NAAB Architecture Program Report (APR) 2013 - Tulane School of ...

Tulane UniversityArchitecture Program ReportSeptember 2013Demographic Category# of ApplicableFaculty MembersTotal number of full-time faculty members 19New tenured women since 20082(4 tenured women total -1 full prof, 3 associate)Women (3 assistant, 3 associate, 1 full, 2 POP) 9African Americans (1 tenured, 1 tenure-track, 1 3visiting assistant )Asian Americans (1 assistant professor, 1 tenure 2track)International faculty (assistant professors) 3Number of professors of practice hired* or5promotedWomen POP’s 2Men (*1 left in 2011) 4Women in school leadership positions (associate 3deans, assistant dean, program director)African Americans in school leadership positions 1(associate dean for community engagement)Other men in school leadership positions (dean and 4program directors)In addition to strengthening the diversity of the school’s faculty, TSA has enhanced staff diversity bycontinuing to actively engage in affirmative action hiring practices when staff positions becomeavailable. However, student diversity has been a long-standing challenge for the school. Existinginstitutional policies and practices, especially in undergraduate admissions, have limited the school’sability to recruit high-achieving underrepresented/minority students as proactively as other top tierarchitecture programs. Throughout the last six years, the school has enjoyed increased success inincreasing its community’s “cultural competence” via community engagement initiatives; however, theschool’s leadership will continue to provide support to existing faculty whose research and teachingpromote the value of an increased understanding of and responsiveness to cultural differences.With the increased diversity of TSA’s faculty ranks and the leadership’s full commitment to D&IEinitiatives, the school has benefited from other existing factors and assets in the development of its newgoals. The timing of the D&IE Strategic Planning Initiative Task Force’s development andannouncement of university-level goals and strategic planning initiatives coincided with TSA’s plannedupdate of its own strategic plan. As such, D&IE initiatives and priorities are prominently featured in theschool’s new strategic planning framework. As another example, TSA’s existing communityengagement programs, such as the Tulane City Center and URBANBuild efforts had been successfullyincreasing the participating TSA community’s cultural competence in recent years. In view of theheightened focus on D&IE initiatives, those programs’ roles in attaining diversity-related goals are nowformally integrated into the school’s D&IE planning process and specifically re-evaluated in order tomaximize cultural competence-enhancing results. In addition, TSA’s relationships with externalprograms such as Project Pipeline, a program established by the National Organization of MinorityArchitects to encourage young students to pursue a career in architecture, will be strengthened in orderto serve as a specific recruitment strategy for talented minority students.21