Category: Registration

Continuing Education Options

This spring I will be coming up on my first license renewal. One of the daunting things that I’ve come across this past year and a half has been learning about the continuing education system and the varying requirements per state. I’ve put together the following list of links as a resource for anyone looking to find out more about whats required of them and where to get some last minute Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

If you are looking up your required amounts of CEUs there are two options for information

  • AIA has a chart showing their requirements and the individual state/province requirements
  • NCARB has a prettier chart, but it doesn’t include the AIA requirements.

That all seems innocent enough, but it can actually be quite confusing, especially if you have multiple licenses. I’ll use my situation as an example. I am licensed in Virginia and Washington, DC. So, AIA requires a minimum of 18 credits annually, 8 of which must be in Health, Safety and Welfare (HSW) certified courses. Virginia requires a minimum of 16 credits over 2 years and no specific HSW requirement. And DC requires a minimum of 24 credits over 2 years, of which all of those minimum hours have to be in HSW certified courses. The requirements to maintain a licenses in good standing over multiple jurisdictions is to satisfy the largest minimum requirement for the smallest amount of time. So my total annual amount of credits would need to be 16 (AIA is 16 per year, Virginia is 16 per 2 years or 8 per year, and DC is 24 per 2 years or 12 per year). For my HSW credits I would need 8 per year, but a total of 24 over two years (AIA is 8 per year, Virginia has no requirement and DC is 24 per 2 years or 12 per year), so to make things easier I am for 12 per year. Now this gets even more difficult if you are licensed in a state, like New York, which will not accept CEUs from certain courses. Plus, there are movements afoot to add Environmental Design credits to the mix of required CEUs.

Something that you should also be aware of is that to my knowledge, no state has an active CEU checking program. The whole CEU process is based on the honor system as far as meeting requirements are concerned. Most states reserve the right to audit your record at any time, so be aware that while you may not have to submit anything proving your CEU record, you should be keeping a log. The easiest way to do this is with the AIA’s transcript system. If you want to check to see if you’ve met your requirements, you need to log into the AIA’s CES Discovery system. From here you can look at your transcript or find classes.

For other sources of CEUS I’ve put together the following list:

  • AIA Lectures – Check your localchapters
  • NCARB’s Free Mini Monographs – They are free, but non record holders are charged a $35 fee for the exam
  • NCARB’s Monographs – These are being discontinued, but are still available for purchase and grading
  • Architectural Record’s CEU Center – Until recently this was an extensive resource for free CEUs. It remains to be seen how the switch to Architect Magazine as the official magazine of the AIA will affect this resource.
  • Architect Magazine’s CEU Center – Expect this to develop and be much more robust now that this magazine is being mailed to every AIA member.

If anyone knows of other good resources for CEU’s please comment and I will add them to this list.

The Incredible Lightness of Being Licensed

After 6 years of schooling, 4 years of internship, 7 exams, and 12 weeks of waiting since my last exam I finally found out unofficially last night and officially today that I am now a licensed Architect registered with the Commonwealth of Virginia. While this does not affect my unemployment, it opens worlds of possibility for me as far as freelancing and my own firm is concerned. Once I get my paperwork in the mail I will be qualified to stamp and sign drawings which makes me able to undertake a whole lot more work.

There is something to be said about the feeling you get when you achieve a long term goal. When I transferred into the architecture program at Tulane I not only promised myself that I would make it through and graduate within the standard time period, but I also made myself a promise, that I would be licensed at least before I was 30 and at best before my High School Reunion. I achieved both goals. I am currently 28 and my reunion (which I won’t be attending, another long story) is at the end of November. This accomplishment makes my unemployment seem like a blessing, because without it I would not have had the time to study and take my exams, nor would I have had the motivation to get my own firm started.

Now to start on my next professional goal. I have 7 years to accomplish it, so that should be doable. I want my work to be exhibited in a 35 under 35 magazine article or gallery show. All that I need is some clients looking to act less like their own designer and more like an art patron. Any takers?

Government Privatization Inaction

I have now been waiting for my last Architecture Registration Exam result for 11 weeks (13 if you include the penultimate exam which I have also yet to receive scores for). This delay apparently has been caused by the private company that administers and grades the exam (Prometric Services); specifically they have not graded a 5 of the 7 exam sections since the start of July. I was only informed of this delay from my state board last week, at week 10(12), which was the first time they had heard of this as well. This delay, which is not the first time Prometric has failed to perform, has affected at a minimum 3,300 people in the state of Virginia alone. The thing that is the most infuriating about this whole exam process is the lack of both transparency and communication.

The exam, which is written by and property of the National Council of Architecture Registration Boards (a non-profit association in DC), is treated with the utmost level of secrecy and security. Not only are examinees not allowed to discuss the content of the exam, they are also not allowed to know the grading scheme that is used to determine passing and failing. There is neither communication about how this exam is graded – on a bell curve, if some questions are weighted more than others or if there is a strict pass/fail point ratio – nor is there any information about how the design components factor into your test results. To further compound the secrecy, passing results for the exam just say you passed, whereas failing results give a small analysis of what subject areas need further study. In addition, if NCARB suspects “Testing Irregularities,” their code for cheating, they can and will hold results form all affected sections until the matter is resolved, which can be as much as 6 months.

By itself this would all be frustrating but workable. The real annoyance comes from the lack of available channels for communication. Before an examinee can take an exam they make have their NCARB council record transferred to their state board. NCARB does not have a collective repository of state testing requirements, so an examinee must work through their state testing application on their own. Once the application is completed, examinees then register directly with Prometric for their exams, by providing a clearance code issued to them by their state. When the day of the exam occurs and an examinee leaves the testing center, that is the last moment they may have any contact with Prometric; from that moment on they can only contact their state to determine why they have not received their results. Grading is supposed to take anywhere form 4 to 6 weeks, but usually takes more like 6 to 8. Prometric has a habit of bunching exams and sending scores to the states all at once. This has lead people to speculate that Prometric only grades at certain intervals or holds all grades form a specific time period to establish a bell curve, but because there is no discussion of grading policy this is all speculation. The thing that convolutes all of this even more is that the state boards do not contact Prometric directly. Instead they eagerly await results but must phrase all of their inquires through NCARB. So to summarize as an individual, if you are fearful that your test has been lost or delayed, you must contact your state, your state contacts NCARB, who contacts Prometric. In this game of bureaucratic telephone it is easy to understand why results can be delayed by 10 weeks or more. 10 weeks, which result in lost wages associated with passing results and being declared a licensed architect, not to mention anxiety and nervousness.

Where have I been this past two months?

I just realized the other day that it has almost been 2 months since I last updated this blog. Who would have thought that I would be able to keep a normal writing schedule while I was working 50 hour weeks, but once I became unemployed I would struggle to write something ever few weeks, let alone months?

So what have I been up to? Well, I have been writing an architecture criticism column for DC Metrocentric (check out the ArchiCritic category) and while at first it was every week that seemed to be nigh impossible to keep up. Now I have settled into a new post every other week, which is totally doable. I just wish that I didn’t wait until the last minute every time to write my article.

The next big piece of news is that tomorrow is my last ARE exam, at least of this go-around. So far I have taken 6 exams and passed three. I am waiting on my scores for the rest. Tomorrow is Schematic Design. If the exam is anything like the practice problems I should be OK. Hopefully, with this one down, that means all I have to do is wait 2 more months and I’ll have my license.

And the last big event (and the one that is most likely going to get me back into the saddle of writing on this blog) is that a good friend and colleague of mine, Andrew Merlo, and I have started our own design firm — studioSML. For right now our website is just a splash page at studioSML.com but in the next few weeks I hope to get it fully flushed out and start the daily chore of posting to a blog there and here as well as updating multiple twitter feeds. At least I have my facebook status repeating my twitter status, otherwise that would be one to many social media updates for me to make each day.

So, if you are looking for design work in the DC area and want to give a new design company a much needed break please think of us. In a few months I hope to be able to say that we are Architects, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens with my test results.

ARE – The first of seven

So I’ve been sworn to secrecy that I cannot divulge any information about the licensing exam section I took yesterday. But I can discuss my preparation, my opinions and the testing center.

I’ve spent the last few weeks splitting my time between looking for work and studying for the Construction Documents and Services ARE section. My studying consisted of the NOVA AIA study sessions, Kaplan prep books, and the NCARB study materials available on their website. As I was told at the AIA NOVA roundtable, the NCARB study questions were the most helpful, they focused more on content and less on tricky grammar hang-ups which seemed to be similar to what I experienced. The Kaplan book was really helpful as a kind of general overview and primer for the exam, but its questions were very much the opposite of the NCARB questions and were more helpful as a general kind of review of each chapter. The study session I attended focused on the AIA documents and while duplicated a lot of the information I read in the book, was very helpful because it was organized in a much easier to understand way. As far as the vignette was concerned I have to say that the Kaplan sample problems just don’t stack up to the NCARB software. Drawing by hand is very different from the drawing program and the Kaplan problems included things like doors, windows, and clerestories which were not a part of the NCARB software.

The testing center itself was an interesting experience. I had no problem finding the place and it wasn’t very busy. I was able to start my exam almost an hour earlier than scheduled. The weird thing is the whole sign-in and sign-out during breaks and the fact that each time you have to show your ID, also the absolute silence of the testing room save for the clicking of mice and keyboards can be quite disconcerting. I did have the testing program crash on me, but the proctor was able to restart the program without a problem and I didn’t loose any time. Luckily I was just checking my answers when it happened, if it had happened mid-vignette I think it could have really affected my performance.

All told, the experience was a lot less stressful than I imagined that it would be. I was worried that it would be as nerve wracking as the AP and SAT exams I took in High School, but instead it was almost relaxing. I’ve scheduled for my next exam – Building Design and Construction Systems – in three weeks.

ARE – Construction Documents and Services

I am now scheduled to take the Construction Documents and Services exam on Thursday March 26, 2009 at 5pm.

Now that I have a firm calendar date, this should put the heat on my studying.