Service and creative practice as a university administrator

I never anticipated becoming director of the School of Architecture, Arts and Design (AAD). This role wasn’t part of my plan. When I was offered an interim director position in 2022, we were at an interesting time at the school – we had just gone through a dramatic restructuring that brought together the performing and visual arts and the architecture and design disciplines. Performing and visual arts had been part of liberal arts at Virginia Tech. 

As I considered my next steps, I realised that taking on an administrative role was a deepening of service to students and colleagues, while simultaneously an extension of creative practice. If I was passionate about ushering in the kind of school I knew we could be, then we must all work as partners to make that vision come true. This would mean not only identifying opportunities for new collaborations but also rethinking existing relationships and making them stronger. My goal as director would be to align service and creative practice, creating conditions for the entire community to thrive. And I would need to do that while also retaining the college’s history of architectural innovation.

Flexibility and collaboration in leadership

What really worked well for me in taking on the director position was: (1) being flexible, allowing for frequent course corrections; and (2) stressing collaboration, ensuring that everyone had opportunities to participate.

For example, enlisting alumni and their firms for a summer career discovery course for high school students allowed us to connect prospective students with graduates of the programme. The professionals were able to rediscover the joy of explaining and exposing the field to students, while scholarships give opportunities to dozens of students who might not otherwise consider or even know about the intricacies of the field. 

Deepening service fuels a sense of purpose

As a school administrator, we also help guide and support teaching faculty. A few years ago, a respected colleague said something that still influences me today. Speaking about the university, Rosemary Blieszner, then interim dean of the AAD, remarked that she knew of no other academic institution where not only did everyone know the motto of the school but actively strove to embody it. The Virginia Tech motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), speaks of promise, of values, of what we want to be and who we want to become. It fuels a sense of purpose. It is aspirational. To me, it is also a directive: it means helping each student and colleague manifest their potential and joy in creative practice.

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I find so much delight in teaching, working in a diverse community of people who are all striving for the common goal of growing and developing ourselves and each other. What a tremendous honour to guide students as they cross the threshold of learning and grow into their full potential. But it also means leaving room for students to actively participate in the process of discovery. We don’t connect the proverbial dots for them, we encourage curiosity. In architecture, we can then manifest and explore this curiosity through studio practice. Rather than approaching teaching as telling students what we as professors know, we help them formulate good questions and explore potential design solutions by leveraging a range of traditional and contemporary means. This results in thoughtful exchanges and reciprocity through conversations and experiences between and among students and their professors. 

The profound value of service

A few years ago, I heard a colleague say to someone more junior in the department that “service doesn’t really count” because its value is harder to quantify than citations or journal articles. This is something I fundamentally disagree with. Perhaps something else needs acknowledgement here: service is an opportunity to be part of a collective vision.

Creative practice – the practice of enquiry – is near and dear to many disciplines. We don’t design new structures, for example, because those we have don’t work but rather because we’re driven by a practice of enquiry – making sense of the world through this practice – to do that. Good work has its own inertia, and its own reward.

We make things and put them into the world because somehow it makes an idea whole, and this is true of many forms of practice. Service is similar in that one is driven to it the way one is driven by creative practice. It cannot be easily quantified because its measure is less transactional than poetic, more profound, and more necessary for improving our world.

Jim Bassett is an associate professor of architecture and director for the School of Architecture in the Virginia Tech College of Architecture, Arts, and Design. 

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