take in two or three students for each studio. Local practitioners critique student work and help them navigate the political and business realities of the design process. At the same time, students get a taste of the role of Chicago’s political leaders in the urban design process.

In the end, the purpose of the studio is not only to give students real-world experience, but to build links with the participating firms. “The thought was those firms might support this program, and they have,” Poole says.

The program also provides employment opportunities. “Since we started the studio, we keep track of how many students get jobs,” Poole says. “Most are offered jobs while they are there as students, and about half the students who participate in the Chicago studio are still in Chicago. Because we work with different firms, the students will apply for a job where a friend was working. And when we do reviews, members of the different firms will sit on the juries and see students who are working in another office. They might contact them and offer them a job. It works two ways.”

Going forward
Poole highlights the disconnect between practice and academia. “Students who leave school are expecting an environment like they had at the university. They want to see that the firms are interested in research and development, that they are interested in up-mentoring, and that they are interested in what the students know and what they can glean from the students. And the students also want to walk into the firm that is far advanced from what they know. They are really ready for learning with new tools, and maybe firms really aren’t prepared for it at the moment.”