#080 - MARC NEVEU, Head of Architecture at ASU and Executive Editor of The Journal of Architectural Education
SUMMARY
This week David and Marina are joined by Marc J. Neveu, Architecture Program Head at Arizona State University and Executive Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education to discuss how architectural education can be improved, the role of the JAE today, timeless versus timely architecture, his journey to becoming a teacher, moving states and more. Enjoy!
ABOUT MARC
Marc is the head of the Architecture Program in The Design School at Arizona State University. Prior to this appointment, Neveu was chair of graduate and undergraduate architecture programs in the School of Architecture at Woodbury University. During his first year of service at Woodbury, both programs were awarded an eight-year re-accreditation from NAAB. Neveu also helped launch IPAL initiatives in both the graduate and undergraduate programs. He has worked with faculty to rethink and develop curricula intended to improve student learning and outcomes. Under his leadership, the undergraduate program was ranked nationally by Design Intelligence for the first time in the program’s history, and has moved up in the rankings in each of the previous three years. Currently executive editor of the biannual peer-reviewed Journal of Architectural Education, Neveu is a widely acclaimed educator and scholar.
HIGHLIGHTS
With the responsibility of publishing the JAE biannually, Neveu shares his opinions on the need for print scholarship in an increasingly digitized world:
“The number of outlets that are not peer-reviewed has certainly increased. For a design faculty member in architecture to get tenure and promotion is really difficult because a building or project is not considered to be scholarship; it's not understood by a large university in the same way. That being said, if the project is published or peer-reviewed, it does have some merit.
I always use the example: if you’re a painter and have a hundred paintings in your house, and you want to go for tenure, it doesn’t matter. If those hundred paintings, however, were in a solo exhibition and was reviewed in the New York Times, it matters. That’s the whole problem with tenure - or at least creative practice, in tenure. So for architecture, what we’ve done with JAE is given designers an outlet to get peer-reviewed and that’s really important.”
As the new Head of the Architecture Program at ASU, Neveu expands upon his plans and goals for this new position and city.
“There's a sense that maybe ASU isn't where it should be and that the relationship with practice is not great. There is a really interesting scene [in Phoenix], that’s very much local but also contemporary. I'm really looking forward to establishing those connections, and getting some of the people who are in practice to teach in those studios, and figuring out how to make that a more reciprocal relationship. My first year is going to be a lot about outreach, looking to the community, trying to get to know people - so teaching is not the first priority.”
Relating both the blind peer-review process used by JAE and the issues of diversity within the field, Neveu discusses the significance of fostering environments where students and designers can look up to individuals like themselves instead of being limited to the same schools of thought. He states:
"I think the question of gender and equity and diversity, for me, is much more about students having a face to look at that is something like theirs. I don’t know what it is to be a black eighteen-year-old kid and walk into a classroom full of white kids and having the faculty every year, be a white guy. That can’t be a good thing. To have somebody who is in a position of power who looks like you or who comes from where you came from is already important. [It's] more about the ability of the student to empathize and see themselves in a position of power - see themselves through somebody who is in a position of power.”
