Stephen White, AIA

Spring 2008 Message From The Dean

2007/08 is a significant year for “Looking Back and Looking Forward” at the School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation. The Architecture Program is 25 years old this year, the School itself was conceived 10 years ago, as the only undergraduate school of its kind combining creation and conservation in Architecture, Art and Architectural History, Historic Preservation and Visual Arts Studies.  It has been 10 years as well since the Historic Preservation program won the RI Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission’s Fred Williamson Award, for its outstanding contributions to the state since the program’s founding in 1976. We can look forward now with our origins and many founding faculty still present, and gather founding ideals and scale into what we have become--a school celebrating both creation and conservation, local and global contexts, in a university that is diversifying and becoming more international in its outlook. 

The program and the school as a whole have achieved several notable national firsts—including being the first US Architecture professional degree program to be founded within a liberal arts college, at what was then Roger Williams College (now a comprehensive liberal arts university); and with the first and still the only undergraduate historic preservation program in the US to be located within a school of architecture.

Looking Back, several important new undertakings were begun this year that further enrich the school, and will continue to define us into the future:

• We celebrated the 25th Anniversary of the Architecture program in October 2007 in a weekend conference where founding alumni and faculty joined current students, faculty and supporters. We have come an enormous distance from where we were in the early 1980’s,  when students being bussed across the Mount Hope Bridge to studios in a former middle school in Portsmouth, RI, to the outstanding studios and facilities we enjoy now, and with our graduates and faculty engaged across the country and the world. We are no longer a young program (!), and take our place in the national evolution of architecture education, with increasing attention to issues of sustainability, integrated practice, and new leadership paradigms including global practice models.
• Visiting Professorships have been established in Architecture and in Visual Arts Studies, along with a Teaching Firm-in-Residence program in Architecture. Brian Healy of Brian Healy Architects is spending the year at the School, and Bruno Pfister of Kallmann McKinnell & Wood visited in Fall 2007 to teach in the Master of Architecture program.  Each have come to the school while in the midst of distinguished practices and with extensive teaching experience at schools such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, Washington University and others. Janet Pihlblad from Washington DC is our first Visiting Artist, spending the year teaching, offering a gallery show, lecture and installation this Spring. Our Spring 2008 Teaching Firm in Residence is Perkins + Will, with John McDonald and Patrick Cunningham leading the graduate studio here. Both Kallmann McKinnell & Wood and Perkins + Will have won the American Institute of Architects Firm of the Year Award.
• The SAAHP Futures Access Network has been launched in Fall 2007, a program where leading practitioners and resources come to school to meet with students regarding employment opportunities and career development. Students prepare for these visits from firms and foundations that occur on a roughly bi-weekly basis through portfolio preparation sessions led by faculty and alumni.

Looking Forward, we have much to aspire to through the continuing evolution of the school and university to new levels of achievement. These include in the immediate year ahead:

• Improvements to the Art Building this June, followed by the University’s hosting a Collaborative Arts Initiative in July.
• Scheduling of our first Summer Academy in Art for HS Students July 6-August 2, paralleling the very successful Summer Academy in Architecture that has been offered here for 12 years, which is an exciting program that prepares students to be outstanding applicants for college programs.
• Establishment of graduate coursework across the school with new topical coursework in Art + Architectural History, Historic Preservation and Visual Arts Studies beginning in Fall 2008, taught by distinguished Visitors and SAAHP Faculty.
• New faculty positions including establishment of a Visiting Professorship in Art + Architectural History, an expert in Asian Art +Architecture in Art + Architectural History, and in Architectural Design + Professional Practices. These broaden the scope of the School, and increase our reach to global history and emerging practice paradigms.

Essential elements of the school’s core beliefs continue, supporting the University’s mission as a liberal arts university with a global perspective.

• The SAAHP maintains our commitment to Freshman teaching, with many of the SAAHP’s most outstanding senior faculty teaching introductory coursework across the school’s majors. 
• Our notable Community Partnerships Initiative continues regionally and internationally, where students and faculty address urgent planning and architectural problems in concert with municipal, regional and other non-profit groups. Notable recent efforts have been led by Professors Ulker Copur in Turkey regarding and Edgar Adams in Massachusetts, which will result in forthcoming publications. Students in Historic Preservation are beginning a partnership project in Providence this semester
• Continued support for national and international faculty and student travel is provided for coursework, which in recent years has included travel to Athens, Barcelona, Boston, Chicago, Istanbul, Mexico City, New York, Paris, Washington and notable sites for art, architecture and preservation around New England.
• Lively Public Events Series of Lecture, Exhibitions and Conferences are scheduled throughout the year, this year including our distinguished visiting faculty to a significant degree, and culminating in the SAAHP’s annual International Fellows Program 11-12 July 2008, on Sustainable Urban Conservation with a distinguished panel of internationally renowned preservationists and architects.
• National and International recognition for our faculty is increasing with faculty involved significantly this year in activities in Turku, Finland; Copenhagen, Paris, Ahmedabad, India; Istanbul, Athens, Mexico City, San Francisco, New York. 

We hope that the constructive spirit that exists here between the people, programs and contexts we engage with will encourage you to participate in the life of the school. Thanks to everyone who has been part of establishing the Architecture Program and the School thus far as we look ahead, balancing creation and conservation, past achievements and future potentials

With best wishes,

Stephen White, AIA
Dean, School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation