±¬ÁϳԹÏÍø

Interest in starting an SDSU's architecture program began in 2007 when then-president David Chicoine came to SDSU from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Chicoine recognized the value of a strong architecture program in the academy. Jerome J. Lohr, an engineering alumnus, equally matched this interest. Lohr has had a long and successful career in engineering, education, construction and real estate development.

• In May 2009, through the coordination of Steve Erpenbach, current president and CEO of the SDSU Foundation, an Architecture Founders Group came together with Lohr and four professional South Dakota firms: Architecture Incorporated, Koch Hazard Architects, Perspective and TSP Inc. This group provided an unprecedented financial surety to see that the program got off the ground and up to full speed with very generous gifts that amounted to a primary start-up fund.
• The administration of the College of Arts and Sciences (now the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences), under the leadership of then-dean Jerry Jorgensen, bore the load of working with initial program consultants, pushing a proposal through the South Dakota Board of Regents, finding the first faculty member, recruiting and advising the first crop of architecture students and supporting the program in its first year. In 2009, Jorgensen and the college administration commissioned professor Sharon Matthews, a former National Architectural Accrediting Board executive director, for consultation and an initial projection of whether and how a program at SDSU could achieve accreditation. Jorgenson asked Roger Schluntz, dean at the University of New Mexico, to review and comment on Matthews’ proposals and began aggressively consulting with the founder’s group about the future of the program. A pro forma was written and a committee formed from both the SDSU academic community and the South Dakota professional community to hire Brian Rex as the department’s first professor and department head.
• The first courses were offered in fall 2010. The faculty has grown to seven full-time members, with students enrolled across all six years of the program.
• The program provides an engaged and collaborative culture on campus and is community focused. It graduates young professionals into a historically underserved region.
• In August 2015, the architecture program relocated into the Chicoine Architecture, Mathematics and Engineering Hall, further solidifying the mutual commitment between the program and the university.
• In 2016, architecture and four other programs formed the School of Design, the first of its kind on campus. This cemented our collective passion for "Inspiring Creative Communities," our collective tagline.
• In February 2017, the professional Master of Architecture degree was formally granted a three-year term of initial accreditation by the National Architectural Accrediting Board.
• In January 2019, the Master of Architecture degree received a full, eight-year accreditation term by NAAB, becoming the first professionally accredited architecture degree in the history of South Dakota. The next accreditation visit is in spring 2027.

We are a small program in a small place with access to big opportunities, and we work diligently to keep costs down to stay efficient. This ideal makes the world of architecture accessible for everyone with the right mindset along with the curiosity and fascination for what we do. This also has a huge benefit for our students. What and when they are learning becomes more self-evident and intuitive for them.

With the right focus, we can teach students in their chosen profession using fewer classes within a more intimate atmosphere where we know everyone and can more definitively verify their understanding. Our program can do this because of its scale, since we can always be well-coordinated across a small faculty. Our architecture culture goal is to ensure that our land-grant university can be as accepting to people of all sorts as we can possibly be. We work to reinforce the vibrancy of diversity of great ideas and the people who have them. This variety makes for creatively charged discussions that can build creative thinkers and impact a world desperate for new ideas. Our student are the inspiration for the professional culture!

Design values, their influence in our communities and the world, and a multidimensional collaboration and community engagement remain a top priority to gain visibility in our regional influence. We share these values with the profession and our accreditation body. We are committed to remain an NAAB-accredited degree and to build our relationship with NAAB stronger by contributing to excellence of other programs through accreditation visits to inform our own practices. Curiosity for innovation, knowledge and lifelong learning drives how we integrate our understanding into our practices. Each element of this foundation is incorporated into the curriculum in a curated way to enhance student's understanding of the profession and its influence of a wider context. This foundation is further reinforced by a variety of extracurricular expectations and opportunities. We have built our ongoing assessments of our curricular system to align with these values and make them the foundation of what we teach and how we teach it.

• Goal 1: Pursue academic excellence through innovative program development, student, engagement and a dynamic teaching and learning environment.
• Goal 2: Advance our university's R-1 goal by contributing profession-enhancing and building industry-changing knowledge and applications. Engage in discovery, encourage innovation that enhances the quality of life for South Dakota and the upper Great Plains region, while adding to the practical dialog about architecture in our nation and the world.
• Goal 3: Broaden the impact of the program through strategic partnerships, collaborations and inspiration.
• Goal 4: Secure human and fiscal resources to provide an infrastructure that ensures high academic and scholarly achievement.
• Goal 5: Model a culture of collaboration (internally and interdisciplinary) that values everyone and their unique perspectives, abilities and experiences.
• Goal 6: Secure funding to allow all architecture students to participate in a School of Design travel study opportunity that is included within the program budget and does not impact student fees.

To reinforce our goals, some critical dialogs among faculty, students and the profession about relevant experiences include.

• Promote the value of professional mentors to every student in the professional graduate program.
• Strengthen the interactions with our professional community through APPB meetings and professional conferences like AIA South Dakota by making them more pertinent to our collective culture and involvement.
• Build cohesion and development throughout faculty to encourage teaching excellence and stability.
• Developing means to increase scholarly output and inventions among faculty.
• Building an effective on-ramp for two year architecture technology certificate holders through relationships with other education providers and programs.
• Build commitment to thoughtful large-scale fabrication opportunities and experiences each two to three years to allow all students to participate at least once during their academic journey with us.
• Create studio experiences that build the teamwork skills of all cohorts across all studios to build a stronger studio culture.
• Bringing together disparate efforts to impact underserved Indigenous populations through community design and awareness.
• Seeking opportunities to engage communities to increase awareness of our efforts and increase student exposure to these life-practice opportunities.
• Forming a committee of faculty, students, alumni and advisory professionals to study financial funding model to ensure our cost-effective approach continues to be one of the highest value programs in the U.S.