Abstract:

A Midwestern American public school district was facing a challenge: how to encourage their high school students to stay in school and graduate. 85 percent of the student population of this school district come from economically disadvantaged households. Among these, 88 percent students are of color, of which 50 percent are Latino and 38 percent English Learners. (Kansas Can Report, 2016-17). Thus, these students face diverse challenges to graduate. The author; a design educator, was invited to collaborate with this public school district as a part of their “educate to graduate” program, developed to decrease the dropout rate among the high school students. The school district administrators wanted to connect their students with post-secondary students to provide them a glimpse of what better future they can have, if they graduate and enroll in post-secondary professional programs.

The author collaborated with the district administrators, other faculty from her university, selected high school teachers, and an award winning architectural firm, to develop an architecture and design education program that involved her graduate students as mentors for the high school students. This collaborative partnership brought together students from two distinct backgrounds and allowed post-secondary students to work with secondary students from the most diverse and multicultural urban school district. In essence, this educational initiative provided students from both institutions an opportunity to learn from each other, and help each other in developing much needed skills. The high school students learned the architecture and design process from the university students and realized that they can fulfill their academic and financial goals without worrying about their socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnicity, gender, language, and even citizenship status. The university students gained first-hand exposure to a diverse school district with multicultural, multi-lingual students, and knowledge of how to apply design thinking, creativity, project management, collaboration, communication, and mentoring skills.

This educational program was designed to develop an interest among the high school students of color in architecture and design education, and profession. This innovative, collaborative, multi-disciplinary, service-learning design curriculum’s goal was to develop a mentoring model, to demonstrate how architecture and design graduate students can assist secondary students to become knowledge seekers and design professionals. This project involved 27 graduate students from an Interior Architecture and Product Design Program and 30 high school students from the school district.

In this paper the author will describe this innovative mentoring model, challenges faced and strategies utilized while developing and executing this new educational program, and experiences both students had while working on this collaborative project. The author will also share exercises developed to engage both students,the project outcomes, and how other educators can develop innovative models for multicultural students and increase their graduation rate.

Keywords:

Secondary and Post Secondary Education, Architecture+ Design Education, Collaboration, Service-Learning, Curriculum Design, Educational Experience, Mentoring.