Fostering Community Excellence 2023-2024 Activities

Learn how the School of Architecture & Design is working to advance a culture of respect, connection, and shared purpose at KU and in the communities we serve. 

Through institutional initiatives and community outreach, we are developing new opportunities to collaborate and engage.

Professor Sam Yates Meier with Hickman Mills Students. 

KU Design Camp + Pathways to Design | Summer 2024 

Sam Yates Meier facilitated the third installment of the collaboration between KU’s School of Architecture & Design and the Hickman Mills School District. Students participated in a personal branding workshop where they created and explored brands, logos, and graphic design. The week consisted of lectures and workshops and concluded with a brand presentation day, where participants shared their uniquely created responsive logo system and brand assets.

KU Design Camp 2024 

In June 2024, the School’s annual Design Camp provided a partial fee waiver to 9 high school students in the Kansas City and St. Louis metropolitan area school districts to attend the one-week camp and learn about architecture and design. The four students from the 20/20 Leadership Program in Kansas City came from Sumner Academy of Arts and Science, Washington High School, and Wyandotte High School. The two students from the Kansas City Kansas Public Schools District came from F.L. Schlagle High School and Sumner Academy of Arts and Science. The two students from the St. Louis area sponsored by Mackey Mitchell attend Parkway North High School and the STEAM Academy at McClure South Berkeley High School. The student from the Kansas City Missouri Public School District attends East High School.  

Campers stayed on campus for the week in Oswald Hall and dined in Mrs. E’s dining center. The week included campus tours, a keynote speaker (Kent Smith), academic spotlight presentations on Architecture, Illustration & Animation, Industrial Design, Interaction Design & Visual Communication Design, and Interior Architecture. The campers stayed busy in the evening with a risograph workshop (Lizzy Arnold) and visits to the Spencer Museum of Art on campus and Sylas & Maddy’s Ice Cream on Massachusetts Street.

Campers chose a morning and afternoon academic workshop to attend during the week. The morning workshops topics included Architectural Design Utilizing Digital Fabrication Tools (Amy Van de Riet), Jayhawk Boulevard: Present and Future (Marianne Remboldt), and Brand You (Sam Meier). The afternoon workshop topics included Architecture: A Spatial Journey (Anne Patterson), Creating Concept, Character, and Creatures (Kent Smith), and Web Design for Beginners (Titus Smith).

On the last day, students presented their workshop projects to their families, guests, and teachers, and received certificates of participation at the closing program. The camp was coordinated by School staff members Anna Abernathy and April Czarnetzki and current KU Architecture & Design students Emma Curran, Ava Gaddie, Kaitlyn Jolly, Lexi Leibengood, and Cash Shellhorn served as resident assistants for the campers. 

NOMA-KC Pipeline Project Architecture Summer camp final showcase.

NOMA-KC Pipeline Project Architecture Summer Camp | Summer 2024

The National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) Kansas City Chapter annually holds an architecture summer camp for middle and high school students of underrepresented populations in the Kansas City area to introduce students of minority backgrounds to the profession of architecture and to encourage them to choose architecture as their career path. Two architecture faculty members of the school, Mohammad Dastmalchi and Amy Van de Riet, collaborated with NOMA-KC to develop and deliver the curriculum for this 3-day long summer camp in July 2024. Twenty-three middle and high school students of minority backgrounds participated in the camp. In the morning of the first day, Mohammad and Amy helped lead a session in which students were instructed in diagraming and understanding how to represent their three-dimensional surroundings into two-dimensional drawings. Mohammad introduced the concept of the “Empathy Map” to help students understand how architects/designers need to think to design a space. In the afternoon, Mohammad and Amy went with students on a site visit to explore an outdoor space on the UMKC campus. Back in the classroom, they led students in a diagramming exercise to help them use their mental mapping to draw a site plan of the outdoor space. On the second day, students continued to learn about urban analysis through Kevin Lynch’s elements of city image, different definitions and terminology in urban planning activities, learning about the elements and principles of architecture, playing games in which, they learned about building's relationships within an urban block, developing skills in orthographic drawings, scale, bubble diagrams, and the design thinking process. In the morning of the final day, students finalized their designs and built physical models, following the guidelines provided by NOMA-KC. In the afternoon, parents and family members came to see their children's work and presentation. The KU faculty members were sponsored with summer stipends from the school.

School Community Excellence Committee Initiatives 

The School Committee on Community Excellence developed and conducted another survey on the climate and pulse in the school's community of students, staff, and faculty. Findings from this study will be discussed by the Committee in 2024-25 with creating action items and plans. We ended the academic year with a Staff Appreciation Party, which was a great success and continued the process of having social opportunities for faculty and staff. Cake and coffee were provided by the committee. Faculty donated monies to purchase gifts for the staff. Overall, it was a fun and positive event, and allowed the opportunity for everyone to meet new staff members as well.  

The Slaggie Architecture and Design Emergency Fund 

The Slaggie Architecture and Design Emergency Fund is to assist a student in addressing an immediate, unexpected financial hardship that might otherwise prevent them from continued participation as a Schoolof Architecture and Design KU student. Six students applied for and received financial support in 2023-24 year.   

MASP & MDSP Program Activities 

The Mentored Architecture Scholars Program (MASP) provided scholarships for 30 students and the Mentored Design Scholars Program (MDSP) provided 15 students in the 2023-24 academic year. In addition to mentoring and advising the scholars received from their mentors, scholars also participated in social activities and professional development activities.

High School Student Visits | Spring 2024 

Through partnership with the 20/20 Leadership Program in Kansas City, the school hosted over 50 high school students of underrepresented populations in the Kansas City metropolitan area on campus to introduce them to pathways to design professions and to recruit future designers. The students were provided lunch and spent time visiting the East Hills Design-Build Facility and Marvin and Chalmers Halls in addition to interacting with the School of Architecture and Design faculty and students. 

School’s Annual Award Ceremony 

These following MASP and MDSP scholars won academic excellence awards at the School’s Award Ceremony in Spring 2024. 

Tim Do - Visual Communication Senior Award + Multicultural Outstanding Scholar Award in Design

Kaleena Montellano - Multicultural Outstanding Scholar Award in Architecture

Cherray Wilson - Multicultural Outstanding Scholar Award in Architecture