ARCH4000 Spring 2009 Grades

I have submitted grades for the one hour ARCH4000 acculturation course. Assume that the remaining two credit hours of this course will be run with great clarity, simplicity, and care. We're making a great class for you and we're excited about teaching it. The remaining two credits will be assessed with clarity of intent and an alignment of content and outcome. We look forward to working with you all this summer and delivering a pair of courses that are academically challenging, clear in intention, and managed in a professional and straight-forward manner.

You will not be pressed for your participation this summer. You will not be "forced" to grow professionally and intellectually through this coursework. Both of these courses will be driven by your daily performance of design, communication, and intellectual knowledge based exercises in architecture. Your performance will be informally evaluated and noted on a daily basis. We will not encourage or cajole you to participate if we see a lack of engagement and performance. If you don't perform in these courses and perform to the expected and articulated standards we set out then you'll be able to perform to that standard in this coursework at a later date. That's not punishment. That's a chance to make certain that you are learning and will be productive, ethically upright, intellectual, and professionally skilled architects.

The only way you will find us confronting you about your work in this course is when we find you impeding our teaching or the performance of a classmate in the coursework. The first time we find this the case we'll talk to you about it and ask you to take a leave from the class and classwork to reflect. The second time, as is outlined in the university's "Civility in the Classroom" documents, you will be dismissed from the course permanently with a grade of either F or W, depending on where in the calendar someone were to step across the line twice. I assume that this will never happen. We can assure that it will not by not even coming close to where the line might be. Err on the side of civility and professionalism in all that you do in an academic setting. Once across the line there's not claiming ignorance or misrepresentation. You are too mature and intelligent for that to be true.

Our role in the summer's coursework is to deliver to you, through an acceptable medium and method, a clear and simple set of lessons in architectural education that are focused on urban issues. Beyond that, at times, we'll try to enliven your experience in the city by pointing things out and illuminating key events. That's not core teaching but is our personal interest in seeing you get the same sort of study abroad experience that we all three were offered in our days in school. We all must keep those roles separate and clear.

You are responsible for the acceptable personal performance and daily engagement with the course material. You are responsible for adding as much as you take from the group dynamic and learning environment we all construct. We are going to engage you through teaching and assessment of your learning. You are going to engage us through performance and learning in the material set out. Its going to be a great summer experience. We're going to make coursework and events that will be challenging and stimulating.

See you on the mountain in a few weeks.