Education has long been one of the pillars of architectural licensure—but what does a degree actually demonstrate? This episode examines how education fits into licensure today and why it is central to conversations about access, equity, and competency.

Andy speaks with Jeremy Fretts, NCARB’s Assistant Vice President for Education and Certification, about NAAB-accredited degrees, jurisdictional requirements, and how NCARB’s Competency Standard may create new ways to recognize learning.

Then, Ingalil Wahlroos-Ritter, a licensed architect and educator, shares her perspective from both NAAB-accredited programs and community college education. She discusses affordability, career readiness, professional literacy, and the value of multiple educational pathways.

Find out more about Pathways to Practice.

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

the initiatives shaping the future of architectural practice.

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And I'm your host, Andy McIntyre.

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In this third episode, we're taking a closer look at education.

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What role it plays in licensure today, how different education pathways are treated across

jurisdictions, and why education is often at the center of the conversation when we talk

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about access, equity, and competency in the profession.

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We'll explore what a degree represents in the licensure process, where the system creates

friction for candidates and how pathways to practice is prompting new questions about how

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we recognise learning and readiness for practice.

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We'll begin with a conversation about how education currently fits into the licensure

framework, including what NCOB's role is and what it's not.

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I'm joined by Jeremy Fretz, NCOB's Assistant Vice President for Education and

Certification, who helps oversee

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how education fits together with experience and examination in the licensure process.

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Jeremy, thanks for joining us today.

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So Jeremy, when we think about the license process, we traditionally often refer to the

three E's of education, experience, and examination.

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And I think when we think about pathways to practice, the education element is arguably

one that seems to be the topic of greatest debate for some of the thorniest issue, maybe.

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And obviously for you in your role, you're very focused on this aspect.

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But just to sort of

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level set, could you give us a sense of how things stand today with regard to education in

the current structure?

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So as many people know, there are requirements for education in many jurisdictions.

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And when I refer to jurisdictions, that's a term we use at NCARB because in the US we have

states and territories with who license architects.

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So jurisdictions encompasses both of those.

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And many jurisdictions, but not all, currently require some sort of educational credential

as part of the path to getting a license.

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It's important to acknowledge that not all because there are 17 jurisdictions

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who never decided to adopt or maybe who always had an alternative, I'll say, to having an

accredited degree or in some cases any degree at all.

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You could go through an apprenticeship path as was long done in the past.

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But many of those jurisdictions have never changed and maintained that.

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And now there's also some interest for a variety of reasons in other jurisdictions of

coming back and saying, we want to offer an apprenticeship path or some other path that

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maybe doesn't

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require that accredited degree.

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But as it stands now, there are 18 jurisdictions that do not require an accredited degree

as the only option to getting your prerequisites for licensure.

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And the other 37 jurisdictions in the US do require that educational component of some

sort as sort of a prerequisite.

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The other spin on that is it really is a prerequisite because in an educational setting,

we don't assess

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at the same level as one would for licensure.

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So for the purpose of licensure, our state licensing boards need to know that every

individual has achieved a certain level of competency.

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And that's not the way a grading system works.

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It's not the way accreditation of an educational program works.

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Programs are accredited, but it doesn't necessarily mean that every graduate who gets a

passing grade in that class

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has learned every necessary item in that class or in that program.

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That's the sort of surety that is needed for a licensure process.

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So while in some countries, one can complete your educational program and be called an

architect, get an architectural license, it's not the case in the United States because we

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don't have that surety that all of the competencies, but we would now use the terminology

of really focusing on competencies.

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We don't have that sureness.

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that every student has achieved every competency.

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And so to some extent, there's some value that is being lost.

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Students are getting great educations, but we're not able to necessarily count that toward

their license.

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We still have to test them or do something else to verify that they have acquired the

competency.

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And that's one part of why we're looking at this pathways to practice approach and really

trying to discover how we can validate

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and give value to work that students are doing in an educational context.

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And of course, that's the great challenge that we're facing and working with our partners

in academia to try and figure out how can we do that?

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How can we do a better job of qualifying students so that they can be sort of a, yes, we

acknowledge you got this in education and we can count that towards licensure and maybe we

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don't need to test you again on that same content.

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So the accreditation that we're referring to is conducted by an organization called the

NAB as we know it, an acronym, is the, I'm going to butcher this Jeremy.

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Let's see if I can get it right.

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So it's National Architectural Accreditation Board.

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National Architectural Accrediting Board.

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Oh, that was close.

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Okay.

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And that organization is the one that has assessed and accredits architectural programs

across the country.

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Now, one of the things that I think we're mindful of is that an accredited degree is

typically a master's level degree or certainly has a extended duration requirement above

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and beyond the traditional sort of four year undergrad.

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which is something that means that typically for future architects, it's requiring five to

six years of school for most people.

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And I think that's a topic of conversation that we've had, obviously, when we think about

this sort of educational landscape and it's worth just taking a moment.

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Could you reflect on that aspect in its sort of contemporary setting, Jeremy?

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Sure.

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First, I'll level set for folks who maybe aren't as familiar.

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Those accredited degrees, accredited by the NAB, National Architectural Accrediting Board,

are either a five-year bachelor's degree or a master's program that can be added on to an

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existing degree either in one, two, or three years depending on what led to getting into

that program.

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Then there is one doctoral program that is an accredited degree.

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And the interesting thing that's maybe a little bit unique to architecture is all three of

those are professional degrees.

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Any one of those meets the requirements that the 37 jurisdictions have for licensure.

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And so in terms of their preparation of a candidate for a professional license to practice

architecture, they're equal.

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And so there's also, as we start to look into how those programs are structured, a

five-year bachelor of architecture

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was very common when I got it.

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Then there was some, would have a shift to going to a four-year undergrad plus two years,

or in some cases a four plus one.

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You know, so that landscape continually evolves over time.

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But one of the things that we're seeing in the broader educational landscape, well,

there's a lot of things we're seeing in the broader educational landscape in the United

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States.

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But one of those things is that there is an interest towards reducing the time to

graduation.

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So there's now some talk about making more bachelor's degrees outside of architecture.

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Why aren't they a three-year degree and sort of being more efficient?

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You also have a lot of students, not all by any stretch, but you have a lot of students

who are coming in with a lot of advanced standing credit from high school as well.

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And then of course, there's the cost factor of how much it costs to get those extended

duration degrees.

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Lastly, I'll say that there has

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been a little bit of a shift in the latest version of the NAB conditions for

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There's also the fact that in the last version of the NAB conditions for accreditation

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courses and specific numbers of credit hours.

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And so they do still hold on to a total number of credit hours at 150 for the Bachelor of

Architecture program, but they don't break down how that needs to be.

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structured.

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So all that's to say, there are a lot of factors that go into that degree length and there

are many different varied interests in questioning whether that is more time in a degree

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program than is needed.

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It's certainly not the least of which is the cost of those programs.

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Yeah.

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As a British individual who went through the UK education system, our undergrad was three

years and we just didn't have the general ed component.

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It was very focused on whatever subject you were studying.

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So I'm mindful of that discussion.

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Now, Jeremy, you talked about the competencies earlier and obviously as almost the sort of

the first action, if you will, from NCARB in regard to pathways to practice was the

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release of NCARB's competency standard back in October of 2024.

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How is that going to

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change this dynamic between education and licensure?

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And maybe there's two ways to, you can approach this in two ways, right?

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Is it going to change the dynamic or how do you think that that plugs in to the discussion

around accreditation and how schools might respond to it going forward?

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there's sometimes some confusion as to who decides what gets taught.

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And I'm going to start there in that schools individually decide what they're going to

teach and they have to meet the requirements of the NAB.

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If they're pursuing a NAB accreditation, they have to meet certain standards there for

student criteria and program criteria and in general areas of content they're going to

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deliver.

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But NCARB has not and does not and does not intend to specify what schools have to teach.

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The council

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NCARB is solely focused on what is necessary to protect the public health, safety, and

welfare for licensure.

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And one of the things that our new competency standard does is it focuses very rigorously

on only protecting the public health, safety, and welfare.

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Because it's very easy to get a bunch of architects and a bunch of architects who are

themselves regulators on state boards.

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It's very easy to come into a room and talk about all the things that we love about

architecture, everything.

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that one should know to do architecture, everything we learned to do to practice

architecture, the realm, the discipline of architecture is quite large.

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But from a regulatory standpoint, we're focused and necessarily from the rationale for

regulation of a profession in the United States is to protect the public health, safety

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and welfare.

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It's not a question of what we want architecture to be, what any one of us as architects

or any one of us as educators want architecture to be.

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It is defined by the state, defined in state law, and it is limited to those things which

protect the public.

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That's what the license actually means, whether we like that or not.

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That is in the United States, the framework we live in.

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That is what the license means.

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And so the job of NCARB is to define very clearly what are those things that an architect

must be able to do to protect the public.

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And that's what the competency standard does.

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It takes perhaps more aggressively than ever that sort of refining of

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only what is necessary for protecting the public.

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Anything else?

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Great.

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If you learn that, wonderful.

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We'd love you to learn that.

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We'd love you to learn that in continuing education, if you haven't learned it already by

the time you're educated and licensed.

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But the competencies are very specifically focused on what you need to have to protect the

public at the point of getting a license.

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So no superfluous expectations in the new competency standard, Jeremy.

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It's a tighter set of expectations than maybe we had prior.

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Yes, that's correct.

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And again, you know, it's hard when you look at, is this what NCARB is asking, you know,

schools to teach?

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Well, it depends.

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What's the purpose of your educational program?

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What is the goal of your specific university program?

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What is the sales pitch you're making to your students?

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Because there are schools whose mission is very much less connected to preparing for

students for practice, and that's okay.

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But we do think that this is an opportunity.

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For schools who are very focused on preparing students for practice, that's their brand or

that's what they want their brand to be.

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We are preparing students to become licensed architects and practice architecture and

build buildings.

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If that is the focus of their program, we hope that this is an increased opportunity for

them to say, yeah, we are focused on these four of the NCARB or these eight of the NCARB

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competencies of the 16 competencies.

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And we are

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focusing on how can we make sure that you're prepared to demonstrate those competencies.

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In that regard, I think it's a new opportunity for educational institutions to have a

clearer understanding of what is necessary for licensure.

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And if they're interested in preparing students for licensure, then it's a helpful

framework.

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But again, it's not going to tell them what they have to teach or how.

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So I'm going to paraphrase a little bit around some of the things you've said just to make

sure I'm understanding correctly.

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So from NCOM's perspective, we really need to be evaluating competency at the individual

level because the life that is given at the individual level, the traditional sort of you

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went to an unaccredited school obviously gives a sense of what you've experienced, but it

doesn't necessarily demonstrate the individual's, shall we say, learnings.

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But if you are a school,

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and you are thinking about, how do we react to what kind of, do we want to show up in

light of the fact that NCUB has this new competency standard.

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What you're saying is there's opportunity there to say, we might really want to lean in or

make sure that our individuals are gaining a great level of competency in these particular

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areas, because maybe that will increase our kind of contribution or appeal to students who

want to get licensed and want to make sure they're gaining meaningful skills to help them

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get there.

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Is that a reasonable?

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summary of some of the sentiment you should.

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It is.

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And I'll add one thing, and this is sort of forward looking and hypothetical at the

moment, is we also are hopeful, you know, we're actively working and researching, but

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we're hopeful that we're going to find some ways that we can partner with schools to

assure that a student has maybe demonstrated that competency.

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And again, that's a focus of the competency, right, is you have to demonstrate the

competency.

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We're hopeful that we can partner with schools in a way that we can check that box in this

program.

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They have planned it and executed it and assessed their students in an appropriate fashion

that we can say, yeah, that individual student meets this competency.

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That's the lofty goal that we're striving for in the work that we're doing right now this

year.

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So NCARB has been fairly vocal in our conversations around making accessible pathways for

individuals who do not have an AB degree, whether it be improving connections with

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community colleges, thinking about how community college students plug into the

profession.

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There's already, I think, mechanisms in our model law around how a four-year undergrad,

which isn't necessarily accredited, can plug in and how that becomes the viable path to

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certification.

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NCOP certification through that.

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If you are a traditional educator right now and you're thinking, well, NCOP's changing the

game on us slightly, right?

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And we feel like we had this sort of solidity, we knew where we were, everything was sort

of safe, if you will.

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But now NCOP's narrative is changing.

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What do you say to that sort of academic who's maybe a bit miffed at the fact that we seem

to be pivoting our narrative around how we think education contributes to licensure?

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this is where I think you probably, should have looked up all the statistics ahead of

time, but you and your team are much more versed in all the statistics.

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I think what we see in the 17 jurisdictions that have historically not necessarily

required an accredited education, that in those jurisdictions, the vast majority of the

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people they license have still received or pursued an accredited education.

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And so just because it's possible doesn't mean people are...

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in mass going to do it.

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And just for reference, the biggest jurisdictions that have those alternate pathways are

New York and California, which are also have the most architects licensed in the US.

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And so, you know, there's certainly evidence that it has been done and it can be done and

that it does not necessarily lead to a lack of educational programs.

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You if we look at the number of different schools even in those two states,

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The number of different architecture schools in those states, there's an enormous number

in both New York and California.

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Of course, we can look at the other 15 states in more detail as well.

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There's data to suggest that even if states don't require an accredited degree,

universities find value in that additional accreditation, students and aspiring architects

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find value in education, and so that is likely to continue.

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The other side of this is,

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I do think it's a time when the educational landscape, I have deep love for our educator

friends and for education and for higher education and for all the good things that come

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out of college education.

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Our friends in higher ed are experiencing a lot of turmoil right now.

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But I do think partly that turmoil is evidence of an opportunity to think differently.

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And I think with

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Perhaps the next round of changes to the NAB criteria, which is that work to revise is

actively beginning and will occur over the next two to three years.

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I think there's some really creative opportunities that are created by this and there are

creative opportunities certainly for community colleges to lean into this area as well.

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There's been a lot of growth in community college architecture programs.

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There are probably going to be opportunities to.

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really dive into continuing professional development as well for universities.

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They try and get out there and attend a variety of events with different educational

communities.

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And certainly the bigger dialogue in the educational space outside of architecture is

about re-skilling, up-skilling, training people who maybe began a degree program and then

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stepped away from it and never finished, bringing them back, creating

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certifications and sort of short form courses and certifications.

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There's a lot of room, a lot of interest, a lot of momentum in the educational space for

creating new opportunities.

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I genuinely think that there are some exciting new opportunities that can come as changes

are made both to NCARB's requirements, but as future changes are made to the NAB

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conditions for accreditation.

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Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today.

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Really appreciate it and for helping sort of shed some light on the educational space.

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And we know it's going to be fun times and you're going to be very involved in the sort of

evolution of NCARB's position on this as we move forward.

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So thank you for sharing.

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Thank you, Andy.

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So as Jeremy noted, NABAC-credited education is often treated as a prerequisite for

licensure rather than a direct demonstration of competency.

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While requirements vary across jurisdictions, NCOMB's competency standard is creating new

opportunities to better align education with licensure without dictating what schools must

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teach.

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That discussion with Jeremy raises an important question.

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How does all of this play out on the ground for students, educators,

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and future architects navigating real choices about cost, access and career readiness.

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To explore that perspective, I'm joined by Ingalil Walrus-Ritter, a licensed architect and

educator who has taught at Nabacredd's programs and now teaches at one of California's

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largest community colleges.

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Well, today I'm pleased to be joined by Ingallil Walrus Ritter, who is a very

distinguished educator, currently teaching at the East Los Angeles College, which is a

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community college, obviously based in California.

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But prior to that, Ingallil, you were the Dean of Woodbury School in California and had

taught in many of the very distinguished locations.

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Welcome to our podcast, Exploring Trends and

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themes in and around NCARB's Pathways to Practice initiative.

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We're really excited to get your take as an educator on this effort.

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Welcome.

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Thank you.

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I'm honored to be here.

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So Ingalil, I'm just going to start with a very general question to you, which is as an

educator with your educator's hat on, when you think about Pathways to Practice and what

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NCARB is trying to achieve through this effort, how do you feel about it?

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What are the sort salient points of Pathways to Practice for you?

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think it's very personal to me, so I hope you don't mind me getting a little bit personal

here.

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As you mentioned, my transition as an educator, I'm a licensed architect here in

California and have been teaching now for 26 years.

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And I started teaching at Cornell University.

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I taught courses in glass, because that was my area of expertise.

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And then I was at Yale University for five years and then the Bartlett in London.

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Moved back to Los Angeles, taught at SciArc.

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and then was at Woodbury University for 17 years where I rose the ranks to serve as Dean

and Woodbury is a Hispanic serving institution.

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And then four years ago, I left Woodbury and decided to throw my hat into the ring into a

position here at East Los Angeles College.

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So my transition was very intentional.

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I wanted to teach at a school and even I think my own personal journey is towards

education that's

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more accessible.

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And after years in a NAB accredited environment, I was very aware of challenges to access

and equity, who gets to become an architect in the first place.

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And I think the community colleges in particular are at that critical entry point into

higher education.

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And so to me, Pathways to Practice is really recognizing that there are so many different

pathways into the profession.

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And I think those all have to be recognized and

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celebrated as a practicing architect in the state of California, where one of the pathways

that into licensure is a candidate without a NAB accredited degree.

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And, you know, as the former president, John Baker, example, of NCARB is an example of

somebody who has taken that pathway.

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And I think the pathways to practice is really an initiative to

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open up and recognize that there are a lot of different ways to practice architecture, as

well as entering into licensure.

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And that's why I think that it's a really brilliant initiative.

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And it is why I volunteer for NCARB, because I feel like we can move the needle and answer

that question about who can become an architect and who should be serving as an architect.

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I think that we need more practitioners with different life experiences.

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And to me, that's exactly what Pathway to Practice is.

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reflecting on the fact that California has almost always had that route to becoming a

licensed professional.

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So the students that you're teaching today at TELAC have that opportunity to become

licensed and gain their license with that community college education.

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That's not a universal truth for other students in other states.

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And I think we sometimes sort of look to examples like California to say, actually,

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There are examples, some of the things that we're talking about within Pathways to

Practice aren't completely new.

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There are states that have really been leaning into that licensure route for a long time.

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You mentioned it was four years ago that you made the transition from Woodbury to E-Lac.

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Has it been as smooth or as challenging as you thought?

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What's your big reflections having sort been in living that for the last four years?

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It has been remarkable and eye-opening.

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And I'm really excited to represent a community college.

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As I mentioned, I've been a practitioner now for 35 plus years here in California.

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I also practiced in New York and also in Europe briefly.

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But I know a lot of people here in Los Angeles.

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And one of the most exciting things has been to make those connections for our students

and work with practitioners

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In Los Angeles, there's absolutely still a stigma to students who are in community

college, but it's been really exciting to sort of disprove those stigmas and to try to

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remove them.

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And I'm really grateful to NCARB for really forefronting that.

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One of my big initiatives has been to work with firms to eliminate those sort of very

specific, for example, they will post internship.

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positions for the summer and almost always list, they have to have a bachelor architecture

or a professional degree or be in a professional degree program.

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So inviting practitioners in large firms to come to our reviews.

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So I've been very excited to be working with those firms and helping our students, as you

say, that our students, I'd say about a third of our students transfer into university

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program.

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A third of them go straight into the workforce and

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I'm going to mention one other opportunity that they specifically have at ELAC, at East

Los Angeles College.

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But then a third of them are, they've done two years in architecture and they realize this

is not for me.

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And so, for example, I have students who then go on to construction management, go into

landscape architecture, into, you know, definitely adjacent fields, and then others who

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leave architecture altogether.

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So I'd say that's about a third, a third, a third.

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I want to mention that here in California, community college is free.

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So if you come from a

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high school, straight out of high school, community college.

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It's called the California Promise.

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Thank you, Governor Newsom.

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It's an initiative that many states have.

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I think Oregon is another one, Washington, where students coming straight out of high

school have two years free community college.

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For others who come to community college, I have students from all over the spectrum.

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It's really wonderful.

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people, non-traditional students, of course, people wanting to change careers.

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The tuition is incredibly affordable.

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And so

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I and my faculty, you we have remarkable full-time faculty.

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Most of them are practicing architects, which is a difference, another difference between

university, where a lot of my colleagues were not licensed architects.

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But here in community college, they are practicing architects and they teach for the

passion of it and for the purpose of it.

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And so really trying to educate or work with our students for them to gain professional,

not just career readiness.

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but professional literacy, understanding what it means to be a professional, how offices

function.

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Many of our students, they're underprepared, they're coming from schools where they had

limited resources, limited opportunity to learn about other careers.

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And so this sort of professional literacy is really, but I think it's universal for all

architecture students to really help students understand what it means to be an architect.

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And so we're talking from design ideation into developing ideas that then can be

physically built to all the way to running a professional office and then everything in

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between.

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So, Ingallel, I guess big picture, when we talk about pathways to practice, there is

concern that with the intent of pathways to practice, there is a huge undermining of an

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accredited degree structure.

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And then some of the narrative is that NCARB is sort of trying to do away with that or

diminish it.

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And I think that's a tricky conversation or a tricky part of the narrative.

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And actually the one where there's

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the most angst when we talk about pathways to practice is what's the relationship, the

future relationship between licensure and education.

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Because there is an intentional effort to try to broaden the opportunities available to

students to access the profession.

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And I think that the community college path is one that we've certainly talked about and

we have flagged and highlighted as being an area which we'd like to see sort of strengthen

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and have a clearer sort of

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value proposition when it comes to licensure.

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You obviously have different perspectives or are able to see it from different

perspectives.

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I'm sure you have colleagues around the country who you talk to and have shared thoughts

with you.

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And you actually, if you're at Woodbury, presumably you were overseeing the IPALP program

at Woodbury as well, which was also designed and intended to try to help, say, smooth and

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streamline access to the professional, certainly the speed at which people could get

licensed.

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How do you see the sort of national discussion around Pathways Practice and the

educational framework?

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having worked for so many years and taught at Woodbury University, which of course is a

NAB accredited, has both a five-year but also a two-year and a three-year NAB accredited

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master's programs.

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And we launched the master's program under my leadership and then had to work with NAB to

go through the steps of accreditation as well.

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in some ways, being at a community college, I miss that sort of oversight that the NAB

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provide schools.

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In other words, NAB provides a sort of roadmap and saying these are the learning criteria

that a student should be graduating with.

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That said, the NAB also allows every school to interpret those very loosely.

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So there's an incredible range of how schools deliver those learning outcomes.

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Another thing exciting about being in California is we have so many schools of

architecture, both NAB accredited, but also community colleges.

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And so students have a broad range of schools to choose from, right?

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Ranging from very technical polytechnic schools to more professionally oriented schools.

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I'm not going to mention which ones are which, but you can guess.

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To others that are incredibly creative and really focused almost on film and other ways of

representing.

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imaginative buildings and speculative built environment.

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So I think there's already a range of how those learning outcomes are delivered, but

that's what I see the competencies almost as providing a scaffolding very similar to the

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NAB accreditation, the sort of conditions and procedures that NAB provides.

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And so that's another reason I'm really excited about working on these pathways, that the

competencies

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then I think are the answer to the question that people might have about whether there is

an erosion or whether there's people who are then on the pathway to licensure who don't

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have the knowledge, the requisite knowledge or skills.

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And I would counter that and say, well, I think that's what the competencies will do, that

they standardize and they align the knowledge.

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I mean, as a practicing architect who teaches, as educators, we are educating students

into a profession.

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I think that's a massive obligation that when students graduate, they should be work

ready.

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And that doesn't mean that we're just vocational.

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And I say that in quotes because I love that word, by the way.

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I think vocational is a really beautiful word.

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It has been sort of co-opted and now have a negative meaning.

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again, we're a profession with very clear standards, you know, the health, safety and

welfare of the public, but also

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I think more broadly the ethical component that I think is so important and I'm so excited

to see that in also the socio-demographic differences.

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I think they could be bolstered in the competencies, but they're there and they to me

reflect and provide that kind of roadmap that the NAB does.

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And so I'm not concerned at all.

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think education is the most transformative power in the world.

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That's what I believe and that's why I'm an educator.

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So I think everybody should be in a NAB accredited.

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degree if they have that opportunity.

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But that if is a big question.

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And we haven't talked about economics, we haven't talked about the debt to earnings ratio,

but I think that's very real.

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And for a lot of candidates, that is a huge barrier.

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And so that's, to me, why the competencies provide that really clear roadmap and

scaffolding for candidates.

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And then, again, the pathways to practice recognizes that there are many different

pathways, the NNAB accredited degree being one of them.

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a great point you make and let's talk about that for a minute if we can because I think

that whether anecdotal or there's a narrative around obviously the increasing cost of

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education and for many, even if it's accessible, it's certainly intimidating and the

thought of being saddled with a lot of debt can be a turnoff to pursuing a particular

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career, right?

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Or it's certainly something that makes people pause for thought.

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From your perspective, because you would have a vantage point on this specifically for

architecture.

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Do you see this sort of being an elevated crisis in terms of the financial burden that

students incur to pursue a traditional education?

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Absolutely.

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And I didn't mention it earlier, but one of the reasons I love being at East Los Angeles

College is that for the first time, I'm sending students off into careers without debt.

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And that is huge.

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And I think that students today, full disclosure, I'm the mother of a 17-year-old senior

who's heading off to college next year.

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And so I'm seeing this as a parent as well, that students are very aware of

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debt, of salaries, of the timeline to licensure.

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We haven't really talked about that, but that's huge.

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And I think that changes how they engage with school.

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I'm originally from Finland, which is a country where education is free.

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So for the first time in my life, I'm teaching at a school that's perfectly aligned with

those values that I carry with me in my soul.

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I'm teaching design studio in the exact same way that I taught design studio at a

university that

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know, dream and create.

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And I think that kind of inspiration and rigor is amazing, but it has to be balanced with,

you know, transparency about what's coming down the pike and what students and that's why

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I think community college is such a great economic proposition for students that those two

years as they transfer in and so many of our students transfer in in the third year in a

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five-year program.

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What a huge relief that is.

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But I will also say there are a lot of students who, some of our top students that receive

full ride scholarships and still can't afford because they're supporting families.

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They can't not work full time.

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And so that's why California, we just mentioned that if you are fortunate enough to find a

firm that you can then enter into as a junior architect,

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and then work there for four or five years, six years, and then take your licensure.

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In other words, go through the, certainly now the AXP program, but what's coming down the

line, something a little bit different, and just think about it.

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You don't have debt, or at least you don't have educational debt.

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So that is a very real and winning proposition for many of our students.

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And it means that those students didn't have to.

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let go of their dreams of becoming an architect just because they could not take the Ford

or take the time away from their ability to support their families and themselves in

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what's becoming a very, very expensive world.

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One of the conversations that will happen around this is saying, yeah, we hear that, we

understand it's expensive, but inevitably there's going to be some kind of loss of skill

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set or someone coming out of community college isn't going to have the basis to really

excel and advance in the profession down the road.

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You mentioned that you've put a lot of effort into connecting with firms, helping people

from your college get into the workplace.

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Is that an easy myth to challenge?

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Do you think is it a question if you think about

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firms and firm leaders out there, that it's easy to sort of de-mystify the value that

community college graduates are bringing to the profession.

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Absolutely.

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Let me say two things.

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First of all, I'm 60 years old and in my entire time, I have never not been aware of the

conversation about the disconnect between the academy and the profession.

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Even 40 years ago, we were talking about students are not learning in school, they're

leaving school and having to start at the very bottom.

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And certainly in my day, it was for free.

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interning in offices before becoming useful, again, I say that in quotes, to then be able

to begin earning a wage.

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That conversation has never not been there.

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In other words, we've always been talking about that disconnect.

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And then let me answer your question.

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As an example, I can name five firms now, and Gensler is one of them, Gensler Los Angeles,

with whom I have a very close relationship, and we've worked on several projects, and I'd

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like to mention one of them.

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But with Gensler,

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Four years ago when I started ELEC, I reached out to the person who hires the summer

internship and I said, unless you set aside, earmark one position for an ELEC student,

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there's no way they can compete.

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They just can't, given the criteria as you have set it out and explaining to them that

those criteria are providing barriers, which of course they didn't want to hear.

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So then they did, they earmarked one position.

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I worked with my students, we put together some work samples, sent them off to the person

doing the hiring.

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He was so impressed that he ended up hiring two of our student interns that summer.

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And the summers proved them wrong.

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Those student interns proved them wrong.

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And that's what I'm telling these people that I work with at the firms.

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Just hire one and see how they perform.

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What's wonderful about community college is that they're learning, as I mentioned, a third

of them go transfer students.

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So those are like, okay, we have to make sure that their portfolios are equivalent to what

the universities are doing.

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They have design projects.

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have, you know, they learn Rhino, Revit.

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They learn all the software skills, representation skills, but the other third, these are

workforce students going directly into the workforce.

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And so I think that community college students have the superpower.

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They have work samples and portfolios that actually have practical.

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One of my classes I teach is how to design an ADU.

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So they're not just detailing and producing a construction drawing, they're really

understanding.

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And that's a skillset that most university students don't develop until later.

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And so.

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I let the students, in other words, do what you're saying, dispel those sort preconceived

ideas.

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And then very often, more often than not, the firm then offers those interns a full-time

position.

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And I can mention many students that that has happened to in the last couple years.

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That is one of the most amazing, you can imagine as an educator, how good you feel about

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out.

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You mentioned you had a high school senior and I also have a high school senior.

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One thing I reflect on in that sort of parent mode is that as my eldest is sort of

approaching that is we talk about obviously community college, the NAB degree, right?

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Which is typically has a 150 credit hour requirement.

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It requires it to be a five years or often it's a master's level course that people do as

a four plus two years.

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I think personally the four year undergrad in architecture seems to be missing from the

conversation.

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Sometimes, and I say that because as a parent, I sort of go, well, you know, I expect that

you're going to go to college and maybe study for four years, but the proposition of

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pursuing architecture in the traditional sense has that extra timeframe and extra costs

associated with it, which may be off-putting to some families.

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When you look ahead, if we just fast track, I'm going to sort of let this be our sort of

dismount for the conversation, which is if you look ahead, thinking about pathways to

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practice and how, you know, your hopes for this initiative.

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What do you see the future of education?

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feel like I'm sensing you see it shifting.

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I'm sensing you see some inevitability in change.

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What would you like to see in say 10 years optimistically?

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That's a challenging question.

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We've had these big conversations, of course, with the Department of Education, know,

recent ruling that architecture is no longer a profession, for example.

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Although in the back of my mind, there is a little seed that thinks the ultimate result of

architecture, there's the credibility, there's, you know, of course we're a profession,

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there's, you know, so much that we do.

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The training that we have to go through, the health, safety, welfare, you know, the

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the harm that can happen if you don't have a licensed professional operating at those

levels.

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But ultimately, when you hear about what the outcome of that is, it means that there's a

cap on a loans that students can take out.

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And there's a part of me that thinks there should be a cap, and those caps should then

affect the schools and result in a perfect world in them reducing the tuition.

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because it will affect, of course, those students that we have been working so hard to

bring into the profession and have all of the pathways available to them.

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So in a perfect world, think affordable education becomes, I think that the pathways can

seem bewildering to many who

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embarked on the traditional path, and I'm one of them.

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My undergraduate degree, I had a history, a dual major, a history in math, so I didn't

have an architecture undergraduate degree.

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And then I got my master's degree.

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And so seven years of higher education, but that's an ideal path.

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And I think that it took me many years to realize, gosh, I really was not very prepared

for the profession.

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And I see students graduating and their disillusioned.

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And so I think two things would be ideal.

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One is that we have more of those kind of practicum courses that I see in many of the

great schools that students are embracing.

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their students are really eager for that kind of real world hands-on work, whether it's a

sponsored studio, working with a profession, internship programs, or design build.

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I think that we need more of that in the classroom.

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But the other thing, of course, is affordability.

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And I'm grateful to be in a state, California, that recognizes that and embraces all of

those different pathways that we've been talking about, including, of course, the

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four-year programs, which you're right, I think we should be recognizing and honoring

those as well.

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UCLA is one that has this really great four-year program.

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So I think that affordability, but also this closer relationship with practice.

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So that when students graduate, they're not disillusioned, that they're like, this is what

I've been working towards.

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I think students want that kind of knowledge that when they graduate, they'll be ready for

working.

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And I think that to me would be two really great future initiatives that would be

something that would really help architecture remain relevant, not just remain relevant,

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to become even more relevant.

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I'm one who thinks that we need more architects.

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because there's too few architects working on too few projects.

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I live in a city that is a perpetual project and we need more architects working to make

everyday life better for every person.

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And that to me would be a really exciting outcome to have more architects with very

different backgrounds engaging in very broad range of design projects that make the world

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a better place.

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Well, thank you.

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Ingol, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your thoughts.

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I do think that if anyone takes anything from our conversation today, knowing that there's

people like yourself who are educators, who are working in the academia and educational

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space, who are contributing as you are to NCOM's programmatic evolution and the future of

licensure, it's good to know that that voice is in the room and we thank you for bringing

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it.

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Thank you.

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This has been really exciting and I'm really honored that you invited me to speak today.

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So thank you, Andy.

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My pleasure.

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Thank you so much.

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Ingalil's experience working across different educational environments gave great insight

into why community colleges play a critical role in expanding access to the profession.

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Affordability, student debt, career readiness and the persistent disconnect between

academia and practice are real challenges for the profession.

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Community colleges can provide opportunities for hands-on learning, professional literacy

and real world exposure.

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Ingalil's perspective underscores

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that education isn't one size fits all and that multiple pathways can lead to competency,

confidence and licensure.

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The takeaway from this episode is simple but powerful.

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A degree is important, but it's not the only measure of readiness to practice

architecture.

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As the profession evolves, Pathways to Practice asks us to look beyond labels and focus on

what candidates can actually do, how they demonstrate competency, protect the public and

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contribute to the built environment.

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In our next episode,

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We'll shift from education to experience as we dive into how candidates earn experience

today, where the current system creates challenges, and how firm culture plays a critical

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role in shaping the path to licensure.

500

Thanks for joining us for another, hopefully great episode.

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Be sure to subscribe, give us a rating and review.

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And if you found this useful, please do us a favour and share it with a friend.

503

We'll see you next time on the NCARB Podcast.