May
& June 2008
OVR Brief- Supplement
Re: Proposed Six-Month
Requirement for Documenting IDP Training Activity
From:
Directors: Anthony Costello, FAIA & John W. Rogers, AIA,
ACHA & Jack
Baumann, AIA, LEED AP Associate AIA Director
DRAFT, SUBJECT TO CHANGE UNTIL APPROVED BY BOARD OF DIRECTORS
12
RESOLUTION 07-I:
Supported by the Council Board of Directors (_-_)
TITLE: Proposed Six-Month Requirement for Documenting IDP Training
Activity
SUBMITTED BY: Council Board of Directors
RESOLVED, That the “The
Proposal” paragraph set forth
in the white paper, “PROPOSED SIX-MONTH
REQUIREMENT FOR DOCUMENTING IDP TRAINING ACTIVITY,” published
as an Appendix to the Pre-Annual Meeting and Conference Report
is approved in principle as policy
of the Council;
AND FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Directors bring to the
2008 Annual Meeting
and Conference a Resolution implementing “The Proposal” with
such modifications as may be
warranted and with implementation commencing in 2009.
STATEMENT OF SUPPORT:
As the white paper makes clear, there currently is both an opportunity
to improve the internship
experience and a problem to be corrected. The more that IDP can
be used as the mechanism to
assure critical reflection by interns and their supervisors on
the candidate's progress toward licensure,
the more the program is serving to enrich the qualitative experience
of interns. Regular,
contemporaneous reporting can facilitate such interactions and
better ensure that an intern is
progressing through the required training activities and will complete
all of them in a timely fashion.
Numerous interns have found themselves toward the end of three
years of working having to
complete several deficient Training Areas. In addition, late reporting
leads to errors and a lengthy
evaluation and acceptance process. Interns may encounter other
issues such as a previous supervisor’s
reluctance to verify past experience that the supervisor may have
forgotten, previous supervisors
having left the firm or no longer being in practice, and invented
or “guestimated” experience leading
to professional conduct violations on the part of both the supervisor
and the intern. The proposal
presented by the IDP and P&D Committees can both improve the
internship experience and
address the problems posed by late reporting
.
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13
[The following to be included as Appendix to Pre-Annual Meeting
and Conference Report]
PROPOSED SIX-MONTH REQUIREMENT FOR DOCUMENTING IDP TRAINING
ACTIVITY
The
Issue:
Currently, NCARB recommends that documented IDP
training activity be reported
every 4 months. Some 80 percent of interns document training periods
longer than 4 months, and
over 20 percent document the entirety of their IDP activity in
a single report (paying an extra fee of
$400). Lengthy retroactive documentation has led to significant
reporting errors with approximately
20 percent of such reports rejected due to such errors.
Opportunities
for Enriching the IDP experience:
IDP is designed
as an active tool to assist interns
and their supervisors in the process of early professional development.
The practice of architecture
encompasses a range of activities, and the 16 Training Areas of
IDP assure that interns will enjoy the
benefit of practice-based learning in all of these. The more that
IDP can be used as the mechanism
to assure critical reflection by interns and their supervisors
on the candidate's progress toward
licensure, the more the program is serving to enrich the qualitative
experience of interns. Regular,
contemporaneous reporting can facilitate such interactions and
better ensure that an intern is
progressing through the required training activities and will complete
all of them in a timely fashion.
The
Problem:
Documenting training activity well after the fact
removes the potential of IDP
serving as an active tool in the enrichment of interns' office
experience. It becomes a time-tracking
process exclusively, with no potential to adjust the nature of
the work experience along the way
toward licensure. Numerous interns have found themselves toward
the end of three years of working,
for example, having to complete several deficient Training Areas.
In addition, late reporting leads to
errors and a lengthy evaluation and acceptance process. Interns
may encounter other issues such as a
previous supervisors’ reluctance to verify past experience
that the supervisor may have forgotten,
previous supervisors having left the firm or no longer being in
practice, and invented or“guestimated” experience leading
to professional conduct violations on the part of both the
supervisor and the intern. Fundamentally, it defies belief that
anyone can accurately remember and
report events like training activities long after they took place.
The
Proposal:
The
IDP Committee has recommended that the Handbook should be amended
at the
2008 NCARB Annual Meeting to provide that after July 1, 2009, interns
must establish a Council
Record and report their training activity to NCARB for periods
of no longer than six months
duration by a report postmarked within 45 days of the end of such
reporting period. In other words,
an individual taking maximum advantage of the new requirement would
have until September 14 to
report training activity that occurred between February 1 and July
31. Individuals will still be able
to report training activity more frequently. NCARB may allow a
reasonable extension of such sixmonth
reporting and/or 45 day filing periods in circumstances where reporting
and/or filing is
prevented by a medical condition, by active duty in military service,
or by other like causes. (These
are now the exceptions to the 5 year rolling clock requirement
to complete all divisions of the ARE.).
This new rule would not apply to anyone who has established a Council
record prior to July 1, 2009
and is already in the IDP system, and it is proposed only for initial
examination candidates after that
date.
A Concern:
Until an intern enrolls in IDP by establishing a Council
record, NCARB has no way
directly to inform the individual of this requirement. It must
rely on indirect broad-based
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14
communications efforts by schools of architecture, organizations
such as the National Associates
Committee and AIAS, word of mouth and, of course, firms and employers.
Interns who remain
uninformed of IDP and other requirements of registration well into
their work experience may“lose” credit under such an
IDP documentation requirement provision since they may be unable
to
document retroactively all of their work experience. Individuals
studying for and working in a
profession that requires all practitioners to be licensed bear
a personal responsibility to investigate
and understand the steps leading to licensure in that profession.
A broad-based publicity effort
focused on sources where students and interns receive information
will assist them in becoming
aware of the IDP documentation requirement. The best assurance
would be a concerted effort by all
schools of architecture to inform students of the requirements
of licensure. There is serious
discussion about making enrollment in IDP a condition of graduation.
Concerted efforts must also
be made in architectural offices to support interns as they work
toward the completion of IDP and
eventual licensure. In order to ease the transition from student,
to intern, to licensed professional,
NCARB currently offers a significant deferral of the Council Record
fee throughout the internship
and examination period.
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