Organizers:
Megan Groth & Aaron Gensler, Woodbury University
Now is the time to critically interrogate the training of professional architects, and in particular, the professional practice course. Students are demanding to be taught more critical, socially and environmentally-conscious approaches to practice while firms demand that architecture schools produce their ideal employee: Revit-ready and able to complete a full drawing set on their first day. Professional practice courses are caught in the middle, often taught by adjunct faculty with embarrassingly low pay, little time and no input on curriculum, who are tasked with using their one course to fulfill a burdensome number of NAAB Accreditation Requirements. This action session uses the Turncoats debate format to ask if we, as faculty and administrators, can do better—better for our students, for ourselves and the future of the profession— in the current format or whether we need to knock it all down and start again? A Turncoats event is part spectacle, part rousing debate and altogether an enjoyable evening of challenging questions that asks participants to weigh provocations from both sides of an argument. The event requires a live audience in a closed-door venue where phones and recording are disallowed, drinks are plentiful, and audience participation is encouraged and expected.
Debaters ‘For’
Renee Cheng, University of Washington
Cruz Garcia, Iowa State University
Nea Maloo, Howard University
Debaters ‘Against’
Julia Andor, American Institute of Architecture Students
Debbie Chen, Rhode Island School of Design
Beth Lundell Garver, Boston Architectural College
Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
