On Wednesday, May 15th, over a dozen people gathered in Architecture Hall, or joined the discussion via Zoom, to discuss the topic of collaboration as part of the Dean’s Dialogue Discussion Series launched by the College of Built Environments’ dean, Renée Cheng. Participants in the meeting comprised of faculty, students, alumni, and professional advisory group representatives from CBE’s five departments (Architecture, Construction Management, Landscape Architecture, Real Estate, and Urban Design & Planning).
Dean Cheng welcomed participants to Wednesday’s meeting and began the conversation with a question: What would it mean if every CBE graduate, staff, faculty knew how to collaborate, really collaborate?
The term collaboration is used to describe many different types of work across many different groups. In the built environments, collaborators can include people with widely different agendas, values, training, and degrees of engagement. If we believe that progress in improving the built environment requires deep collaborative skills and ability to facilitate collaboration, what can CBE do to develop and support those skills? How well do we do that now? How are we measuring success? Does anything need to change?
Participants in the meeting discussed what successful collaboration would look like for our college and how it could integrate with our curriculum and research as well as across the UW. The biggest obstacle to successful collaboration identified in the meeting was how fundamentally different language and vocabulary can be across the different disciplines and how a shared language in practice could help close the gap.
You can review the discussion here (closed captioning available):
Last of the Dean’s Dialogue Discussion Topics:
Wed, May 22nd: When we talk about CBE’s research having more impact, what do we mean and how do we measure it? (7:30 am in Arch Hall Room 042, light breakfast provided)
Please RSVP to Susanne Adamson at adamsons@uw.edu if you plan to attend any of the above sessions so that she can plan for refreshments.
OR Join the Livestream (Zoom)
Same link for all five meetings: https://washington.zoom.us/j/4073312015
Dial-up is also available:
+1 669 900 6833 US – West
+1 646 876 9923 US – East
Meeting ID: 407 331 2015