It’s been a great start-of-semester and welcome-back here in Dublin. I’ve been settling back in at TU Dublin, since the first of the year. I’ve been learning to juggle a host of new job responsibilities along with my favorite existing projects. There’s so much work to be done!
In addition to teaching first-year engineering modules/courses, I have also been helping launch the new MSc in BIM, working on curriculum development (which buys out half my work time), finalizing research projects for publication, and drafting my final report for the 2018-12019 fellowship I had to UCL.
I’ve also attended a host of special events:
- The launch of TU Dublin’s new strategic plan
- A two-day conference on “Rethinking the Crit” in architecture and design education.
- Tech support workshops for staff on Brightspace and Agresso
- Personal wellbeing workshops for staff on insurance and personal finance.
- A planning sessions with our ever-expanding RoboSlam team preparing for Dublin Maker 2020 (June 2020) and our upcoming Engineering Your Future week (May 2020)
TU Dublin’s new Strategic Plan
The unveiling of the strategic plan was quite well organized and inspiring. The speakers and panelists all did a great job explaining the shared aspirations of our academic community. I hope the details are as well done as the vision they presented.
Soon, I’ll read the plan and see how it matches up against the evaluation rubric I published back during my doc studies, which you can download here.
Chance, S and Williams, B. (2009). Assessing University Strategic Plans: A Tool For Consideration. Educational planning: the journal of the international society for educational planning, 2009, 18(1), 38-54.
The take-home message of the strategic planning launch was that TU Dublin values diversity and inclusivity. The student voice was clear, strong and impressive. The leaders were well-spoken.
TU Dublin’s workshop on “Rethinking the Crit”
I attended a hands-on conference alongside architecture students from all over Ireland as well as teachers and critics from Ireland and abroad.
The workshop was organized by my College’s office for Learning Development, under the direction of Patrick Flynn, our Head of Learning Development. In many places, his role would be called Vice Dean for Academics, but DIT (the parent of TU Dublin) tended to do things its own unique way.
As I’m part of a team developing a brand new Architectural Engineering curriculum, this conference on how to improve the studio jury system was of great value to me. That Arch Eng course will graduate people ready for architecture licensing.
One of the presenters, Dr. Kathryn Anthony, literally wrote the book that got this conversation rolling: Design Juries on Trial. It was published in 1991 but there’s still a lot more uptake needed of her ideas across the globe. She collected data at Hampton University, where I used to teach, and at HU we used many of the techniques she proposed—with great success.
I hope to use techniques we discussed to help improve architecture education near and far.
Ireland by Chance 