Experience is essential to becoming an architect—but access to meaningful experience is not always equal. This episode looks at how candidates earn experience today and how firm culture can shape the path to licensure.

Andy speaks with Gabriella Bermea, Chair of NCARB’s Experience Committee, about the Architectural Experience Program, recent AXP updates, and how the program is being aligned with NCARB’s Competency Standard.

Then, Jenny Kawecki joins to discuss what NCARB’s data reveals about attrition, supervisor relationships, firm support, and the challenges candidates face when trying to complete experience requirements.

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 fourth episode, we're focusing on experience, how licensure candidates earn it

today, where the current system creates challenges and why firm culture plays such a

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critical role in shaping a candidate's path to licensure.

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We're going to look closely at the Architectural Experience Program, or the AXP as it's

known.

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and explore how Pathways to Practice is prompting NCARB to rethink how experience is

documented, evaluated and connected to competency.

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We'll begin with a conversation about the experience program itself.

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I'm joined by Gabriella Bemea, a licensed architect and senior associate at Perkins

Eastman and Chair of NCARB's Experience Committee.

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Well, I'd like to welcome Gabriella Bermeyer.

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Thank you, Andy.

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I'm so excited to be here.

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Thanks, y'all, bringing me on.

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And Gabriella, you are our current chair of our experience committee and you've served as

an NCARB volunteer for a number of years.

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I know you've been on the experience committee as one of our volunteers for a few years

and also on our futures collaborative.

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So tell us a brief bit about you and your route to becoming an architect and your

involvement with NCARB, just for context.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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So I am based in Austin, Texas.

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It's where I hold my license in Texas and in Colorado.

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My path to licensure, I had actually started at a really fantastic K-12 firm here in the

Austin region and then kind of made a transition to complete my AXP hours, which I'll talk

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about here in a little while.

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And then now that has landed me as a senior associate and PM with Perkins Eastman in our

Austin studio, which I have absolutely adored still working in K-12, which has been a

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great overlap.

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And when it comes to

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talking about competency and experience and then being able to work in the educational

environment.

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It's been a great synthesis to how I've came to practice.

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I did get licensed back in 2021.

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So that was through the ARE 5.0 and I've just been really enthusiastic about helping this

next generation of architects find their pathway here and go beyond competency into really

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finding a career path in architecture.

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From your own experience, I assume you went through the AXP and not the IDP, which is its

predecessor.

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So you have firsthand experience of the program, but also in your volunteer role as being

on the experience committee, you've seen some oversight of the program structure.

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So could you share your thoughts on it?

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Tell us about the current program, how it works, and feel free to sprinkle in some

personal commentary on that from your own experiences.

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Absolutely.

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So for those who are going through it now, you understand candidates complete that 3,740

hours in the six core practice areas.

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So practice management, project management, programming and analysis, project planning and

design, project development documentation, and then construction and evaluation.

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That really provides the whole scale idea of what you see throughout a project, which is

absolutely fantastic.

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Our candidates are in the bulk of their hours through firm work, but there's also

supplementary gaps that they can get through other

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instances like construction firms, like under another licensed professional, if for some

reason they're not able to have access to an architecture firm, which I think is really

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great about our program and allows for people to come in the pathway through many, many

ways in, many ways out through our Pathways to Practice initiative.

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With the NCARB approved experience like Community Design Centers, Disaster Assistance

Programs, and Supplemental Learning, it again provides that well-roundedness for maybe

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even students or

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new graduates who have not been able to find a job in this market currently.

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So the process revolves around logging these hours, verifying them with supervisors, and

then tracking exposure and really meeting and competency across the full project life

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cycle.

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It's less so about checking boxes, and that's been a big transformation we've had over the

last year to go from these 96 tasks to aligning with the 16 competencies, which helps the

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candidate understand how a project moves from concept to construction.

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And AXP is really that structured framework that teaches candidates how to navigate the

profession holistically.

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And I think we've still got a lot of great improvements to go as we continue on with our

committee work.

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Thank you.

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I'm going to, guess, just want to zoom up even a little bit further because one of the

main framing pieces of licensure has been these three aspects, right, which is education,

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experience, the examination.

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And from NCOB's perspective, the evolution of the experience program to what we have

today, which is the AXP, really is trying to provide a framework that's going to support

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professional experience, the experience people are gaining in firms and to provide some

guidance to that process to help both the individual and the firm identify what the

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appropriate kind of competences to explore and what kind of experiences that future

architects are going to need.

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You started off talking about the Pathways to Practice initiative, which is the main theme

of this podcast series.

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I'm just going to dig into that.

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So you mentioned some of the changes that have recently happened in light of the fact that

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NCOP's competency standard, which launched last year.

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And I believe that the experience committee has been obviously looking at that and

thinking about what changes should happen in light of that.

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Could you elaborate on both the process and the outcome of that work?

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Yeah, absolutely.

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So this is something that I'm really fortunate to have had four years of experience

committee experience.

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So I've been able to see the census pathways practice initiative launched back in that

21-22 timeframe.

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And what's been really exciting about that is in this last year, we've had probably the

largest shift that's happened to the AXP in recent years.

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So I cannot believe we're already past November 18th.

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I feel like I was saying that date constantly since last June, since the annual business

meeting.

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But the main, one of the largest pieces is the updated reporting policy, which now allows

candidates to earn 100 % of credit for experience up to one years old and 75 % for

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anything older than a year with really no upper limit to how old that experience is.

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And I've actually had a number of current candidates reach out to me and say how positive

an experience this is for them.

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They basically use those months to reach out to old employers and start getting things

ready to launch on November 18th.

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So I know it's working in real time again, that's anecdotal, but

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there's some real benefits to that and I don't think we'll really see the effect of it for

another year or so or two years as we get in the new data and see how the next NCARB by

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the numbers comes out.

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can give you a spoiler alert data piece if you like.

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So our understanding is that when that change went into effect, we had just shy of 800

candidates go to AXP complete when that action was put in.

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And we saw in the region of 18 and a half thousand candidates gain additional sort of

experience or sort of leap forward with regard to their experience gain.

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So yeah, it's a big impact straight out the gate in terms of the changes that that would

make.

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And yes, you're right.

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Prior to that, it was a six month reporting requirement and it's basically just extended

the time window for people to report experience professionally.

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And there was that five-year cutoff prior, which was a large talking point for our

committee, whether or not that continued on or it extended to this basically lifetime of

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the 75 % of experience, which is absolutely fantastic.

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I don't know if there's video with this, but I have a smile just plastered on my face

right now because I am so excited to hear that.

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Thank you for sharing that tidbit, Andy.

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In addition, we did have some experience area descriptions.

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I mentioned earlier the 96 tasks to the 16 competencies to match our competency standard.

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That was another large change that we are still

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We have candidates who send in emails, does this qualify under one of these areas?

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So there are still questions that are happening with that, but it's in great alignment

with moving from the AXP as an exposure tool to now an actual competency standard.

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So we can help our candidates and supervisors better have the support to understand what

this setting actually will mean for our future architects.

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I'm going to take a little sidebar here because I think what you've just talked to is a

really great example of how change happens at NCARB and how the organization evaluates

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work and evaluates its evolution.

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As someone involved in that process and obviously as the chair of the experience

committee, can you tell us a little bit about how those decisions are made and your

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involvement in the process as an architect and as a volunteer for this organization?

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Absolutely.

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I mean, it's one of the reasons why I'm continually here year after year because there is

this sense of the change doesn't happen just to happen.

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It happens because there is a clear pinch point that is hurting our candidates in some

way.

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Those in turn, that data goes to the board.

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The board in turn gives us charges and we work with NCARB to create solutions that are

driven by the actual people who are taking in the supervisors, the candidates, the

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retirees.

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everyone comes to the table and develops these solutions that are, again, approved by the

board, sent out to membership to our member board members, our state boards for approval,

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because that's ultimately who's going to adopt these.

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And in my opinion, a great exposure of what civic engagement should look like when it

comes to a licensure policy tool, when it comes to rules and regulations of how we

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regulate the profession.

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I've really enjoyed seeing it and being a part of it.

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The policy change that just happened, which is easy to understand that because of the

numerical changes to the timeframe, right?

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But the other change that you referred to was the change from the 96 tasks to the 16

competencies framework.

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And that's also been a bit of an undertaking.

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The company standard launched in October 24.

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And since then, the organization's been sort of grappling with what does that mean to the

current programs.

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And there's been a number of changes and adjustments made.

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the experience program in light of the competency standard?

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What's your involvement been on that front from the committee perspective?

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Right.

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So the experience committee had direct oversight on that after licensure, after the

licensure R &D task force passed on the competency framework.

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And it was one of our charges in our previous year to say, how do these align with the

experience areas?

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And then you come forward to next year and now it's actually changed in the paper itself.

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So it's again that example of step one, step two, step three, but there is a constant

engagement in between, of course, all with board and member board member approval with it.

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and all the staff support who have been immense in giving the accurate data, answering

hundreds of questions from our committee members as to why are we even making this

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decision.

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My large shout out to Michelle as being a fantastic liaison to giving us exactly what's

needed every single time, because we do have a lot of local members as we should, right?

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We have people who are asking the questions, is this actually going to make an equitable

change for our candidates?

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And to be able to come around and have these data numbers.

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has been spectacular.

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as a shout out to my colleague, Michelle Cohn, who's one of the last presidents in our

programs department.

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So we're going to name check it.

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Let's do it fully.

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That's what I say.

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uh So Gabriella, I think that there's two threads for me to pull on.

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One is great plug for anyone who's interested or thinking about volunteering with NCARB.

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And you've given a good indication of the sort of value and the benefit of doing so.

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We appreciate that.

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The second question though is, or thread to pull on from what you said, was that NCARB is

evolving, right?

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The programs themselves are changing.

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it's not that we are, when we talk about pathways to practice, which is the main theme for

our podcast series, to really try and story to the changes we're thinking of making, the

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changes we're exploring and sort of rational reason behind those changes.

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And I think what you've indicated or conveyed is the fact that it's not that this

organization stands still.

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It's not that we haven't evolved or haven't changed for a long period of time.

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There is change and there is evolution in the programs anyway.

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But Pathways to Practice does represent potentially a change, let's say, of a magnitude

maybe slightly greater than some of the others that we've seen and are typical of us.

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So I'm wondering, what's your take on that when you think about Pathways to Practice and

you're exposed to NCARB?

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How are you feeling about Pathways and what do you think it heralds for the future?

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Where I think this really goes is it's not saying that the traditional way to architecture

is wrong.

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It's just saying, have we included everyone?

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Has everyone been brought to the table to really make this a thriving profession?

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And I think that's what Pathways to Practice directly addresses.

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It addresses the draftsman who has 20 years experience and never really got tapped on the

shoulder to become an architect and is now studying, passing his exams or her exams and

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going into the workforce.

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It is the person who has a degree in kinesiology, started interning at a firm, who's now

able to go through a pathway to practice through one of the non-Nav accredited degree

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state pathways.

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It is really about bringing everyone to the table, allowing for them to see architecture

as a viable career and again, make our built environment more representative of the

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communities that we serve.

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Opening those bridges up, allowing for community college programs to be able to come to

the table, allowing for

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Those who come from a NABAC-credited degree who may have gone through a different career

path, may have studied in tech or may have experienced in that, come back to the

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profession.

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And that is something that's really powerful when we talk about the longevity, because

what I think our constant mindset is, and this is NCAR volunteers, this is what I've heard

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from board members, is it is not about the next 10 years, it's not about the next 50

years, it's about the next 100 years of what it looks like to be an architect.

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And Andy, that's one thing.

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I really enjoyed when I got to be a part of the Futures Collaborative is we talked about

those long-term issues that didn't stop at licensure.

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They continued on out of this world if we're talking about space architecture on what the

future of our profession looks like from a regulatory standpoint, but then also from a

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practice.

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some information for others out there would be that you're the chair of our experience

committee, but there's also counterpart committees in education committee and examination

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committees.

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And those three have been long standing.

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They've been existing for a long time.

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And yes, our volunteerships sort of cycles through and we get new faces and new people and

new opinions on those groups every year.

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But it creates this sentiment of, oh, do you feel protectionist in that role towards the

experience component of licensure?

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And how do you think experience is going to sort of contribute to the whole as we move

forward?

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That's one thing that talks a lot to our committee charge for this year is bringing the

program committees, that education experience and examination, all together in the same

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room constantly, right?

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So our committee meetings are actually joint committee meetings.

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We're talking about the exact same content time and time again.

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And what's exciting about that is we're all moving on the same page, that competencies

need to be a part of all three of these individual standpoints.

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And when we do it all holistically,

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we can be on the same page.

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And we've got parallel charges to just have things changed out between education,

experience, and examination.

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I think that really says it was a strong message from the board to say we need to evaluate

this holistically, what our program is.

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No longer the three-legged stool, but how are we moving together in tandem for our future

architects?

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I think for the future of experience, where my hope is continuing to expand those

pathways, where we have these academic practice hybrids, experience-only routes,

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credit for meaningful community-based work, which are things we already have to continue

to widen the access.

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The more we have these clear instructions, cleaner reporting, intuitive technology and

transparency, our system will be easier to navigate for people who are wanting to enter

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and stay in the profession to strengthen both NCARB's mission and the future of

architecture.

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Great points.

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I really appreciate them, Gabriella.

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I want to give you the floor to add any other commentary.

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Any final thoughts for us?

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I have really enjoyed the Pathways to Practice podcast because I think this is a great way

to engage with our candidates, with our record holders to say, this is about you.

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This is about transparency and exposure and giving you the floor to be a part of this.

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I'd encourage those who are listening, who are interested in becoming an NCAR volunteer

again, Andy, you made the plug, I'll make the plug again.

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Come join and see what it's really about.

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Join the item development team.

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Join one of the program committees, the Futures Collaborative.

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There are great conversations that are happening here that don't happen in a vacuum.

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And that's the most important piece of it all.

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So if you are encouraged by this conversation, I hope you realize your voice is needed and

wanted in this space.

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Well, Gabriella, on behalf of NCARB, thank you for your commitment and your time that

you've devoted to us over the last few years.

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Really appreciate it.

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And thank you for joining us today.

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Thank you.

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So Gabriella walked us through how the AXP works today, from earning experience across six

practice areas to the recent changes designed to reduce unnecessary barriers for

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candidates.

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Her own experience navigating licensure provided a lot of insight into how the AXP is

evolving to better align with NCOB's competency standard, shifting the focus away from

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task tracking and towards demonstrating real professional competency.

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That conversation highlights an important reality.

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Even with improvements to the program,

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a candidate's experience is still deeply influenced by the firm where they work.

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To explore that side of the equation, I'm joined by Jenny Koechi, colleague at NCARB, who

leads our data and research efforts, including NCARB by the Numbers and our joint baseline

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on belonging study with the National Organisation of Minority Architects, or NOMA.

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Jenny, welcome.

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Hello.

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Happy to be here.

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Not your first time on NCARB podcast.

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I remind everybody that Jenny oversees NCARB by the numbers, our annual data publication,

and is a colleague who has lots of insight into data and trends on the path to licensure

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and the profession at large.

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So Jenny, welcome.

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Thanks.

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So today, Jenny, we're talking about the architectural experience program, the AXP, and

I'll start with a little anecdote because I was recently at a panel discussion and I was

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asked a question from the floor.

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which was based on our own data, when we look at attrition rates, we see the greatest

proportion of attrition, i.e.

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candidates stopping pursuing licensure during the experience program.

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And the question was, what are we doing about that?

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And I will say that in the moment, my answer was sort of like, well, you know, it's

actually, it's a tricky one for us because it's a part of the process where arguably we're

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kind of least connected to the candidates.

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And there's a lot of responsibility.

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on the firms and their experience going through that, gaining that professional experience

that's not necessarily directly related to NCARB.

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So I'll just open up with a question about that.

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How do you see that data?

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What are your thoughts on the experience program and its relationship to how it plugs into

the licensure path?

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Yeah, I mean, that's a great question.

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And it is tricky because we do have the least control over what happens in individual

firms across the country.

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We can't come in and say, like, no, you must do this.

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That's not going to fly.

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And I think some of the attrition is natural because people just change career paths over

time.

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When I first got out of school, I maybe thought that I was going to work in a different

area of the world than I am.

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Didn't see architectural licensure in my future, but here I am.

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Are you telling me that wasn't your childish dream to work for the national organization

overseeing architectural licensure?

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Really?

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Yeah, you know what?

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I was going to go into landscape architectural regulation.

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That was the goal.

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OK.

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But no, so some of it is natural.

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People change career paths and that is to be expected and not something that we're

necessarily trying to put a stop to.

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But then some of it I think is specific to architecture and to the process of earning

experience and how that connects at the firm level.

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So there's a lot about moving through earning experience that is just dependent on the

culture of the firm that you're working for.

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And when you're a new licensure candidate, when you're

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maybe a fresh graduate or you've only been working in the field a couple years, you don't

necessarily have a lot of control over that firm culture.

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You're kind of more subject to it.

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There's a degree to which candidates can't really control the experience they're going to

get and NCARB can't control it either.

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And so there is some attrition that we see throughout the experience program as a result

of that.

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I was recently talking to one of our candidates who had moved firms primarily to be able

to complete the experience program.

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I can't remember if it was construction and evaluation or there was one particular

practice area that they'd really struggled to gain experience in in their current firm and

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decided that they had to move to be able to finish that component of the program, which

struck me as being like, wow, that's a lot to ask of somebody to actually

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be in a position where in order to get your license, you're going to have to quit a job

and start a new one and go through that effort.

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So fair play to them, but it certainly opened my eyes to that reality.

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Jenny, we talked briefly there about sort of some of our data, but you've also been very

much involved in the work we've done with NOMA, the National Organization of Minority

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Architects, in and around better understanding some of the experiential factors that

people have going through the AXP program.

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Could you tell us a little bit?

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about that joint effort, what led to it and what the sort of headlines had been.

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Yeah, sure.

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Baseline and Belonging was our joint study with Noma, where we really dug into impediments

on the path to licensure at a variety of stages.

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But a big part of it allowed us to gain insights into what happens in the experience

portion in the firm culture setting that we don't necessarily have access to as NCARB.

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And we really saw when it comes to firm challenges, I mean, there's a variety of things

that come up for candidates, right?

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There's the

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matter of how supportive of licensure is your firm.

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And we have seen that some firms are more supportive than others, and that makes sense.

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Some firms have more need to have more licensed individuals on staff than others,

especially larger firms tend to have more licensed architects based on what we've seen.

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Then maybe a small firm might just have need for one licensed architect, and they don't

need to have all of their other employees earn a license.

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And so the degree to which they have a kind of like structured

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process for helping candidates go through the experience program varies firm by firm.

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And some of the bigger firms, again, have more resources to put toward dedicating a

structure for that than others.

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And then we've also seen there's just a big reliance on the relationship that you have

with your supervisor.

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So some candidates from different backgrounds we've seen are more likely to have a more

talented relationship with their supervisor than others.

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So we've seen that.

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People of color, especially women of color, tend to have more difficulty having a

supportive supervisor relationship than, say, your typical white male candidate.

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And that can impact a variety of things from the types of experience you get access to, to

how in touch your supervisor is with your licensure process, how fast they're reviewing

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experience reports, all types of things like that.

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Experience the realities of being in a firm and gaining that firsthand insight into how

projects are delivered has been fundamental to the licensure process for long time.

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The AXP as we know it, which has been around since 2016, so pretty much coming on 10

years, is the latest iteration of NCARB's programs to support the gaining of experience.

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You could go back way back when to sort of early apprenticeships as part of that process.

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One of the questions that

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We often ask ourselves as like, well, you know, it's been so fundamental and inherent

there.

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And if it isn't broken, then you know, why are we fixing it?

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Why are we talking about making changes to the licensure process with regards to pathways

to practice?

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So I just wonder about that question.

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If it's not broken, don't fix it.

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But is it broken?

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from your perspective, if you want to give a bit of a critique of the current program,

what do you think are some of the weaknesses in the current system?

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Well, I think that that thing that you brought up earlier about some candidates having to

choose between leaving a job to finish the experience program versus maybe staying in a

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job they like is pretty significant and impactful.

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That can be because of licensure support a firm offers, but can also just be based on the

type of firm and the projects they take on.

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Like we have heard from some candidates whose firms maybe just don't do a lot of

construction administration.

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Maybe they offload that to another firm or a contractor or consultant or whoever.

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And so candidates who work at firms like that can have trouble getting experience in the

CE area specifically.

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And so for those candidates, they might have to choose, do I look for another job, even

though I really like this one, or do I stay here and not earn my license?

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And that seems like a pretty big flaw to me.

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Granted, I'm not an architect, but I don't think that NCARB wants people to be in the

position of choosing between.

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a livelihood that they maybe enjoy and are making progress in versus like switching just

so they can earn a license.

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And I think that is something that we're really looking into with Pathways to Practice.

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With regard to Pathways to Practice specifically, how might this effort, this sort of

reinvention of the licensure process ease this component, make some improvements in and

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around the gaining of experience?

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What's on the deck for that as potential?

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I will start by saying that it is still a work in progress.

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any listeners out there are thinking like, NCARB is definitely going to do this because

that girl in that podcast said they would.

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Just know that this is all still a work in progress.

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It's all still tentative.

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But one of the things we're looking at is not necessarily making people demonstrate their

competency in specific areas in ways that are duplicative, right?

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So currently,

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as an example, you have to do the practice management experience hours, right?

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And then you also have to take a practice management exam.

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So you're really duplicating that effort and you probably took some classes related to

professional practice in school, right?

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So in that case, you might be triplicating your effort in that competency.

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But what we're looking at is ways to make it so that you only have to demonstrate that you

are competent in that area through one methodology in most places.

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So if your firm doesn't do construction administration,

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Maybe you can just take an exam on construction administration to demonstrate your

competency in that area and you don't have to go change jobs so that you can earn

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experience in that area.

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You're still learning experience.

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We still, I think we're all in agreement that earning experience is a very important part

of the licensure process and we're not looking to cut experience out of the licensure

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process, but maybe ways that people can just be able to demonstrate that they are capable

without having to demonstrate

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experience and exam in every single area.

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A reminder for anyone listening out there that a year ago NCARB launched our competency

stat, which redefines the requirements for licensure around 16 core competencies.

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And Pathways to Practice is really anchored on those 16 competencies and how in the future

a prospective architect can really demonstrate their competencies across those 16.

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Jenny, how do you see experience relating to those 16 competency areas?

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Is it going to be pretty uniform or do you think there's going to be some distinction

depending on the complexity error itself?

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Do you mean like the way that you demonstrate experience?

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Yeah, or even its applicability to competency.

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Absolutely.

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I think that our volunteer architects, I will say that the decision on this is way beyond

me as a non-architect, but we have a lot of volunteer architects who are looking into how

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each of those competencies is best demonstrated.

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So some of them might be best demonstrated by taking an exam or by taking a class, and

some of them might be best demonstrated by earning experience.

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And so I don't know which way they're going on individual competencies off the top of my

head, but I do know that that is something that is currently being discussed and evaluated

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by our volunteers and our member licensing boards.

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And so I know there's more to come on that front.

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And if there's anyone out there listening, and we hope there is, I hope there's a few,

maybe they're going through the Experience Program now and we're talking about Pathways to

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Practice, but it feels like it's very sort of out there in the future and several years

away from being impactful.

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If anyone's out there and they're struggling with some of these topics that we've talked

about, any advice for them or any resources that they could turn to or look to for

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support.

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I would encourage them to stay subscribed to our newsletters because we're sending out new

information all the time about all this stuff and to look for ways to get involved.

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We're doing a lot of surveys and like feedback efforts with licensure candidates, with

architects, and we're going to keep doing that over the next couple years as we work to

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implement this.

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And so it's really essential to us that we do get involvement from all those people so

that we can make sure that the programs and policies that we put together are really

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reflective of architectural practice and

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Don't create any unintended barriers for licensure candidates in the future.

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So look for ways to get involved.

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Share your thoughts.

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Make sure your voice is heard.

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But otherwise, just keep reading.

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Keep reading what we put out there.

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Look at our newsletters.

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Look at our blog.

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And stay involved.

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great.

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Well, Jenny, thank you very much for joining us today.

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Really appreciate your insights as always and enjoy the rest of podcast.

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Thank you very much.

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Thanks for having me.

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So as Jenny explained, firm culture, supervisor relationships, and access to different

types of work can significantly affect a candidate's ability to progress successfully

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through the AXP.

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Experience is one of the most common points of attrition on the Path to Licensure.

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During on data research, Jenny highlighted how pathways to practice could offer more

flexibility by allowing candidates to demonstrate competency in different ways without

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being forced to change jobs or stall their careers.

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The key takeaway from this episode is that experience matters, but access to experience

isn't equal.

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While hands-on practice remains essential to becoming an architect, Pathways to Practice

is challenging us to think differently about how experience fits into licensure, how it

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connects to competency, and how we can reduce barriers without compromising public health,

safety, and welfare.

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In our next episode, we'll turn to the third traditional pillar of licensure, the exam,

and explore

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how testing has evolved over time, what it measures today, and how it might change in the

future.

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Thanks for joining us for another episode.

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Be sure to subscribe, give us a rating and review, and if you found this useful, please do

us a favour and share it with a friend.

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We'll see you next time on the End Card Podcast.