On Wednesday, May 22nd, over a dozen people gathered in Architecture Hall, or joined the discussion via Zoom, to discuss the topic of research impact as the last session 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, 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: When we talk about CBE’s research having more impact, what do we mean and how do we measure it?
Impact is widely shared goal for research at the UW among colleges, schools, departments and individual faculty, staff, and students. Does “impact” mean the same thing across the UW? Are there specific CBE definitions? Are there multiple definitions even within the CBE community? Is there a different impact for each type of research (scholarly, applied, collaborative, community-based, interdisciplinary, etc). What metrics might be consistent with CBE values? What metrics do our partners use to measure impact?
Participants in the meeting discussed what measures of impact could look like for CBE’s research and consensus arose around the indicators of public policy, scholarship, and design practice. Other topics included bridging the impact of our college’s research in practice and within the greater university community, measuring community impact through studio work, and conducting an assessment of quarterly interdisciplenary studio.
You can review the discussion here (closed captioning available):[vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/338311021/8a6dd15420″ height=”800″]