A History of Internship and the Emerging Professional's Companion
The AIA is committed to supporting interns in their efforts to become licensed members of the architecture profession. As one aspect of this support, the AIA began publishing the Supplementary Education Handbook: An Intern's Companion to the Architect's Handbook of Professional Practice. Last published in 1992, the SuppEd Handbook provided a framework for comprehensive continuing education in professional practice issues through independent study. While the Supplementary Education Handbook was a useful and thorough publication, the need for a new resource became evident after the publication of the 13th edition of the Architect's Handbook of Professional Practice in 2001.
Developments in architecture internship since 1992 also affected the development of a new supplementary education handbook for interns. In 1996 the Carnegie Foundation released a report entitled Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice, authored by Dr. Ernest Boyer and Lee Mitgang. This report incited a revolution in thinking about the path from architecture education to licensure. In response, the five collateral American architecture organizations—the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), and the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB)—organized an Internship Summit. Held in April 1999, this event brought together many stakeholders in the profession to develop ideas for strengthening the bridge from academia to practice.
Internships, before and after graduation, are the most essential link connecting students to the world of practice. Yet, by all accounts, internship is perhaps the most troubled phase of the continuing education of architects.
During this century, as architecture knowledge grew more complex, the apprenticeship system withered away and schools assumed much of the responsibility for preparing architects for practice. However, schools cannot do the whole job. It is widely acknowledged that certain kinds of technical and practical knowledge are best learned in the workplace itself, under the guidance of experienced professionals.
—Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice, 1996
Two major committees, the Collateral Internship Task Force (CITF) and the Collateral Internship Management Group (CIMG), were developed to study the positive changes discussed at the 1999 gathering and to make recommendations to implement them. In 2002 a second Internship Summit was hosted by ArchVoices at the University of Oklahoma to continue the conversation among interns and architecture professionals. Efforts are currently underway to hold another Internship Summit in fall 2005.
Beginning in the late 1990s, a number of significant studies and surveys on the architecture internship process yielded further information about the educational needs of today's emerging professionals. In particular, significant findings from the 2003 Internship & Career Survey helped guide the development of a new resource that addresses a changing profession. A summary of the survey's findings follows:
Mentoring: Nearly all respondents indicated an interest in mentoring, while only half indicated satisfaction with the mentoring they were currently receiving. Of the respondents, 39 percent said they would be most interested in a program coordinated by their local AIA component, while 34 percent would be most interested in one coordinated by their employers.
Career/Work Experience: The survey revealed a significant trend in which students acquire work experience while still in school. Between the 1999 AIA Survey on Internship and the 2003 survey, this statistic jumped from 19 percent to 42 percent of respondents. Nearly a quarter of non-registered respondents do not plan on pursuing a traditional architecture career, but most still plan on registration. Currently, 18 percent of those surveyed indicated they were employed in a non-traditional position.
IDP: For 59 percent of interns with professional degrees, the average time it took to complete NCARB's IDP was longer than four years (the program is designed to take only three years). Half the interns who completed IDP indicated they were not able to fulfill all 16 IDP training areas at one firm. However, when this same half were asked why they left their previous jobs, only 11 percent indicated it was to complete their IDP requirements.
Professional Service: Both current members and non-members ranked networking (21%), access to resources (20%) career enrichment (15%), and continuing education (14%) as the most important AIA membership benefits for Associates and Young Architects.
Other information used to develop what became the Emerging Professional's Companion came from a market research study conducted to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the 1992 SuppEd Handbook, as well as to identify the training needs and delivery method desired by the current audience of interns. A number of issues emerged from this study. Accessibility was important to users, which led to investigation of online delivery for the Companion. A Web-based format not only allows seamless portability for the user, it also makes it easy to update the Companion as new trends in the profession take shape. A team of diverse and renowned authors, each an expert in a specific training area, was hired to write the Companion chapters. These individuals used the NCARB core competencies as a basis for their work, writing narrative sections for context and exercises and scenarios to give interns a chance to practice applying their knowledge.
