ARCC President's Report - 1999
The 1998-1999 year for ARCC may be best characterized as one of internal stability and external outreach.
Membership: Membership during the past few years has remained relatively stable at around 35-40 members -- although this generally reflects the addition of some new members and the loss of some older member institutions. The most significant change in membership over the past year appears to be the general departure of most non-North American members from our ranks. Feedback from one such institution suggests that this is due primarily to distance and the resulting difficulty of fully enjoying the benefits of membership.
Both this year and last, invitations to join ARCC have been sent to all North American architecture programs accredited by ACSA. The invitation packages have included a letter from the ARCC President, a brochure, a sample Newsletter, and (this year) a summary of the King Medal awards program. Invitations will also be sent this year to all accredited Landscape Architecture programs in North America. This outreach to landscape architecture is an extension of the connections to these programs that were developed during the Raleigh Spring Research Conference and that already exist through some of our current members. We are attempting to identify a liaison from Landscape Architecture to work with the ARCC Board of Directors.
Publications: The anchor of ARCC publications continues to be the ARCC Newsletter, ably published by Mary Kihl with the gracious assistance of the Herberger Center at Arizona State University and its staff. The Newsletter is sent to all member institutions in adequate numbers to be distributed to all interested faculty and staff. In accordance with a vote of the ARCC Board of Directors, the publication schedule for the Newsletter has recently been expanded from three to four times a year.
This year's Spring Research Conference was held in conjunction with the ACSA Technology Conference (see below). ACSA assumed responsibility for the publication of the conference proceedings so that there are no "ARCC" conference proceedings this year.
The ARCC World Wide Web site continues to provide instant access to information and resources that may be of interest to members and potential members. This, however, is an area that clearly could expand provided there was interest in doing so among members. To date, fewer than half of the ARCC members have provided current research and organizational profiles for the WWW site. Plans are currently underway for an online "ARCC Journal" that will provide an opportunity for peer-reviewed publication on the WWW.
Awards Program: The ARCC awards program was especially active this past year with the very successful initiation of the King Medal program to acknowledge excellence in student research efforts. Inquiries and discussion regarding the King Medal constituted a substantial portion of all communications to "headquarters" from members during the year. The Board of Directors is pleased to announce that the King Medal program will be conducted again this year.
In addition to the King Medal, ARCC awards include the Haecker Award for long-term and substantive leadership in architectural research and the ARCC Best Paper Award for an outstanding offering at the annual (spring) research conference. Recipients of both of these awards will be decided during the Annual Meeting.
Spring Research Conference: The 1999 ARCC Spring Research Conference was held in conjunction with the ACSA Technology Conference (Montreal, June 1999). This does not necessarily signal a pattern, but the re-established independence of the Technology Conference provided an excellent opportunity for ARCC to build bridges with other organizations. The ARCC role in the conference was substantial -- although turnout and paper submissions were not on a par with the numbers experienced with the Raleigh conference in 1998.
As a follow-up to the Raleigh conference, ARCC is co-sponsoring (with EAAE -- the European Association for Architectural Education) a conference on research in architecture to be held in Paris and Lyon, France in early July 2000. This will in effect be the year 2000 spring research conference. It will probably be appropriate for ARCC to conduct a stand-alone research conference in the U.S. in the year 2001 -- probably in the spring.
Other Outreach: As has been the tradition for the past several years, ARCC sponsored a session at the ACSA Annual Meeting (held this year in Minneapolis). Carolyn Dry (University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign) was the session organizer and moderator for that program. With Walter Grondzik as moderator, ARCC also organized a session on research needs for the built environment in Florida at the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) annual conference held in Orlando. There will also be an ARCC session at the upcoming ACSA Administrator's Conference.
ARCC is pleased to be one of the three constituent organizations comprising the Initiative for Architectural Research (IAR). We believe that IAR can play a substantial role in promoting and coordinating architectural research efforts among academia, government, practice, and the commercial sector.
Acknowledgments: One of the nicer aspects of the President's Report is the opportunity to acknowledge the efforts of those who have contributed to the operation and success of ARCC over the past year. ARCC is truly an all-volunteer organization -- there is no paid staff. Without the willing and often unstinting donation of hours and hours (and ideas and ideas) ARCC could not exist.
Let me publicly thank the Officers and Directors of ARCC:
Vice-President: Bruce Haglund, University of Idaho
Treasurer: Alison Kwok, University of Oregon
Secretary: Martha Scotford, North Carolina State University
Past-President and IAR Representative: Dick Schneider, University of Florida
Board Member: Michael O'Brien, Virginia Tech
Board Member: Brian Sinclair, Ball State University
Board Member: Paul Gleye, North Dakota State University, and
Board Member: Mary Kihl, Arizona State University
Brian Sinclair and Martha Scotford deserve an additional round of thanks for their efforts in launching the King Medal program; Mary Kihl for her ongoing stewardship of ARCC publications; Alison Kwok for organizing the papers review process for the research conference; Bruce Haglund and Michael O'Brien for their efforts in support of an expanded Annual Meeting format; Paul Gleye for his positive contributions to the Board's monthly deliberations; and Dick Schneider for his counsel and continuing work with IAR.
Walter Grondzik
President
Visiting Professor, University of Oregon (1999-2000)
School of Architecture
Florida A&M; University
Tallahassee, FL