With the Competency Standard in place, what could the future licensure model actually look like? This episode explores how NCARB is moving from big ideas to practical implementation.

Andy speaks with Julie Hildebrand, former Chair of NCARB’s Licensure Process Research and Development Task Force, about the early research behind Pathways to Practice. Julie shares how the task force explored licensure models from other professions and countries, tested ideas, and balanced innovation with regulatory responsibility.

Then, Greg Wynn, current Chair of the Research and Development Task Force, explains how the work is shifting toward assessment criteria, feasibility, and multiple equivalent ways for candidates to demonstrate competency.

Find out more about Pathways to Practice.

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

the initiative shaping the future of architectural practice.

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I'm your host, Andy McIntyre.

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In this, our seventh episode, we're looking ahead at what the future of licensure could

look like and how NCARB is working to move from big ideas to practical, reasonable

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implementation.

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We'll explore the work of the Licensure Research and Development Task Force, how a

flexible

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a modular licensure model is being shaped and what all of this could mean for candidates

navigating the path to practice.

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We're going to start by grounding this conversation in the work that's already been done.

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I'm joined by Julie Hildebrand, former chair of ENCOBS licensure process research and

development taskforce and longtime executive of the Texas Board of Architectural

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Examiners.

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Julie, welcome.

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Now, Julie, it's important, good context this, I think, for anyone listening.

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You

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served for a indeterminist amount of time, I'm not going to say how long it was for, as

the member board executive for the Texas Board of Architectural Examiners.

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Could you just tell us a little bit about the role of an MBE and their responsibility?

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Sure.

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With the MBE, what I am most responsible for is ensuring that architects that receive a

license are both competent and safe to practice.

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And so we are in charge of what the different licensure process is, what are those

requirements to get licensed, and ultimately we receive that authority from the

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legislature.

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So we have to ensure that anything that we are doing as far as licensing is in compliance

with the

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So anyone wanting to get a license in Texas had to go through you.

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Is that a fair statement?

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Yes.

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And obviously the board was presumably a group of volunteers that were state appointed

that you then support them in their decision making, but you as the MBE are very much the

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sort of, you're the paid support person within the state's governance structure who's

overseeing the work of the board and also the delivery and the action of their decisions

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within the state.

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And it's actually the board, it'll vary from state to state, but in Texas specifically, we

have architect members, members that are licensed to architects.

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We are a multidisciplinary board, so we also have landscape architects on the board and

registered interior designers.

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And then we also have public members.

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And so I think that really helps ensure that the interests of the public are what comes

first versus the interest of any single profession.

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the country, different boards have different focuses.

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Some are very specific to architecture, some have multiple professions like yours, but I

think it's fairly common to have a mix of public members and professionals who are working

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in the field as well.

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I agree.

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would think most states, especially today and today's society, have both professions and

public members.

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Now, Julie, you're not an architect, am I right?

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You have a legal background, if I remember.

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Correct.

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Yeah, I'm not an architect.

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I have my law degree and that's actually when I started working for the state.

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That's what my job was, was prosecuting some of the disciplinary cases.

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And then I've also worked in both when I started out was with physicians, also worked with

pharmacists and dentists.

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And then my last 10 years as the executive director, I was with the architecture board.

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So are architects the best profession?

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Can they assume that what they've always suspected is true?

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Yes, they are.

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I would say along with landscape architects and registered interior designers, they're all

my favorite.

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Absolutely.

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Great answer.

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So Julie, I know not only have you been serving Texas in that role, but you have been a

longstanding volunteer for NCARB.

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Tell us a little bit about the relationship between the state and NCARB from your

perspective as an MBE.

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Right, yeah, think it's for the state, particularly the state of Texas, it's very

important for us to be able to volunteer with NCARB.

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We do rely on them 100 % for our testing, and so we don't have any testing capability that

we do just at the board level.

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Everything that we rely on for granting the license is going to come from the ARE, so

NCARB's test.

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And so that relationship, we're heavily dependent on NCARB.

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And so it's really important that we take an active role in what work NCARB is doing and

what the future of the test looks like.

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Also with the AXP, the Experience Program, it's really important.

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That's another one of our requirements.

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So it's really important that we have input and an impact.

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And I think that's important for

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the state of Texas, but I think it's also important for just, you know, national licensure

as a whole to be able to have the different states all have input on what the ultimate

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structure looks like.

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So Julie, you have this great resume of volunteership and then you were asked to join and

let's talk a little bit about pathways to practice right now because that's really the

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topic of our podcast series is understanding sort of the motivation, the backstory, the

drivers for why NCARB is really focusing itself on this effort.

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And I think you as an MBE and someone who's obviously been

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very close to this work in your role as chair for the Research and Development Task Force,

which was specifically appointed and assigned the responsibility of saying, might we go

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about doing this?

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But yet you obviously have that history of, I'm there to think about the state health,

safety, welfare of the public protection.

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How do you go into that?

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Tell us about your mindset and thinking about pathways to practice and what you want to

see from it, your hopes for it, and how you think it's going.

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For me, yeah, there was two different approaches I had to take.

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When we were first looking at research, you know, I didn't really have to worry too much

about being the executive director for the Texas Board.

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With research, it was fun.

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You just get to learn.

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You get to hear what all the different options are.

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You get to become educated on the whole world of licensure and credentialing.

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And so for that part of it,

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I really felt like I was able to let down some of my walls and my restrictions and just

learn as much as I could.

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Once we started getting into the development, I think I slowly started reapplying my

responsibility as the executive director.

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So maybe in the first iteration, I still allowed myself to think big and broad.

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And as we started polishing,

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the program started trying to come up with something more detailed and something that

would actually work.

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That's when I started to that hat back on and even grabs some of my more attorney

characteristics and really start poking holes and asking questions and keeping it in mind.

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Okay, how am I actually going to take this back to my office and apply it?

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Can I still say as the executive director for Texas,

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that this is a model, a licensure process that I can rely on and that I can confidently

say to my board, to the legislature, to the public, yes, if somebody is licensed in the

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state of Texas, they are competent to practice.

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And your work was sort of running alongside the work of the competency task force who were

developing what we now have published, which is the 16 competences, which are the sort of

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the base camp, if you will, for everything we're to do going forward.

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You mentioned just now that you have these two phases, this research phase and then this

sort of reality check, like what's our confidence level?

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What's the veracity?

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Could you give a specific example of maybe something that came in that you thought, well,

that's really novel and new, but hang on a minute.

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It doesn't pass.

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the reality check on the other side, just to give context for that kind of decision

making.

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Yeah, I think one of the best examples, when we were first looking, doing our research

part, we were looking at other countries.

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And one of the countries we looked at, I believe from my memory was Japan, and their

system was tiered.

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So you had kind of a tier level one architect and then a level two and a level three based

on their experience.

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And then that would go out onto what kind of work they could do based on their tier.

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And I think as a task force when we were in our ivory tower, when we heard that, we were

like, that sounds great.

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Let's take that back to the committee summit and see how it sounds.

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Cause again, we were thinking big and fun and something different.

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When we got it to the committee summit, I don't think I have ever been shot down.

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So, but again, we got that feedback that was just realistic.

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Because this was at the very beginning, and I think we were focusing less on what was

realistic and more what was a big change.

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And so there was, there was lots of people were able to point out further concerns about

stratification.

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You know, is that really what we want to set up to where, you know, you have some

architects that are at this level and others that are at that level.

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And that was really a good point.

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That was an unintended consequence.

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We weren't wanting to go in that.

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direction.

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And so that was really good feedback.

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We also just, you know, the logistics of that, how do you even set that up was a lot of

concerns.

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Got that concerns that that would require a lot of law changes for states and just

wouldn't fit in.

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It'd be like fitting a square peg into a round hole.

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It wasn't going to work.

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And so I think that was one of the examples where we probably went off in the left field

and

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the membership brought us back in and said, no, that makes no sense.

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So that was a good example of what you were asking.

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Yeah, there are plenty of checks and balances and you can find somebody who will say,

whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down.

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Yeah, I would say even that experience gave us more information.

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It helped us pull what we want to keep in mind when we're looking at the model, at the

possible model.

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And it is, you we don't want to break the system.

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We don't want to make things worse.

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We don't want to create inequities that don't currently exist.

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It really, again, gave us a lot of direction and a reality check.

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And I think that's important when you're developing.

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a new program.

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an age old question asked in many contexts as if it's not broken, why fix it?

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And I'm interested in your take on that question regarding this work.

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What's your answer to that question?

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Well, we did ask that same question.

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And I think that's why in the research level, we started looking at other professions,

other countries.

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What we also looked at is what NCARB is currently doing.

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And those were some of the questions we did ask.

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We asked, what do we really like?

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What do we want to keep?

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What is it non-negotiable?

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We don't want to change this.

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But then we were able to ask,

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what could we improve on?

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What currently drives us crazy?

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What currently do the states not trust?

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I was able to think about it in that mindset of when I'm licensing somebody right now,

what already makes me feel uncomfortable.

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And so we had lots of discussions on that, on what is the current in-car process?

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What do we like and what do we want to improve on?

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And then we were also...

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able to have that discussion, which was really helpful with other committees.

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So the other committees were assigned that same type question.

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And so we were able to get their input and feedback.

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And then we also had other interest groups that were able to give us feedback on that.

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You paint a great picture of sort of the level of engagement and involvement from across

different volunteer groups.

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And obviously those different groups have different responsibilities or thoughts or

perspectives to advocate for.

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Julie, you obviously served, think two years as the chair for the R &D group.

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Is that correct?

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It was.

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So you're like, it's such a blur.

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Was it two?

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It felt like six.

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I understand.

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But that group has continued on and is in its fourth year or third year now, I think with

Greg.

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When you sort of stepped away, which is totally normal, that's often the case with all our

committers that our volunteers sort of move through.

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And that's part of the health, I think, of the organization is that, and it's also

respectful of people's time, quite frankly, because it is a big lift.

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is a big lift.

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What point was the group at in the process when you sort of passed the baton?

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We had just gotten the competency standards.

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And so we had completed all of the research, or at least that first round of research.

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I think you're continually doing research.

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But we had finished the initial research, and then we had just received the finalized

competency standards.

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our early on meetings, once we got that, were more at that conceptual level.

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And so it was still a very, when we talked about, what is the model going to be?

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It was still at a very broad level.

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And so we were looking at like, what would the overall structure be?

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What type of, as far as the assessment tools, which we had learned during the research

phase, we were starting to look at, okay, we might have 12 different assessment types in

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our toolbox.

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Which ones specifically fit

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this competency standard, which ones are going to be best to assess this competency

standard.

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So it was really at that point that we just got the competency standards and we were able

to start really getting down to the good work where we were able to apply everything we

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learned in research and start working on the beginnings of the model.

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Do you think doing the research before you got the competency standards was helpful?

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It allowed you to sort of assess different assessment methods without the sort of buy-see

of, know where it's going to be applied.

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Yeah, I think it was very helpful first of all to just get educated.

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My whole career I've been in regulation and there's always been some form of an assessment

for an individual candidate to get a license.

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But after, yeah, the research phase of the licensure task force, I really got a much

better understanding of what the different tools were.

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So I think

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The research was important just to get to that knowledge point.

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But like you said, it was also an important exercise to go into it with no expectations

yet, no guardrails yet.

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I think that's kind of how I pictured it, is let's spend this first part, this phase one,

with an open mind and no guardrails.

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If we could do anything and nobody was going to scrutinize our model,

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what would we do?

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What would be the perfect polyannic view of what a licensure model could be?

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And then once we got the standards and once we started getting feedback and started

applying what the states and what NCARB and what the candidates would need, that's when we

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were then moving from this broad approach to a more targeted approach.

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And that's when we started putting up guardrails is kind of how I've

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described it in my brain is having those guardrails to guide us.

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And finally, Julie, sort of looking ahead, and obviously I think you'll be an enthusiastic

spectator in terms of what's coming out of this process and where did you leave it and

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where did all those conversations go and how did they end up lining?

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What's your hopes for the process and what would you like to see at the other side?

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I really want it to be a process that wasn't patchworked, if that makes sense.

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I've always seen in government, I think, a common approach is, let's just take what we

currently have and tweak it, because that's all we're allowed to do normally to begin

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with.

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you can tell in something when a product has been built that way, that it's just you

didn't.

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take a fresh look.

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You just took what you had and made adjustments.

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And I think you don't get the best product that way.

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You don't get all your goals met that way.

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And you just do with what you've got.

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I think that's what we get used to in government.

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So I hope that this can be a process that we truly were able to look at from a broad

perspective.

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And then we're able to apply those competency standards and the needs from that.

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And that it's a very tailored for each competency standard and that it makes more sense

because not only has practice changed, but the technology and the innovation in assessment

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has changed.

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And so for me, it's exciting to see that we can have something that is the exact fit.

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and not just, well, this is good enough.

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Well, good enough for government work.

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They always say that, and that's not what we want.

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We want something that's a tailor-made, exact fit model for our new competency standards.

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The last one that is really important for me is going to be that it's flexible.

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The model is broad enough that it works for today, but that it also works

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for five years from now when something changes in practice or when a state, for instance,

when they get a new legislative mandate, that they're able to take that model and make the

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changes they need.

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So I hope that it's not so inflexible that it creates more problems than it solves.

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Great.

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Julie, thank you very much for joining us today.

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Really appreciate your insights and thank you for all your volunteership with NCOL over

the years.

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Really appreciate it.

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And thank you, this was fun.

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So in that conversation, Julie walked us through the early years of the task force as a

work, beginning with broad research into licensure models from other professions and

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countries, and then narrowing that focus as NCOMB's competency standard came into view.

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What stands out is the balance her group worked to establish, thinking boldly about what

could change or remaining grounded in the responsibility licensure boards have to protect

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the public.

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Her reflections made it clear

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that Pathways to Practice wasn't about dismantling licensure, but about questioning

long-standing assumptions and stress testing new ideas before moving forward.

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And that brings us to the next phase of the work, turning concepts into something that can

actually function at scale.

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To talk about where their work is today, I'm joined by Greg Wynn, a licensed architect and

long-time educator at Cal Poly's Architecture Department and the current chair of NCARB's

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Research and Development Task Force.

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Greg, welcome.

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Greg, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your involvement with NCARB and give us

a very brief introduction to the R &D task force?

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sure I'd be happy to.

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And again, thanks for having me.

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I'm an architect in California.

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I've been teaching at Cal Poly State University for about 25 years.

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I got into examination development with the California supplemental exam 15, 20 years ago.

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And I just have been really interested in examination and how we assess candidates for

licensure.

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So I got the opportunity to be on NCARB's examination committee for three years and then

enjoyed that.

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process very much and then went on to work on the R &D Task Force last year and then this

year I was tasked with being the chair, asked to be the chair and certainly accepted the

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role.

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It's been a wonderful, wonderful thing to be on the R &D Task Force.

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All right.

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Thank you.

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And Greg, you're carrying a lot of the water right now, your group, in terms of what's

next for Pathways to Practice within NCARB.

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And specifically, I think your task with really taking sort of some of these conceptual,

like we think we know what we might want to do, but how are we going to do it?

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And what are the mechanisms that are going to be put in place in which to really assess

the competency standards that were established over a year ago now?

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I feel like it's probably a bit of a poison chalice to be given this chairmanship.

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How's it going for you?

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It's been a lot.

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The task force work has been actually really amazing.

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The benefit that I have had is because I had that time working on the exam committee, we

were able to look at some of these ideas as what-if scenarios.

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This kind of blue sky thinking was done three, four years ago.

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Like, what if we could do this?

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What if?

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And we had charges at the time of pretend as if and we...

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Wow, there was some wild and crazy ideas that came out of that.

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timeframe.

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And so whenever my time was up on exam and I moved to R &D, I had this great background

about what could happen.

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We'd had all these great discussions.

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And so it's been really, really helpful to hear some of these ideas and then begin to

think about how might we begin to turn these into some kind of reality.

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And like you say, starting with the competencies, NCARB published the competencies in late

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And the R &D Task Force primary charge

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this year has been to take those competencies and then convert those into actual

assessment criteria.

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How might we come up with a way to assess candidate competency that meets these criteria?

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And that's involved a lot of meetings, discussions, and the R &D Task Force Committee in

itself, it's about 15 people, mostly architects from across the country, but we've got

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member board executives and public members.

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shows this broad range of ideas and diverse thought, and certainly everyone has an

opinion.

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We have some fantastic discussion and argument, collegial argument.

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It's just been great to get these competencies down to assessment criteria, and that work

is pretty much done now.

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Our next charge is to take that work and pass it to the other committees, the program

committees, education...

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experience and exam and they continue working with them as they begin to develop real

prototypes on how this thing might develop.

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So we had some early prototypes and now then we're pushing our work down to the other

groups working with them and see if we can convert this thing into a real system of tools

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that could be used to assess candidate criteria.

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Well, I was going to pick up on something there because you said that at the start there

was a lot of crazy ideas or a lot of really interesting and sort of novel ways of

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approaches that might be considered for competency assessment.

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Assuming that the refinement is, okay, what the feasibility of these, how might that

actually work in reality?

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And I'm interested in that evolution of the conversation within your group about sort of

going from.

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that really comes conceptual out there concept to how would we do this?

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it achievable?

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Is it something that we could do, whether it be at scale or with a reasonable lift?

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Is that the nature of the conversation that's happening within R &D yet?

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To some extent, is.

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I I think everybody agreed, given unlimited money, unlimited time, we could figure out a

way to assess all the competencies in different realms, be it in an education realm, in an

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exam realm, in an experience realm, we could do it.

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So if we said we could do it, then we had to say, well, then now we just need to figure

out the best way or the best two out of three ways.

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But we've always had a charge that we need at least two ways to assess.

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criteria because not everybody has the opportunity to go to the education route or maybe

not everybody has the same access to AXP experience mentorship routes.

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And so we need to be cognizant that there needs to be multiple ways to meet the competency

other than the very linear traditional three E's way that we've always had.

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I think that's been a driving force throughout all of our work.

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It's just...

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How do we make it so that the candidate can approach licensure from multiple paths and get

through there, get through the process and still prove their competency?

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And I think with that idea, we did throw out the wild ones.

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We said, okay, yeah, that's just gonna be too expensive.

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We know that's gonna be crazy.

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But we've never said no.

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We've always just put it on the back burner.

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So I think there's lots of ways to do the work.

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And now we're just getting to the point where we're starting to talk about how real can

this be?

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I think we're all confident that it's very doable.

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Now it's just, you like say how to get it to scale.

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How do you do this for as many candidates as we have?

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So Greg, you just mentioned the traditional method involving the three E's of education,

experience and examination, which inherently has some redundancy in it.

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There's a lot of overlap between practice areas and the XP and the ARE, obviously in

education as well.

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I one of the challenges in the new system that's being considered, developed, is that

there's a desire to make the system a bit more efficient and maybe really have a high

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level of veracity around our organization's confidence that

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a is demonstrating competency in a particular space and maybe with a single method of

demonstration.

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That's presumably a big topic of consideration for you and your group.

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And I'm just wondering what your reflections on that are.

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I think you're right that the existing system and then frankly, the existing way that we

teach as an educator is we teach it, we teach it again, we teach it again, we teach it

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again, and then we test it.

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And so we hope that in learning it three or four times that you've got it.

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And then oftentimes we teach it in multiple years.

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So what we currently have follows an education model that has worked, but I do think we

can find some efficiencies.

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And the work of the R &D task force, I think what we've looked at is that...

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we recognize that some of the competencies are relatively easy to show competency in.

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And so there might be certain competencies where we say, this assessment could be

relatively low stakes.

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Yes, the candidate still has to prove competency within that area, but it's probably not

as hard and not as hard to assess as some of the other competencies.

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And the idea of redundancy, there are certain competencies that we feel...

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are just so critical to what an architect does that they need to be assessed by more than

one methodology.

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I think you might find in the end product that there's a variable scale and assessment

happens at different levels for different competencies.

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But it's something we talk about all the time about, are we sure that the candidate can do

this with one?

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So it's great discussion.

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We look forward to seeing what the prototypes come out as so that we can really assess,

can they?

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But we want to have that confidence too that

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And I think it can be there that, yes, with this one assessment, we know the candidate can

do that thing, that competency.

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It seems that that does put some pressure on you and your group to also meet this desire

to have multiple options because then you're sort of saying, well, now I've got to have

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two ways where we have real high level of confidence in a particular method in order to

demonstrate it.

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Do you think the same applies?

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Like that's a nice aspiration, but the reality is that some competencies might have a

singular and you have to do this, that this element is going to be a requirement.

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I think it's always been our point that we will always have to, we are going to have to,

because we don't want to get pigeonholed into there's only one way to become an architect

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ever.

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And in that way that we also need to make sure that both methodologies are equivalent and

fair and equally rigorous so that it doesn't become, hey, we've created two ways to assess

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this competency, but 99.9 % of the candidates are choosing method A because it's...

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the easier way or the faster way.

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So as we go through and develop these prototypes, we need to verify that they're both

comparable.

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Do you have any spoiler alerts for us in terms of the types of processes candidates might

get excited about or things that are on the table that really think there's good mileage

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in that we could see in the new system?

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I think that candidates that are thinking about licensure in the relatively near future

would be excited to hear that there might be some competencies that they could achieve

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without having to go to a test center, without having to leave their house.

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They might be able to self-study, for example.

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Imagine a competency or at least a portion of a competency, a certain criteria where you

could say, I read three articles, I did this...

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home self-study course, I assessed myself, and I'm competent in that thing.

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Not unlike we might do continuing education or like students are commonly doing now.

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We all do it now where we take some kind of Zoom training and with a test at the end.

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And for certain competencies, that might be a very efficient and appropriate way to

evaluate a candidate's competency.

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That's a game changer.

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So when anything changes, often people that are familiar with the current system get a bit

nervous, a bit fearful of disruption.

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And there's an assumption that change is probably going to be bad, make it more

complicated.

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And I do know that when we talk about 16 competencies, it sounds like an awful lot to

people who are used to dealing with the six practice areas.

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What's your reflection?

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Cause you obviously have some insider knowledge and you've been very connected to this

process in the past couple of years.

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What would your message to

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the crop of candidates who think they might be impacted or have the opportunity to plug

into the new system down the road?

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What would your message to them be?

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I think there's two sides of it.

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In both cases, I think it's fear based.

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I think there's a fear that change is bad or that change is going to make it easier.

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you know, I to say that whenever I started this process, I was one who said, the three E's

are perfect.

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Why are we changing these?

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This is great.

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They've worked so well.

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It's taken me this time and looking under the hood.

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to where now I'm such an advocate of this system to recognize that we can do this in a

different way, in a better way, in a more efficient way, in a more accurate way, that I'm

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fully on board.

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Now it took me some time.

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And so I think time will matter, but we've also got to prove that we're not reducing the

rigor, that we're not harming the public, that we're making a system that's more

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equitable.

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And ultimately, that's been the driver of this whole thing is we've seen...

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people fall off the path to licensure and we're losing them because there was all these

institutional barriers to these weird things that happened to get licensure that was from

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a hundred years ago.

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And in this process, we know we can deliver a product that is different and has all the

qualities that we're looking for and still be rigorous.

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But I think it's fear-based.

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For the candidate that's in the process right now, there's gonna be fear of...

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my goodness, that's changing out from under me and I've got all these hours and I'm

halfway in the middle of these systems and now I've got to change again.

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And I would just say, don't worry.

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NCARB has always had a process for helping candidates transition from ARE4 to ARE5 or from

ARE5 to whatever we come up with in the future.

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There will be a plan and it will be fair.

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You can usually kind of go path A or B for a while and then we change.

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So I'm not too worried about that fear.

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recognize that it's going to be different.

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In some cases, it might be better, but don't fear the change.

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It's going to be all right.

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Obviously ENCOB, this has been a big topic for several years now, and we've very much

talked about it in terms of the license process, getting licensed and maybe making it more

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efficient, maybe helping people get through in a quicker timeframe.

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I wonder if your reflections on sort of a level above that in terms of why that is

important and what benefits it gives to the wider profession, if ENCOB can make this

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change and land the plane, if you will, on pathways to practice and create a system that

is just.

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more accessible, more fair, more efficient.

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For me, it gets down to, I mentioned this, people have been lost along the way.

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we've been, NCARB is really great at keeping data.

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That's one thing I love about NCARB.

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There's data for everything.

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And they track so many things about candidate demographics.

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So NCARB has records that say, here's a group that fell off at age 32.

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Here's a group that fell off.

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And you can see where the troubles are if you look behind the curtain a little bit.

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So, everybody on the R &D task force, and frankly, everybody on all the committees has

been looking at, are we doing it this way where we're putting up these institutional

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roadblocks?

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So, it's even things that have just been procedural, like the five-year rolling clock

issue, or when you can begin to test.

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Some of these things that are changing even now that have just been, you know, that's a

head scratcher.

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Why did we do that?

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Well, it's because we've always done it that way.

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But if you really go back and look at why we did it...

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there's really not an answer to why we really did that.

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And so the intent of all of this work is to say...

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And let me give an example.

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This is one that I use with my students and friends when they try to tell them what's

going on.

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I say, you know, imagine somebody who's going through a five-year education program, gonna

get their B.Arch, but then at year four and a half, something happened.

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A parent died or, you know, whatever it was, you had to drop out of that education.

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But then you went to work for a firm for 10, 15 years.

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you've been doing all the things you've been doing, you just didn't get licensed because

you never had that final degree.

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Should we be holding that person back?

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Should we make them go back at age 35 or 40 and go take their very last course in studio?

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Or can we come up with a better mousetrap that helps us get that candidate over the line

because they've been doing all the things?

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And so if we can come up with alternative pathways that solve

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different solutions for different demographics or different needs, then I think we're just

taking away some of those barriers that I think are there.

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I don't think it's gonna be the kind of thing where everybody's going on a different path.

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I still believe that the traditional education, working for a firm, taking some exam, mix

and match, taking exams early, doing some experience while in school, I think that's gonna

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get blended a little bit.

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But I don't see everybody just going with...

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5,000 different ways to become an architect.

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But at the same time, we shouldn't be preventing people from becoming an architect that

have every desire or totally capable and competent and want to join this profession.

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Well, Greg, on that note, I'm going say thank you so much for joining us today.

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Really appreciate your insights.

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And I know you've got a few months left before the sort of R &D task force wraps up its

work.

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I'm sure that you'll be asked to continue your volunteer ship with NCARB.

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I totally recommend people volunteer for NCARB.

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It's been a really great experience and I look forward to working more with NCARB as much

as I can.

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It's been great.

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We appreciate you.

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Thanks again for joining us today.

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Thank you.

437

So Greg offered a candid look at what it means to move from blue sky thinking to real

world feasibility.

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He explained how the task force is translating the competency standard into concrete

assessment criteria while ensuring multiple equivalent ways for candidates to demonstrate

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competency.

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Perhaps most importantly, Greg addresses the concern many candidates feel when they hear

the word change, emphasizing that this work is about reducing unnecessary barriers,

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improving efficiency,

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and creating a system that better reflects how architects actually learn and practice

today without sacrificing rigor.

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The key takeaway from this episode is that reimagining licensure isn't about creating

shortcuts.

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It's about creating clarity, flexibility and fairness.

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Pathways to Practice is building toward a licensure model that can evolve with the

profession, better measure the competency of each candidate and remain worthy of public

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trust.

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So in our next and final episode,

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the season.

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We'll look at where we go from here, what the next steps towards implementation look like,

and how NCARB will continue engaging with the community and what candidates should expect

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as this work moves forward.

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That brings us to the end of another thoughtful episode of the NCARB podcast.

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

conversation helpful, please share it with a friend.

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Thanks for listening.

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