by Tim Hayduk, Lead Design Educator
The Education team at the Center for Architecture hosted the fifth-annual Architecture and Design College Fair on 11.04.17, an important event serving high school students in the New York City metropolitan area.
The Center’s K-12 programs utilize architecture, engineering, and design to teach young audiences about the built environment through hands-on, project-based workshops. Two-hour Student Day field trip workshops take place at the Center for Architecture and multi-session Learning By Design:NY residencies are taught in schools throughout the city. A handful of programs for high school students are offered each summer as an introduction to design thinking and portfolio development, and give students a sampling of what the first semester of architectural design studio is like. The College Fair sets the stage for students, their families, and college representatives to interface, an invaluable experience for all who participate.
In past decades, architecture and design college fairs were more prevalent than in recent years. Today, only a few major U.S. cities host such fairs, requiring college recruiters to make expensive and time-consuming trips to specific high schools with the hope of reaching a few students, at most, per visit. The Center for Architecture put the New York City region back on the college fair map in 2012 and the demand from architecture schools continues to grow. New York City is joined by Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Philadelphia who also host architecture college fairs in their cities.
This year, thirty colleges and universities were present, from as far away as NewSchool of Architecture and Design and SCI-Arc in Southern California to City College, the Cooper Union, the New York Institute of Technology, Parsons and Pratt right in the Center’s backyard. Moving the College Fair from a weeknight to Saturday resulted in a 30% increase in student attendees. College reps were very willing to help visitors consider the many choices, benefits, and tuition and scholarship opportunities which are part of the higher education equation. Mark your 2018 calendars and join us for the sixth annual Architecture and Design College Fair on Saturday, 11.03.18.