Architectural, engineering and design professionals rewarded the University's graduate program in architecture with a third-place ranking in the 2006 annual Design Futures Council survey published last November in DesignIntelligence. The Landscape Architecture program was also recognized with a fifth-place ranking in its field.
The rankings represent a particularly significant achievement for the University given the program's small size relative to its peers, Architecture Dean Karen Van Lengen said.
"It's long overdue," Van Lengen said, because "we don't send as many people into the working world as these other schools. Unless [the survey respondents] have an interface with [our graduates], they can't know their capabilities and talents."
The limited exposure of national employers to University graduates, which number 30 to 40 annually in the Masters of Architecture program and 15 in the Landscape Architecture program, impedes the University's ability to compete with larger programs like Harvard and Columbia, which graduate 150 students.
Such differences among schools contribute to wider than expected fluctuations year to year in the rankings, said DesignIntelligence Managing Editor Dan Downey. The University did not make the top 15 in 2003, was ranked ninth in 2004 and finished eighth last year.
"It really varies and a lot of it has to do with the nature of the survey," Downey said. "We try to be as scientific as we can, and there are times when certain firms and agencies do not respond. We try to cast a broad net and try to get as many responses as we can."
The survey consists of several thousand firms and organizations across the nation, ranging from smaller to large multi-national firms, Downey said. Respondents are asked to share their experience and qualifications of new hires.
Still, some architecture professionals suggest that students not put too much weight on the rankings.
"I don't think people should worry about that stuff to tell you the truth, because they are almost always wrong," said Matthew Bell, a principal in the Washington D.C office of Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects, who also coordinates the graduate Urban Design program at the University of Maryland School of Architecture. "I just think it's really spurious and useless to everyone to pursue [rankings]."
The University's architecture program attracted national interest in 2002 when it placed second in the Department of Energy's Solar Energy Decathlon, Van Lengen said. Since then, students have been working on a similar project with Prof. John Quale, experimenting with affordable and energy-efficient prefabricated housing. One such project includes a house that will be built for the Habitat for Humanity and sent to Louisiana for Hurricane Katrina victims.
Bell said he thinks the University's program is particularly strengthened by the strong Landscape Architecture program.
"It adds a layer of knowledge and exposure to the school's general education that a lot of schools don't have," Bell said. "Issues about environmental sustainability are dealt with at a more sophisticated level."
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