NCARB Prize Overview

To support NCARB’s mission of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public through effective regulation of the architecture profession and development and administration of the Architect Registration Examination® (ARE®) and the Intern Development Program (IDP), the Council regularly conducts a practice analysis of the architecture profession. The practice analysis obtains psychometrically valid and legally defensible data about the tasks performed by architects and the knowledge and skills that are necessary to adequately perform those tasks.

NCARB’s 2007 Practice Analysis of Architecture underscored the findings of Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice (The Boyer Report) and identified specific examples of the disparity between practice and education. It identified five domains and over 100 knowledge/skills that the profession rated as important for recently licensed architects practicing independently. Seventeen knowledge/skills were identified as being acquired after licensure, despite the fact that all were designated as essential for recently licensed architects practicing independently. NCARB noted in the NCARB Position Paper for the NAAB 2008 Accreditation Review Conference that 12 of these knowledge/skills that are currently being acquired after licensure would be most appropriately and effectively addressed at the educational stage of an architect’s development:

    Domain 1. Predesign
        •    Project financing and funding
    Domain 3. Project Management
        •    Project budget management
        •    Construction conflict resolution
    Domain 4. Practice Management
        •    Legal & ethical issues pertaining to contracts
        •    Legal & ethical issues pertaining to practice
        •    Business planning
        •    Strategic planning
        •    Financial management
        •    Risk management
        •    Marketing and Communications
        •    Contract Negotiations
    Domain 5. General  
        •    Entrepreneurship

All 12 knowledge/skills were in Domains 1, 3, 4, or 5; there were no knowledge/skills in Domain 2 (Design) that were noted as most appropriately and effectively addressed in education.
 
Architecture programs interested in submitting projects for NCARB Prize 10 were encouraged to study the 2007 Practice Analysis of Architecture and The Boyer Report for examples of specific areas in which the academy can bridge the gulf between education and practice to better prepare students for internship and future careers as architects.

Assessment of projects submitted for NCARB Prize 10 was based upon the project’s effectiveness in integrating practice and education in the academy and meeting the following objectives:

• Integration of non-faculty architect practitioners* in the education of students
• Creation of innovative concepts and methods to integrate practice and education
• Achievement of immediate and continuing impact on student education and development
• Recognition of and response to specific needs of the students, the school, and the profession
• Effectiveness in responding to relevant issues identified in the 2007 Practice Analysis of Architecture and in Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education (The Boyer Report) as they relate to specific needs and criteria
• Likelihood of the project to serve as a model and to be adapted and/or adopted by other faculty and other architecture schools

* Non-faculty architect practitioners were required to hold current registration in a U.S. jursidiction (See the Registraiton Board Licensing Requirements for a list of current registration requirements and links to all 54 U.S. jurisdictions' registration boards). Non-faculty architect practitioners were not required to be registered in the same jurisdiction in which the architecture school is located and non-faculty architect practitioners were not required to be in the same physical location as the architecture school as long as means to ensure the involvement of the non-faculty architect practitioners are evident. Non-faculty architect practitioners were not allowed to include any faculty members (adjunct, visiting, part-time or full-time). Verification of all non-faculty architect practitioners’ registration status must have been submitted with the project documentation.