ArcPrep Detroit High School Program Offers Opportunity to the Next Generation of Designers
Students and instructors in the Architecture Prep Program (ArcPrep) were featured in an interview by Current State’s April Van Buren on February 19th, 2016. Current State is a public radio program through Michigan State University’s WKAR station.
ArcPrep is a program that links Taubman College with Detroit Public Schools. The idea behind ArcPrep is to create opportunities for high school students to explore the field of architecture in a college level course. The class consists of around 30 students who attend public high schools in Detroit. The group is almost entirely made up of students of color. The racial and socioeconomic diversity of this classroom contrasts sharply with the field of architecture as a whole; less than 2% of licensed architects are African American, and only about 3% are Hispanic. Paulina Reyes, a design fellow at Taubman and an instructor for ArcPrep, expressed the idea that there are many more solutions available for creative problems in the world of architecture if they are drawn from a more diverse selection of the population.
The program allows students to spend three hours a day with professors designing buildings and drawing blueprints for twenty weeks. This kind of project-based learning can open up the field of architecture to students who did not envision a career in math or engineering. ArcPrep creates a pathway for the students to follow, which can then allow them to apply math and engineering to other areas that interest them. The program wishes to go beyond competency in a field of study and instead strives for students to find a passion that will build excitement for the field. ArcPrep hopes to show young designers from a variety of backgrounds that they can be the future face of architecture.
To listen to the entire interview: wkar.org/um-program-recruits-next-generation-diverse-architects
To learn more about ArcPrep: taubmancollege.umich.edu/architecture/high-school-programs/michigan-architecture-prep
