original photo: Lorie Shaull
George Floyd wasn't the first or last Black person to be killed by the hands of police or vigilantes, but his documented murder helped spark a rise in discourse on systemic racism. In this 15-part series, members of the design community share how their conversations and view of and place in the profession have changed in a year that also saw an increase in attacks—many fatal—against people of color as well as the lives of millions more gone due to COVID-19.

Jonathan Massey
courtesy Jonathan Massey Jonathan Massey

Here, Jonathan Massey, dean and professor of architecture at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Planning, shares his actions and plans to increase diversity and inclusion in architecture.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are central to the mission of Taubman College. As part of a University of Michigan initiative, the college wrote a DEI strategic plan five years ago under the leadership of Milton Curry, who was at the time associate dean, and then-dean Mónica Ponce de León, AIA. Now we’re writing a second five-year plan, DEI 2.0. We’ll engage the whole college in reflecting on what we’ve done and identify what we want to prioritize moving forward.

The Value Proposition of Architecture
I know of two things that will be at the center of that conversation. One is a self-assessment about our history of recruitment and retention for faculty of color, so that we understand better how Taubman College has been a place of success for a diverse array of faculty and where it has also fallen short in recruiting, supporting, and retaining BIPOC colleagues.

The second topic is what I call equity innovation: academic innovation that promotes equity by improving inclusion, access, and affordability in architecture education. Architecture is a rigorous professional degree that requires a lot of coursework, including design studios that demand many hours of class per credit. The programs rely on many conventions and traditional ways of working—some explicit, others tacit—that we have inherited from past practices designed for a different community of learners. They are not optimized for inclusion. It can be difficult for first-generation college students who may not have much prior access to knowledge about architectural practice or education. It’s tough for people with caregiving responsibilities or who need to work part-time. It’s challenging from a disability and universal access perspective. And it’s costly.

[Architecture] programs rely on many conventions and traditional ways of working ... designed for a different community of learners. They are not optimized for inclusion.

The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards’ Integrated Path to Architectural Licensure and updated Architecture Experience Program are improvements aimed at shortening time to licensure. We can expand this process by considering the range of requirements, processes, and practices that limit the opportunity to shape the built environment by filtering out a diversity of talent. One focus area might be admissions requirements, such as standardized test score and portfolio requirements. Another could be curricular requirements, such as calculus; or curriculum structure, from prerequisite chains, co-requisites, and “weed-out” courses that raise the degree of difficulty to complete coursework. More generally, can we use academic innovation measures such as self-paced, on-demand online courses or blended learning, which combines in-person with asynchronous online learning, to give students the option of shortening their time to degree, reducing costs, and gaining flexibility in their learning sequence or in their allocation of time within the semester.

Bringing a greater range of talent into the field will also require improving the value proposition of studying architecture. Architecture is exciting and compelling, but it can also be punishing and exhausting. Many dimensions of our profession seem to be optimized for privileged people. Many early career alumni I’ve talked to are still struggling with long hours for poor compensation as they launch their adult lives while paying off student loans. How can we redesign the field of architecture to promote inclusive and accessible participation by a broader range of actors than are currently rewarded in and attracted by the field that we have? Let’s make it easier to thrive as a whole person in the field of architecture.

Bringing a greater range of talent into the field will also require improving the value proposition of studying architecture.

The Me Too movement is another important dimension in this conversation. Over the past year, our chief diversity officer and chief of staff have led a community process to draft a statement of shared values and expectations articulating the treatment we expect for ourselves and expect to grant to others. The primary motivator has been changing the climate around sexual harassment and sexual misconduct, but with an intersectional approach that recognizes that LGBTQ+, racial, and other forms of harassment, discrimination, and bullying are inextricable from gender-based harassment and violence. By inviting everyone—students, staff, and faculty—to embrace this College Compact, we aim to create a culture and climate resistant to harassment and create a values framework that embraces and empowers a diversity of people.

Collective Campus Action
Last summer, the intersection of the pandemic with the murder of George Floyd and the national reckoning around racial justice spurred changes in the ways we work together at the college. Our students organized a coalition across our degree programs that mobilized in May 2020 to represent themselves in our planning for the upcoming academic year. They organized town halls and meetings, and we partnered with them to figure out how best to adapt to the pandemic, on topics such as remote and hybrid learning, health and safety measures, facilities access, emergency support, and peer-to-peer community-building.

A second student group, Design Justice Actions, was inspired by Design As Protest. It identified 13 steps for the college to strengthen our DEI work and to take a more explicit racial justice emphasis. To have students organizing themselves and pressing administrators, faculty, and staff to focus our efforts in new ways has been amazing. Faculty and staff stepped up too, and we tightened up our coordination with one another and with our students to navigate the storm together.

One outcome was an audit of course syllabi aimed at increasing racial justice material and POC voices. Over the summer and in the fall, about 30 students and 60 faculty members in the architecture program conducted these workshops—a beautiful example of students helping to direct the intellectual agenda.

Many dimensions of our profession seem to be optimized for privileged people.

Architecture program chair McLain Clutter also worked with associate professor Mireille Roddier and Ph.D. candidate (now graduate) Irene Brisson to develop a new foundational architecture theory course that centers questions of difference, identity, justice, and equity. In parallel, we launched a new graduate course, the Egalitarian Metropolis, taught by history department chair Angela Dillard and urban historian Robert Fishman.

We also hosted an iteration of the Dark Matter University course Foundations of Design Justice, taught by Brenda “Bz” Zhang, Assoc. AIA, with partners from DMU.

And we just launched a search for two faculty members—early career designers and scholars working to advance racial and spatial justice. We aim to recruit new colleagues who will enrich our understanding of how to change the world for the better, and whom we can empower as teachers and in their research and creative practice.

Sharing the Power
I’ve been in academic leadership roles for more than a decade now and over the course of my work at Syracuse University, California College of the Arts, and the University of Michigan, my sense of purpose has evolved. My primary initial motivation was to support the field that I love: architecture and the related practices of urban design and planning. I saw my role as setting up faculty to do field-changing research, creative practice, and teaching; and to welcome students into the field that we are evolving.

Over time, I’ve learned a lot from activist groups that are more directly challenging the status quo, and for whom architecture and other built environment disciplines are primarily pathways for the pursuit of justice. Four different examples, among many, are DAP, The Architecture Lobby, Who Builds Your Architecture?, and AIA San Francisco’s Equity by Design committee. These groups have helped me recognize and embrace the goal of putting the tools and intellectual capacities of our disciplines more directly at the service of equity and justice, based on the understanding that this can reciprocally strengthen social transformation, our fields, and our professions.

[P]utting the tools and intellectual capacities of our disciplines more directly at the service of equity and justice ... can reciprocally strengthen social transformation, our fields, and our professions.

Pursuing this work through academic leadership means listening to, learning from, challenging, and supporting the many constituencies of our college: students and alumni; faculty and staff; community partners and the many publics we serve; administrative leaders of our university; accreditors and other regulatory groups; and professional and advocacy groups. It also means recognizing and engaging the “missing cohorts”—the people who aren’t joining our fields because they are excluded or don’t see value in participating.

One key component is embracing shared governance at the university and college. I got into leadership work as a member of the University Senate at Syracuse, and I have the privilege of working closely with the Taubman College Executive Committee, elected faculty representatives that identify needs, set agendas, and collaborate with our associate deans and program chairs to navigate the challenges and opportunities facing our college. My role is to learn from our community members, identify goals and issue challenges, translate among our many constituencies, and engage them in decision-making. I hold authority and accountability on many matters, but we achieve the best outcomes when we follow deliberative processes to set our course together.

Diversifying Leadership
A key to greater power-sharing is mutual learning: leaders learning from faculty, students, and staff, but also faculty, students, and staff learning how higher education operates. So much hinges on seemingly arcane topics, like how we build our budget. At Taubman College, we have great latitude to take ourselves where we want to go—so long as we can find a sustainable way to raise the revenues we need to carry out our vision.

A key to greater power-sharing is mutual learning.

There isn’t one universal roadmap for transformation. Our educational system encompasses many different kinds of institution playing distinct roles in generating knowledge and providing education. Taubman College generates new knowledge at the leading edge of research and creative practice, and we invite students into that process as learners and, increasingly, as co-creators.

This year, we launch a new undergraduate degree in Urban Technology, which will teach students to work at the intersection of data and technology with buildings and cities in ways that center questions of equity. We are channeling some of the new approaches to teaching and learning we developed last year into long-term academic innovation, creating what our associate dean for academic initiatives Anya Sirota calls a “blended future”: combining the best of online and in-person learning. By pursuing equity innovation, we can advance our field by making it more equitably accessible and more appealing to a diversity of talented world-makers.

As told to Wanda Lau. The views and conclusions from this author are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine or of The American Institute of Architects.