College of Built Environments at the University of Washington.
Message from the Dean
Fall 2011
Two thousand eleven marks the start of the University of Washington's 150th anniversary year, so it is a double pleasure and honor to welcome you to our small corner of the campus. Among the many responsibilities we share as part of this great enterprise is continual reassessment and reaffirmation of our core mission, which is to prepare our students for effective and fulfilling careers across the broad spectrum of built environment disciplines — architecture, construction management, landscape architecture, real estate development, urban design, urban planning, and all the tributaries of scholarship and specialization that flow from these powerful vocabularies. I can think of no more capable academic leaders in this mission than our four distinguished department chairs — Jeff Hou, Dave Miller, John Schaufelberger, and Qing Shen — and I encourage you to visit each of their department's websites to learn more about our internationally celebrated faculty and students, and about their many newsworthy activities, awards, and achievements.
One item deserves mention without delay. This past spring the American Society of Landscape Architects elevated Professor Daniel Winterbottom to its august Council of Fellows, "among the highest honors a landscape architect may receive, conferred upon individuals in recognition of exceptional accomplishments over a sustained period of time." We salute Professor Winterbottom, whose lifelong leadership in the areas of health and community landscape design, landscape craft, and design/build have brought significant luster and distinction to our college and university. Hearty congratulations to Daniel and the entire top-ranked Department of Landscape Architecture, which I assure you has many future Fellows in the queue.
Professor Winterbottom's determination to raise the conscience of design exemplifies a tradition of community-engaged scholarship that runs deep through all our departments and disciplines. Take for example CBE alumna Sylvia Tatman-Burruss (CEP '10), who last spring sent us this inspiring report on her experiences in Ajo, Arizona, where she works as a AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer:
Two days ago I sat outside of my neighbor Paul's house as he dangled one Marlboro Slim after another from his fingers to his lips. Paul is about six-feet-two-inches tall, with a white beard, blue eyes, and a distinguishing looking cane to match his very distinguished gait. Paul believes whole-heartedly in space aliens, for which I certainly can't blame him, or even find cause to argue. As he smoked, he showed me plans of an alien space ship landing site that would utilize the Cornelia Mine pit with an accompanying conference center. Paul has a desert tortoise named Gracious, whom he keeps as a companion.
As I neared the end of my Budweiser, Paul made his way to his feet and showed me to the shed where he keeps the bikes he has kept for far too long and is now ready to donate to the bike cause I'm working on, where a group of us provide assistance to kids after school in partnership with the Pima County sheriff's department and the Border Patrol.
The story of Paul isn't really to make fun of aliens, though I still chuckle at the "UFO's WELCOME" sign in his window. And it's really not about bikes, though I do love them dearly. What it's really meant to do is illustrate that in nine months of living in the desert, (1) I know myself and my talents much better (2) to be able to be of some service to a community worth loving and who love me back, (3) combined to leverage friendships and resources toward a kind of common betterment.
What else have I learned? Community development is really hard. What have I gotten myself into?
I have signed up for a second year as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer. I think I more or less have the place figured out. I hold positions in two major community groups in town; I play on a softball team; I am dating a Border Patrol agent; and I am a member of a welding co-op here in town.
This year's upcoming projects include: a housing market study of Ajo, much like the project I did in Jamestown, NY; bike sculpture welding, using bikes found in the desert and local artists who like public art; a youth photography program in which I teach at-risk kids to analyze the community around them using black-and-white film; community radio, to bring diverse groups together toward a common goal; and designing metrics for community development organizations within the state of Arizona. For this project I will be working directly with Dr. Tracy Taft (Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford), who helped start Neighbor Works.
I am now very curious about how to measure success in community development. How can these metrics be developed for each individual community? The simpler answer is not always the right one. Is creation of more affordable housing really the best solution? How do we know? Are jobs really the problem, or is it something deeper? What is the story?
Graduate school is starting to become clearer; what a difference a year makes.
Sylvia's story perfectly embodies the values and philosophy of our award-winning interdisciplinary undergraduate Community, Environment, and Planning curriculum in the Department of Urban Design and Planning, which through novel administration and pedagogy aspires to an alternative educational experience "fully lived, not passively taken."
Finally, UW's 150th puts us in the right frame of mind for CBE's own centennial, which arrives in just a few years. As most of you know, CBE began its life as a curriculum in architecture, which the university approved in AY1914-15. According to our esteemed historian and emeritus professor Dr. Norman J. Johnston, FAIA, the 1963 black-and-gold invitation celebrating our fiftieth anniversary described an all-day occasion at the HUB: "a time for inventory, a time for projection, and a time for comments and questions posed by those who have been most directly involved in the processes of education: alumni and teachers."
In that same spirit, you can look forward to a yearlong college-wide program of special events that will explore our past and future through the lens of emerging practices in teaching, research, service, and inquiry. Be assured we will intensify our search for stronger intersections between design and science, likewise to further articulate our unique responsibility to research and discourse on climate change, urbanization, energy, information, and health. One hundred years after our inception we remain a work in progress, and our effectiveness depends in no small part on your continuing support, contributions, and participation.
We welcome your suggestions. Please stay tuned, and please stay in touch.
Daniel S. Friedman, PhD, FAIA
Dean
dsfx@uw.edu