In the season finale, Andy looks ahead to what it will take to implement Pathways to Practice and what candidates can expect in the years to come.

Andy speaks with Mike Kolejka, Chair of NCARB’s Policy Advisory Committee and an Arizona board member, about the policy and regulatory steps needed to adopt new licensure pathways. The conversation explores member board approval, jurisdictional differences, and the importance of maintaining public protection.

Then, Jared Zurn returns to discuss implementation timelines, candidate transition planning, dual delivery, and how NCARB will continue gathering feedback as future programs are developed.

Find out more about Pathways to Practice.

Welcome to the NCARB podcast, where you get an inside look at licensure, regulation and

the initiative shaping the future of architectural practice.

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I'm your host, Andy McIntyre.

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In this, our eighth and final episode of the season, we're turning our focus to what comes

next for NCARB's Pathways to Practice initiative.

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Over the past several episodes, we've explored the history of licensure, short-term

changes to the current system and the research shaping a more flexible licensure model.

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Today,

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We're looking ahead at the scope of change required to implement new licensure pathways,

the timeline involved, and what candidates, licensure board members, educators and

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practitioners can expect as this work moves forward.

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We'll begin with the regulatory perspective.

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I'm joined by Mike Colecker, a licensed architect and partner at Orkut Winslow, who's also

the chair of NCARB's Policy Advisory Committee and a board member on the Arizona Licensing

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Board.

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Mike brings insight from both the member board and the volunteer side of the organization.

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Mike, you are a board member based in Arizona, Phoenix, I believe, and you're the current

chair of the Phoenix board responsible for overseeing architecture.

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Is it solely architecture or is it a multiple profession?

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We're a multidisciplinary board.

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we actually oversee and regulate 26 different disciplines ranging from architecture,

geology, home inspectors, alarm specialists, all the different branches of engineering,

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landscape architecture.

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We don't have interiors.

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That's not a regulated profession in Arizona, but yeah, we oversee all of those

professions.

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And so we have a multidisciplinary membership of our board.

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We're also the only board in the country that only has five.

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professional members and six public members.

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So the public members actually outnumber the professional and I'm the only architect on

our board.

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It's an interesting time to be a board member in Arizona, but it's been good.

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We have a good board and a good group.

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But you are chairing a group that's overseeing all of those different professions.

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Congratulations.

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Not only are you doing that, but you're also, as I mentioned, a fairly long-standing,

Voluntary NCARB.

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You've served on numerous committees with us.

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Recently, believe you're on the Research and Development Task Force.

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I had the pleasure of serving on that for over two years with Jared and that team and

Julie Hildebrand was our research and task force chair at the time.

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And it was an absolutely phenomenal group of people to work with and the diversity of the

members of that task force, I think is really what has led to such great potential and

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success with the pathways going forward.

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Could you just explain to anyone listening the role that that group had specifically

related to the Pathways to Practice initiative?

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Absolutely.

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So we actually started with the R part of R &D, which was the research components.

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And the first year was really about looking across the world at different countries and

how they regulated and licensed architects within their jurisdictions.

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And you'd be surprised the diversity of some of those.

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As an example, India, you get your license immediately upon graduating from your higher

education.

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The UK, of course, has a very different process, but

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Canada also in terms of how they assess competencies.

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Really, that's kind of what we're looking at.

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While the competency task force was identifying what eventually became the 16

competencies, our task force looked at nationally and internationally what was being done.

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But we also then looked at other professions.

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So we looked at engineers, we looked at nurses, we looked at pilots, and how are those

professions being evaluated and assessed for competency.

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that are potentially new ways that NCARB could investigate and potentially apply that to

the profession and practice of architecture.

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So that was kind of our first year of work.

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The second year then became part of the D, the development side, where we started looking

with our psychometricians at various different assessment methodologies, again, that were

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done in other countries and were done in other professions, which we kind of had a heat

map, essentially, and we had identified all 16 competencies on this kind of big matrix.

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And then on the vertical scale, had a number of different, you know, simulations, subject

matter expertise, portfolio, things of that nature.

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And we kind of looked at which ones of those different assessment methodologies could

effectively assess a competency.

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And there were some that could address multiple competencies and there were others that

potentially could only address one or maybe two.

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And from that heat map, then we had kind of working closely with our wonderful

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staff liaisons and Jared and Julie at the time, and now Greg, at how could we kind of

distill that down to a manageable number?

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And then also looking at the pros and cons of each of those assessment methodologies,

because some, personally as an architect, to go into a simulator and be able to simulate

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something would be like a pilot would be so amazing to do, but what's the cost of doing

that?

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And how accessible is that to candidates if you're in a rural area or other areas where

you might have limited testing capabilities?

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What does that look like?

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So we kind of looked at all of that and that was kind of at the end of my two years on the

task force when I then moved over to a different committee to work on from there.

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And that different committee is sexily titled the Policy Advisory Committee, I believe.

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And you are now chair of that group.

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Yeah, they jokingly call me Pac-Man now.

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which actually I'm kind of, I'm liking it off to get the little animation when I come up

on stage next time to talk.

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But, but yeah, the policy advisory committee is exactly that.

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We will take policy items, whether it comes from the board of directors, whether it comes

from other committees or other task forces.

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And part of our task is to vet those against, you know, the model law, the professional

conduct standards at NCARB, and also from a practicality standpoint, the ability for this

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to then be.

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provided as a potential resolution for the membership to vote on at the annual business

meetings.

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Oftentimes those policies can be fairly simple, know, cleaning up old resolutions that

aren't applicable anymore or need some updating.

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And then other cases like with Pathways, it's going to be very interesting to see what

comes out of the education experience and examination committees, as well as R &D task

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force that the PAC will essentially have to look at and identify.

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How do we make this into a resolution that the membership can digest, understand, and

ultimately, hopefully, vote in favor of?

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Anyone listening to this will be thinking, how many committees does NCARB have?

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And the answer is quite a few, but I think it's worth just highlighting the fact that

people like yourself, Mike, who are a volunteer, who are a professional architect from all

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around the country are giving their time serving on these committees.

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And that's really the sort of driving force behind NCARB's programmatic and policy

evolution is that we aren't just a group of staff sitting in DC making these decisions

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that we really are working with a community of practitioners to help.

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determine what the best way forward for the organization is.

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Now, coming back to this, and I'm going to ask you specific question about Arizona.

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So with Pathways to Practice, the big thread or theme really is a diversification of the

pathways as bringing in new opportunities for candidates to get to the point of licensure.

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What's the state of play in Arizona to date at the moment?

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Well, Arizona is a multiple pathways to licensure.

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And the way that we do that is currently based solely on time.

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And what I mean by that is if you imagine a bucket with notches on it and the top of the

bucket, the full bucket is eight years.

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That in Arizona is the kind of minimum requirement of time or education or both.

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to be eligible for licensure in addition to passing the architecture registration exam and

successfully completing AXP.

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What that means is that some candidates who want to have a higher education degree,

whether it be a community college degree, we will give anywhere between two and three

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years of experience towards that eight-year bucket.

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If you have a non-NAB degree, we typically will offer four years of education credit.

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You make up the other four with work.

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If it's a NABAC credit degree, it's five years of education credit and you make up the

remaining three.

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And then at that point, assuming you've also completed AXP in parallel and the passing of

all six divisions of the ARE, you're eligible for licensure.

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We have quite a variety of architects in terms of their past experience going through any

number of those four different paths that we currently have.

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But what I'll emphasize again is that it is all based on time.

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And obviously when we talk about pathways, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

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There's more than just time that we're talking about, but that's how we do in Arizona.

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And there are many other states.

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In fact, there's, believe it's 11 states that have the high school plus approach where no

higher education is required.

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It's all work experience.

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And then there's additional six to seven that are a non-NAB requirements.

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So there may be a four year bachelor's of science in architecture, other degree that would

get you partial credit, but obviously the remainder would still need to be work

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experience.

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And just to clarify for anyone who's sort of putting that jigsaw piece together in their

heads.

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So someone who, for example, had a four year undergrad will get four years contribution to

that eight year timeframe.

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That means they've got four years of professional experience to gain in a firm to get to

that eight.

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And at the same time, they can sort of double dip into the AXP, which is the experience

program, which is basically recording hours across six practice areas.

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And if they finish the AXP within the four years, great.

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If it takes them a bit longer, it's going to take them a bit longer.

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But it's not subsequential.

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Yeah.

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Great.

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I wanted to just touch on that because I think it's always interesting for people from

different states and different jurisdictions to go, okay, you know, there is variety,

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there is range and different states approaching some of these models differently.

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Putting your sort of NCARB hat, the national responsible piece that you have as PAC chair.

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One of the questions that people will ask of NCARB about Pathways to Practice is.

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Why is it taking so long?

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Why such a long runway?

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I want to dive in at that point, give your reflections on why does NCARB have such a large

turning circle, if you will, and has to be very intentional about timeframe when it's

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making decisions.

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Could you dive in off that diving board and take us where you want to take it?

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Absolutely.

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Well, I think one thing that I've always been very appreciative and I highly respect NCARB

as an organization and as a regulatory agency that, you know, obviously working with our

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55 member boards is there is a desire, a true desire to want to open up more opportunities

for people to become licensed as architects, but at the same time, also making sure that

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we are very, very much focused on maintaining the rigor that is necessary

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to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public because it's one thing to open up

opportunities for people to be able to have the opportunity to become licensed, but if

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it's coming at a potential safety risk to the general public, then we have not succeeded

in what we were hoping to try to do.

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And that's one of the things that NCARB has always been incredibly deliberate about and

very intentional of making sure that we try to provide more diverse opportunities, more

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pathways to enter the profession.

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while at the same time making sure that we are protecting the health, safety and welfare

of the public.

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So that's one thing that I just kind of want to make sure that we keep in mind as far as

that goes.

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And as part of that policy advisory committee that I serve on, one of the key things that

we also are looking at is whatever policy, whatever comes out of the R &D task force, what

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comes out of the three E's as we, you the education, examination, experience committees is

part of our committee's responsibility is making sure that we can vet it carefully against

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Again, maintaining that rigor while also making sure that we are achieving what we're

hoping to achieve, which are more pathways into the profession, but also making sure that

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it is something that the membership will ultimately be able to accept because any

resolution is good, but only if a majority of members accept it and ultimately modify

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their own state, whether it's statutes or rules to adopt it.

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So that's the other thing that's the next big push after NCARB creates.

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the pathways itself, how can we make sure that members, boards feel comfortable enough to

accept it and communicate to their legislators, the architecture community, and the public

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as a whole that this is a good thing for the profession, but it's also a good thing for

the communities in which we serve.

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And I think that's really important to stress is with Pathways to Practice, this isn't

sort of a tinkering around the edge of the licensure system.

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It's really revisiting or sort of reinventing the core components of what you need to do

to become a licensed architect.

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Exactly.

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Yeah.

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It's not just do three years or two years of AXP, do the exams and do the schooling,

whether it's five years or whatnot, is are there ways that we can potentially take even an

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exam as an example?

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You know, we have six exams currently and you might have a candidate that passes some

parts of that exam, but unfortunately doesn't perform as well on, you know, a certain

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portion of the exam.

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And as a result, they fail the whole thing.

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Or there's other situations where we might have competencies being assessed and reassessed

multiple times, which in Canada that doesn't happen.

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You know, as we were doing our research, you know, they do it once and that's it.

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If you've proven you've done it, you've done it.

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And so we don't need to have a candidate, you know, assessed over and over and over again

on one thing while potentially only assessed once on other things where there's a

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disparity between how those assessments are being done and what competencies are being

repeatedly checked on.

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So I think that's part of it.

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And being able to also leverage a lot of the resources that the professional community

has, like continuing education courses, you know, the NCARB monograph series is a great

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example where could potentially some of that be eligible for assessing competency in a way

that we don't currently do.

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So in a perfect world, what would be the best way to assess competencies and not just

stick to the three E's, look at it in a different capacity.

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And that's part of what the task force was doing when I was on it.

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And what they're continuing to do and have really gained a lot of momentum in the last

year and a half as all the competency information has come into that task force, the

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different assessment methodologies have come in and now it's really starting to take

shape.

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I am so excited to see what the ultimate recommendations will be coming out of that task

force here the next little bit as the three yeas now take it on and run with it from their

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side.

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You and me both, right?

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Because we're super interested to see what the venture framework and the specificity of

the framework is.

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Because again, as you say, it's being diligently worked on, developed, thought through,

refined.

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If you were to talk to somebody, say you were talking to a, whether it be a high school

student or a someone who may be early on in their higher education path, and they are

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likely to be someone who is going to be going through the new process.

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in a few years, and I know you don't have the specifics, but knowing what you do about it

because of your involvement in these groups, what would you sort of say to, what should

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they know about the process?

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Should they be excited about it?

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So I'm going to take it from the lens of a high school student first, in that for a lot of

candidates, going to a five-year program or a two-year credit master's program, it's very

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time-consuming.

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It can also be very expensive.

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And sadly, some candidates can't afford to, particularly as the cost of education

continues to rise.

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I I've seen how much my alma mater, Virginia Tech, what it costs now compared to what it

was when I was there 25-plus years ago.

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And it's amazing what it costs now to potentially have an education.

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I think that the education will always be an incredibly strong and viable and

well-regarded way of getting your license.

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But I believe that it should be more than that.

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And that's part of why we're doing the pathways to practice.

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And so what I would tell that high school student is you should really be excited about

the different avenues in which you can actually pursue to get your license.

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If you want to go to a NABAC credit degree, you can.

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If you would rather go to community college to get some core curriculum items done and

then work in a firm or other avenues to get your license, then this is really something

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that in many states has never been possible for them before.

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The micro credentials, you know, being able to get some partial credit for getting your

CSI or taking the lead exam or the NCARB model graphs, like I mentioned before, all of

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those things give the students the opportunity, I think of it like a buffet, right?

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It's either,

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You know, the one plated meal, have no choice or you have a buffet and you can choose

whichever avenue you want to go down.

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And that's true for even, you know, a freshman in college who may be in general studies

and has not been accepted into their architecture program or potentially is going to

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consider going into the architecture program, but maybe they're coming into financial

challenges or family issues come up or whatever it is.

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The ability to say, Hey, if you get off the NAB carousel, it doesn't mean that your path

is over.

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In fact.

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You have all these other paths now at your disposal that you can do if that original path

is not something that life allows you to do anymore.

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And so I think there'll be a sense of excitement and in some cases also relief and relief

financially, relief time wise and release stress wise, knowing that there's so many other

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avenues to pursue.

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So I think that's going to be the thing that candidates are going to be really excited to

hear about.

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And as long as we get them early enough, that's why I always say if we can get to these.

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students when they're in junior high or high school so that they know that there are these

paths available, more of them may pursue an architecture degree or architecture licensure

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path than currently do, which is to the betterment of the community and the profession.

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Yeah.

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And thinking about Arizona and the established system and the inherent flexibility or

options that you have there, it sounds like pathways to practice isn't necessarily, is

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going to probably not be a huge leap for the state of Arizona.

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But for some states who maybe don't have that inherent flexibility, some of the narrative

or some of the suggestions or the concepts around pathways to practice maybe represent

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quite a significant change and could be daunting.

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some legislatures in other states.

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What's your message to that group?

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Well, the reality is that we've got states that have multiple pathways, like I mentioned,

know, 12 that are high school plus an additional six that are non-NAB.

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But we have a lot of jurisdictions, a lot of member boards that are still, NAB is pretty

much the one path that you can have.

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It's obviously a lot simpler for regulatory side of things because one size fits all and

either beat it or you don't.

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When you start to introduce that, there's going to be some level of trepidation, I think,

whether it be among boards.

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or among legislators about what does that mean?

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And I think, again, the messaging has to continuously be to board members and to

legislators that we are looking to provide more opportunities for folks to get into the

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profession.

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All right, Mike.

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Well, thank you for joining us today.

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Really appreciate your insights and enjoy the sunny weather in Arizona.

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Yeah, it's definitely a nice one out today.

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So and stay warm there in DC Andy.

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I'm sure it's a little on the nippy side there.

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All right

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Mike, thank you.

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So in that conversation, Mike unpacked what it actually takes to adopt new licensure

pathways at the policy and regulatory level.

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He explained how change must move through resolutions, member board approval and

jurisdictional processes and why flexibility at the national level has to be balanced with

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local authority and responsibility.

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What becomes clear is that pathways to practice isn't something that can or should be

rushed.

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Adoption

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requires trust, clarity and confidence from licensing boards and the architecture

community.

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All while maintaining ENCOB's core mission of protecting the health, safety and welfare of

the public.

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That raises the next critical question.

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How does this work translate into a realistic timeline for candidates?

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To talk about implementation from ENCOB's perspective, I'm joined once again by Jared

Zern, ENCOB's Chief Programs Officer and a central figure in shaping pathways to practice.

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Jared, welcome back.

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know, I think this is your third time on this podcast series.

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In the absence of any greater knowledge resource, you're back with us.

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We appreciate you.

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You're welcome.

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I again, I think I've had a great opportunity over the last couple of years to work with

competency task force and the licensure R &D task force and really have a good strong

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sense of where we're headed with Pathways to Practice.

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Well, this is our eighth episode in this series and we're really trying to look ahead now.

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We've spent a lot of time thinking about the backstory, why the licensure process came to

be in the first place, how it got to where it is today.

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And now we really want to talk about really where we're headed and a little bit more so

practically speaking, what people can maybe expect.

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As it stands today, when do we think candidates can expect to really see the new licensure

process and actually practically think about navigating to it?

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Now this is again, my prediction.

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So I'm also going to caveat it with this is my prediction.

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I think candidates are going to get to see a realistic, here's what it's gonna look like

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And then based on that is when I think candidates who are actively in the process are

going to start having those ponderings about, okay,

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So I know this is the plan for the future and it's very real and I almost go touch it.

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They're going to then make that decision about whether they want to just get done under

the current process because NPR will still continue to deliver the current process even

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after we launch the new one.

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Or some candidates might actually decide, no, I actually see some better opportunities

with the new process and we'll then plan a transition.

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So you said they will see it in 2028.

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That doesn't necessarily mean they can start it in 2028.

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Correct?

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Correct.

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That's again, where I will hedge my bet and say that I don't know if we will actually be

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Again, we're still several years away.

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Now, if we can expedite development and bring things to scale quickly, absolutely.

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We may be having a conversation in late 2027, really previewing the final product.

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but it also might roll into 2028, which means we may not go fully live until sometime in

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And you just talked about the likelihood of overlap between the current system and the

future system.

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know that that is the way NCOM has tried to do it in the past.

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And when we've rolled out new exams, there's been a period of dual delivery.

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I think the intent is this would be similar and there would be an overlapping window.

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Is that your assumption?

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Do think that's true?

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That's a very true assumption.

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And what candidates might see is that this overlap may even be larger than some of our

past overlaps, because one of the assessments we have to make is how dramatic of a shift

265

is this going to be and then properly right size, whatever that period of overlap is going

to be.

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And we're expecting that this is going to be a more dramatic shift.

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To save anyone having to research and dig through the annals of our information, the last

overlap we did was 18 months when we went from 4.0 to 5.0 in the exam.

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if you're saying it's longer than that, then I'm going to infer you're talking a minimum

two year overlap.

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Is that kind of mindset?

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I would say that is absolutely a minimum, a minimum of a two-year overlap is sort of where

we are at in our planning process right now.

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So I'm going do some basic math, back of the napkin math, Jared.

272

And I'm going to infer from what you just told me that realistically, if you are in the

current program today and you're like, stop talking about pathways to practice.

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I just want to finish the current system.

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I put my blinkers on.

275

I'm not going to worry about that.

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I'm not going to let it distract me.

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You probably got into 2030 reasonably within the current system.

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Very good math, Andy.

279

Absolutely, I would agree with that statement.

280

So here's a question then.

281

So if anyone's listening to this and saying, wow, that's a long timeframe.

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That's a really long runway.

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Why is it so long, Jarrah?

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It is so long for multiple reasons.

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One, we wanna get it right.

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We understand at NCARB that the programs we develop for licensure impact candidates every

single day.

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That is not lost on me and I know that is not lost on any of us that work at NCARB.

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And it's our responsibility to not rush.

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If I was telling you today that, we came up with this great new idea and we wanna make

these changes in six months.

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you should be freaking out as my colleague at NCARB because you know we would be moving

too fast to do a good job for all of our stakeholders.

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And I said, there's multiple reasons.

292

So one is we want to do right by all of our licensure candidates.

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At the same time, we have to do right by our jurisdictional licensing boards.

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And we are not going to build and deliver something that they cannot accept for licensure,

something that they don't have confidence in.

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And that would be really bad for us to do as a national organization.

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And simply, we will not do that.

297

You talked about the transition and I want to dig in on that a little bit because when you

talk about transition, you mentioned overlap, right?

298

That allows for someone to finish in the current system.

299

It allows someone to start afresh in the new system and there's arguably element of choice

there, but for a big cohort of our candidate community, there's going to be the

300

opportunity to sort of change track mid flight to basically say, I've made this much

progress in the current system and I now want to finish out this licensure process in the

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new.

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think that's what when we talk about transitioning, often that's the group we're referring

to.

303

I get it, it's still down the way and we haven't got definitive decisions on that yet.

304

But from a philosophical perspective, how would you frame out that thought process that

goes into developing a sort of transition plan?

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What are going to be some of the considerations that you and others are going to have to

help make that smooth and

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easy to understand, smooth, reasonable fare to the candidates that are going through.

307

Because of course, everybody's going to be at a different place when you get to that

transition moment.

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Sure, I will say our thought process is actually going to start at the end.

309

And so the end of this journey for all of us who have been licensure candidates or who are

licensure candidates, the end of your journey is getting licensed.

310

So what we have to think about in developing a transition plan is to ensure that when you

get to that moment where your NCARB record is sent to the jurisdictional licensing board,

311

that the jurisdictional licensing board is going to say, yes, Jared,

312

has done all the things he needs to do for us to grant him a license to practice

architecture.

313

So we will make sure that whatever the transition process is, in the end, it creates

validity and trust at the jurisdictional level.

314

From there, what we do is we work backwards to make sure that the things you've achieved

in your current licensure journey, then properly count for credit in the new mob.

315

So if I am someone who is part way done with my exams and fully done with AXP, how do I

transition will look different than somebody who might be partially done with AXP and

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hasn't started their exam, right?

317

Those are two very different candidates and we will build a structure that appropriately

says, well, you're here today.

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If you transition, here's where we will give you credit.

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And what we know is,

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the period of dual delivery allows some candidates to go, oh, here's my opportunity.

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I might only be as far as A, B, C, D and E, but if I can get to F, G and H, I'm in a much

better place to transition.

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So we have to give those candidates time to get in the right place.

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So it sounds complicated.

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And admittedly, from a logistics perspective, it is complicated.

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And then back to your other question, but it's NCARB's job to then figure out how to make

it simple.

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And we can do that because we have a relationship with every licensure candidate.

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You have an NCARB record with us.

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We know your exam progress.

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We know your AXP progress.

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We know where you went to school and any degrees earned if you submitted your transcripts.

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We can use all of that data to show you how you best transition or we can show you it's

probably best for you to just get done with the current process.

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So somebody could be listening to this in six months time and they're like, well, that's

old information.

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How do I know what's happened?

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How do I know if it's changed?

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What should our candidate community have?

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What should their expectation be around being informed, staying in the loop, having

insight and information on this process?

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they should expect and we should deliver as an organization to keep them up to date.

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So this is where I'm gonna make a plug to you as a licensure candidate.

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If you have not already done so, please go into your NCARB record and make sure that you

are signed up to receive our ongoing communications.

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Because if you have not done that or if you've decided to opt out or block us from your

email address, you're going to be missing out on some pretty critical pieces of

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information as we update you on the progress.

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World War II.

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Are there going to be opportunities for people listening to maybe get involved, to share

their thoughts, to contribute to this process as we move forward?

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The answer there is absolutely.

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This is part of the reason NCARB does take what can seem like a long time to get stuff

done is that everything we do engages with a variety of stakeholders and tries to

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understand their impact.

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So we have already done large scale surveying to get us to this point.

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We've already done focus groups to get us to this point.

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I can absolutely guarantee you we are going to do more focus groups and we are going to do

more large scale surveying to keep checking in.

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as we iterate.

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For those of you that are in the design profession, you know exactly what I'm talking

about.

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We are going through a standard design process here.

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We are continuing to do community engagement, continuing to learn, we're refining our

program, and using architecture terms about what do we need to build?

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What do the requirements need to be?

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And then we're going to build those, we're going to come up with schematics.

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We actually probably have a luxury that you don't as a practicing architect, you don't get

to build a school, or at least most of the school and then test it.

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and then go, I don't like that.

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We're gonna build it differently because your clients can't afford it.

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Now the reality is NCAR has the luxury, if we can build prototypes of future assessment

methods, we can use focus groups to get feedback on those assessment methods, and then we

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can iterate and make them better.

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And that's exactly what's gonna be happening over the next year and a half to two years.

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Once we're comfortable with that prototype and going, yes, this is really working for us

and it's working for the candidate and it's working for the member boards,

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That's when we go to scale production.

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We ramp up, we build it full scale, and then we turn it on for the future licensing

process.

365

Well, Jared, really appreciate the insight and that sort of, I guess, wrap up detail about

what to expect when.

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I don't want to leave it there and I'm going to invite you to sort of take us back to the

real big picture.

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And as we close out this episode and this series, as we've explored Pathways to Practice,

I want to ask you this question and get us back to the why.

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So I wanted to leave us with the why we are doing this.

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So it's an awful lot of work.

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We keep talking about it.

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We're saying that it's going to take several years.

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for this organization to enact this change, remind us why we're doing it and why it's

important.

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I will remind everyone why we're doing it.

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And I will help you remember why based on what we're calling it.

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We call this pathways to practice.

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And that is very intentional because we at NCARB know our mission is to work with the

jurisdictional licensing boards to ensure the people who are competent get a license to

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practice architecture and that's practice, right?

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So that's why we end with pathways to practice.

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The other reality is we started with pathways in the plural because what we know is we're

all unique individuals.

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We have different education, we have different work experience, we bring different assets

to the profession, but we also bring different backgrounds and maybe even socioeconomic

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status and the ability to pay for certain things.

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And so what we want to ensure at NCAR is that we develop a licensure process that truly

embraces the variety of people that want to be architects.

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gives them access into this profession, but access into the profession in a way that

allows them to demonstrate they're truly competent.

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Because we're not going to give the license away.

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No state licensing board is going to do that.

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You as a licensure candidate will have to earn it.

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Or you as a licensed architect know you have to earn your license and that's going to be

the future too.

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But remember pathways, embrace the multiple ways in which we've all come to this

profession.

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And that's why we're doing

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Jared, thank you.

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As you say, it's a journey.

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We move forward on it with consideration, thought, diligence, and please stay in contact

with us as we continue on down this path.

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Jared, thanks very much.

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Really appreciate it.

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So Jared provides important context on what candidates can expect over the next several

years, emphasizing the Pathways to Practice is a deliberate multi-year process with a long

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transition period.

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He explained how NCARB plans to support candidates by providing transparency, advanced

notice and dual delivery of programs, ensuring that no one is forced into a sudden or

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unexpected shift.

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Most importantly, he reinforces that this work is grounded in listening to candidates,

boards, educators and practitioners, and the opportunities to engage and provide feedback

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will continue as this model evolves.

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As we close out this deep dive into Pathways to Practice, a few key themes stand out.

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Licensure exists to protect the public, but in order to protect the public effectively, it

must also reflect how architecture is practiced today.

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Pathways to Practice is about expanding access without lowering standards, modernizing the

licensure process and recognizing that there are multiple valid ways to demonstrate

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competency.

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The initiative isn't about shortcuts.

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It's about fairness, transparency,

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building a licensure process that can evolve alongside the profession while remaining

worthy of public trust.

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And if there's one takeaway from this season it's this, the path to licensure is changing

but the purpose of licensure is not.

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That brings us to the close of this our eighth and final episode and the end of this

season of the Endcard podcast.

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Be sure to subscribe, leave us a rating and review and if you found this series useful

please do share it with a friend.

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Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

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on the Encarve Podcast.