TEACHING + LEARNING CULTURE @ THE A-SCHOOL
BACKGROUND + PROCESS:
The UVA Architecture Department Teaching and Learning Culture Policy Document (TLCP) is a statement of shared values, aspirations and expectations. Each accredited school of architecture is required by the National Architecture Accreditation Board (NAAB) to have a public, written policy describing and guiding its teaching and learning culture. UVA Architecture encourages creativity and intellectual evolution and relies upon a university-wide culture of mutual respect, trust, and student self-governance. We recognize that this document will require ongoing interpretation and entrust the students and faculty in each course to interpret and seek feedback on the teaching and learning processes, parameters, and channels of communication specific to their course and learning objectives.
VALUES:
UVA School of Architecture (UVA SARC) students, staff, and faculty reaffirm and support the values articulated by the AIAS Teaching and Learning Culture Task Force report in 2020. These values are: Optimism, Professional Conduct, Constructive Evaluations and Instruction, Collaborative Community, Health and Wellbeing, Time Management and School-Life-Work Balance, Diversity and Solidarity, Respectful Stewardship and Space Management, and Well-Rounded Enrichment.
These values inform the following topics surrounding our teaching and learning culture.
THE FULL TLCP DOCUMENT CAN BE ACCESSED HERE (DRAFT ONLY).
Excerpts that highlight the primary topics included are shared below —
IDEA EXCHANGE + EXPERIMENTATION:
UVA SARC aspires to maintain an environment conducive to idea exchange and experimentation. We model the confidence and humility to truly learn from other ideas, respect each other’s work, and create a learning environment that is more than the sum of its parts.
Experimentation is integral to design and scholarly excellence and requires conspicuous support of risk-taking, empowerment of creativity and new approaches, and the fostering of intellectual curiosity. Students, staff and faculty strive to balance the design of possible futures with the importance of conveying current professional conventions, norms, and knowledge.
SPACE, EQUIPMENT AND MATERIALS:
Our physical, virtual, and social infrastructure is built to support participation in multiple forms of intellectual development and creative processes. Students share productive social spaces meant to foster peer-to-peer learning. Students, staff, and faculty are invited to take advantage of opportunities and spaces of exchange by maintaining a presence in the school, making work visible, fostering dialogue, providing constructive feedback, respecting and acknowledging the work of others, and taking care of shared spaces and resources.
All members of the School of Architecture will respect the rights of others; this includes the property of other individuals, groups, and the school. Much of the space in Campbell Hall serves multipurpose functions and requires the academic community to display etiquette and common courtesy to enable these spaces to support all formats of teaching and learning.
Faculty and administration should ensure that materials, tools and space needs to complete assignments are available and accessible to students, with consideration of lead times and costs.
ROLE OF STUDIO:
The design studio is a place where students learn by doing. It is a space that captures our values and displays the collaborative idea exchange and experimentation of students and faculty. Studio is a central component of the Architecture curriculum: the studio is the place where students research, propose, test, develop, and present design propositions that synthesize material from a diverse range of sources.
Every individual project contributes to the School's design culture and the open studio environment enables this design culture to be visible and celebrated. Students are strongly encouraged to work in studio and benefit from and contribute to this crucial collective dialogue.
FEEDBACK:
Feedback is a critical element of learning and growth in a professional and educational environment. Feedback comes in many forms at UVA for students, faculty, and administration. In the classroom, feedback may come in the form of discussions, critiques, reviews, and/or traditional academic graded submissions.
When providing feedback, faculty, students, and guests are expected to find constructive ways to strengthen the work by elucidating ideas or methods that they may not have explored, making correlations between other projects, or by providing insight from their background and expertise. In any of these formats, students are responsible for on-time submission of work or presentations, and engagement with the entire discussion, critique, or review process. Faculty are responsible for facilitating constructive critiques directed at the work and not the individuals and fostering opportunities for all students to engage in learning during collective learning or review events. This learning community understands the difficulty of evaluating qualitative creative production with quantitative grading but will do its best to be fair and evaluate work without bias. Student organizations are one of UVA’s most important venues for student to faculty feedback.
CREATIVE PRACTICES AND BALANCE:
Creativity thrives with a healthy work-life balance. The school encourages healthy work habits and teaches skills to help students prioritize and use time efficiently and productively. To facilitate healthy balance, faculty are expected to state all expectations, requirements, and deadlines in a clear manner and to work with their students to ensure that these are achievable. All classes require rigor and time to maximize learning, and no single course or studio should overwhelm other academic obligations. Students are expected to prioritize learning and engagement across all classes in proportion to course credit hours. Faculty should ensure that learning expectations and time commitment are appropriately scaled to the course's credit hours.
The School of Architecture encourages care for one’s wellbeing outside of class. Students are encouraged to raise concerns about course deadline conflicts early and directly with course instructors. Concerns or considerations can also be raised to faculty mentors, program directors, chairs, and/or student representatives.
ACCESSIBILITY AND INCLUSIVITY:
The most vibrant learning environment welcomes far reaching perspectives, ideas, and backgrounds. Our teaching and learning culture is motivated by our commitment to the university as a space for cultivating democracy, one dedicated to “the sustained, critical rethinking of our institutional policies, practices, and structures.” All students and faculty are expected to be familiar with the school’s JEDI Initiatives and its implications for course content and learning and teaching culture.
A critical element of accessibility for architectural education is affordability, and management of the costs of printing and supplies for courses reliant upon creative production. Faculty are expected to clearly communicate required supplies and associated out-of-pocket cost estimates with advanced notice to enable student planning. In addition, faculty are expected to plan their assignments to ensure that out-of-pocket costs do not exceed a portion of the university’s annual books and supplies estimate in keeping with the course’s proportional credit hours.
All members of the UVA SARC community are responsible to maintain a safe community on Grounds. Power-based personal violence will not be tolerated. Any member of our community affected by power-based personal violence can find information on the Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights webpage that describes reporting options and resources available and direct access to the Report and Incident tool.
STUDENTS IN DISTRESS:
Services for students in various forms of distress are offered by Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) in the Elson Student Health Center. The embedded CAPS counselor for the School of Architecture is Dr. Lisa Bermeo. She will be joined by Dr. Rachel Berry (currently on leave) in the spring 2023 semester, with both counselors working part-time. During evenings and weekends, emergency crisis assistance (434.972.7004) is available. In addition, if you are concerned about another student, call 434.243.5150 during business hours, and request the consulting clinician. Resources for wellbeing are found on our website.
COMMUNICATION AND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS:
The School of Architecture encourages an atmosphere of mutual respect among students, staff, faculty, and administration, in studio, in reviews, in classes, and in the School in general. The School supports an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity, where new ideas and multiple points of view are encouraged. The School promotes cooperative understanding and views the studio and classroom to be a place where architectural ideas are discussed and debated, and where contradictory viewpoints can co-exist.
In today’s academic and professional environments 24/7 communication is facilitated by the availability of many messaging platforms, however students, faculty, staff and administration should adhere to respectful communication hours when sending time sensitive requests.
As a public institution, the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture strives to be as transparent as possible. In this context, student participation in faculty meetings, curriculum reviews, and search committees is encouraged. Administrative decisions impacting the curriculum or pedagogy will be explained to the student body in a clear and timely manner.
HONOR CODE:
Students are often expected to work collaboratively and learn from one another. Within this context, work presented and submitted by a student is presumed to be authored by that student or clearly noted as collaborative or drawing upon the work of others. Students are expected to use citations in accordance with class citation style guidance for written and graphic work to clarify authorship.
The goal of the University of Virginia Honor Code is to build a community of trust across the University community. More information on Honor Code can be found at: https://honor.virginia.edu/.
PROCESS OF IMPLEMENTATION AND REPORTING:
A committee composed of equally-empowered students, student leaders, faculty, and administrators will revisit this document periodically in order to stay connected and attentive to our academic community. This committee is also responsible for interpreting the document and considering grievances, suggestions and discussions, and may be advised in the event of greater violations. The TLCP is always available to the public via the school’s website, and will also be distributed to students, as well as discussed during Fall orientation each year. Complaints can be submitted to the TLCP Committee by emailing and scheduling a meeting with the department chair or program director.