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March 2006

Diversely Qualified Faculty Desirable in Design Programs
ASLA's White Paper Promotes Inclusion

Washington , DC —Professional architectural organizations—including the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) and others germane to the profession—have signed the American Society of Landscape Architects' white paper, “ Sustaining a Diversely Qualified Faculty in Design Programs.”

ASLA's white paper encourages developing and applying broader measures to assess scholarly contributions in accordance with each faculty members' role in their department. It identifies this approach as inclusive and more desirable in delivering a professional curriculum and in administering an academic program. To contrast, the paper compares an inclusive approach to one that is two-tier, recruiting practitioner-based faculty to non-tenure track appointments and research-based faculty (typically with doctoral degrees) to tenure track appointments.

To cover this discussion, the paper presents three main points:

• Academic faculty with diverse opportunities and responsibilities for teaching, creative work, scholarship, and service will most likely further multiple institutional missions by representing a broad-range of backgrounds and interests.
• Academic, professional, and licensing organizations each contribute to the design disciplines and their academic programs.
• Design programs should require faculty inclusive of practitioners and scholars to tenure and non-tenure track appointments, in which all faculty members remain current in their discipline and active in one of four scholarship forms (discovery, integration, application, and teaching).

Organizations that have signed ASLA's white paper—sent to institutions of higher learning that grant degrees in the design disciplines—hope that the principals represented may be helpful toward sustaining a diversely qualified faculty in design programs. The list of these organizations includes: the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA), the Landscape Architectural Accreditation Board (LAAB), the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), and the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards (CLARB).

For full text of this white paper, click here.

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About NCARB
NCARB comprises the architectural registration boards of all 50 states as well as those of the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. NCARB assists its member state registration boards in carrying out their duties and provides a certification program for individual architects.

The mission of the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards is to work together as a council of member boards to safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of the public and to assist member boards in carrying out their duties. In order to achieve these goals, the Council develops and recommends standards to be required of an applicant for architectural registration; develops and recommends standards regulating the practice of architecture; provides to member boards a process for certifying the qualifications of an architect for registration; and represents the interests of member boards before public and private agencies. With the Committee of Canadian Architectural Councils (CCAC), NCARB has also established guidelines for the reciprocal registration of U.S. and Canadian architects.