Raising the bar

Portland State architecture students will soon be able to compete fairly for jobs and graduate school opportunities after graduation.

The five-year-long accreditation process of PSU’s Department of Architecture will soon end.

Although PSU will not receive the official verdict until February 2013, Clive Knights, chair of the Department of Architecture, believes that the visits “went very well indeed.”

In order for a student to eventually become a licensed architect, he must first receive a degree from a school with an architecture department that has been accredited by the National Architecture Accrediting Board.

The student must then complete graduate school, participate in a three-year
apprenticeship under a licensed architect and pass a nine-part architecture exam known as the Architecture Registration Exam.

PSU students will benefit from accreditation in several ways, Knights said. Both Knights and PSU President Wim Wiewel agree that the program’s application process will become more competitive.

“Without [accreditation], a program can’t attract students,” Wiewel said.

“Once professional accreditation is attained, PSU students will find themselves on par, nationally, with other full professional programs across the country,” architecture professor Rudy Barton said. He also noted that accreditation will allow PSU students looking to continue their architecture studies to stay in the state rather than seek accredited graduate programs elsewhere.

Knights also believes that accreditation will lead to more opportunities for PSU architecture students than if they were graduating from a non-accredited program.
Another benefit is that there is a common standard for all NAAB-accredited schools. These schools share similar curricula and internship opportunities, providing a more standardized education.

The accreditation itself is a long and complicated process that spans four to six years over three visits.

The first visit by NAAB, in February 2008, is referred to as the candidacy visit, and determines whether a school meets baseline qualifications.

The second visit, the continuation visit, took place in February 2010 and tracked PSU’s progress.

The last visit took place from Sept. 29 to Oct. 3, 2012. Each visit takes much preparation, but the final visit was crucial, Knights explained.

Professors in the architecture department are guided to ensure that they are staying on course for the accreditation while meeting PSU’s standards.

Knights was required to draft a 75,000 word report that serves as the program’s self evaluation and discusses the department’s resources, facilities, students, staff, opportunities and more.

One of the most tedious and time-consuming aspects of the process is archiving student work. NAAB visitors were shown examples of projects that represent the work of architecture students.

Knights and his fellow faculty were asked to produce student work on both ends of the achievement spectrum, ensuring that the sample “is as illustrative of students’ criteria” as possible, Knights said.

The visit ends with the accreditors sharing their impressions with the public. Students received special recognition for “quality—not just of their work, but of their community and their sense of mission,” Knights said.

“The faculty feels great and validated. We took great pain over the last year, especially the summer, to provide the visiting team with the clearest insight into our program, and it worked seamlessly,” Barton said.

Wiewel believes that accreditation “firmly establishes PSU’s architecture program as what will become one of the nation’s leading urban architecture programs.”