The AIA’s National Associates Committee (NAC) and ArchVoices, a nonprofit think tank on architecture education and internship, released the 2003 Internship and Career Survey Report on October 17. The two groups worked together to conduct, compile, and analyze this survey to “better inform the profession’s understanding of this important period in the lifelong professional development of architects.” They are making the full report available online at www.aia.org/nac and www.archvoices.org.

“I am excited to see this final report and have optimism that it will provide some answers, create additional questions, and continue to fuel important discussions and critical thinking about architectural internship and the effect it has on the whole profession,” says AIA Executive Vice President/CEO Norman L. Koonce, FAIA. “As we start to form the agenda for the AIA national Board of Directors in 2004, we are keeping emerging professionals, and their unique issues and concerns.”

Developing a benchmark
As reported in the September 2003 issue of AIA|J, the AIA’s new journal of architecture, some 20,000 interns, associate AIA members, and young architects received the survey by e-mail this spring. From nearly 5,000 usable responses, NAC and ArchVoices selected a random sample of 1,000 for processing and tabulation. The survey drew questions from other significant surveys on architectural internship in recent years, and its findings serve as a benchmark comparison to the 1999 AIA National Survey of Internship, 1999 NCARB Architectural Internship Evaluation Project, and 2000 Survey of California Architectural Internship.

“The survey results will enable us to make more informed decisions about emerging professionals,” says Shannon Kraus, AIA, associate director on the AIA Board of Directors and a recently licensed Dallas architect. “Too often, decisions that determine internship and registration requirements are made without actual data about the experiences of emerging professionals themselves. Not only do this survey and resulting data afford us that opportunity, but if we are able to execute a survey like this on a regular basis, we’ll be able measure trends and changes over time.”

The survey says . . .
Major findings of the 2003 Internship and Career Survey include:

• Nearly one-quarter of non-registered respondents indicated they do not plan on pursuing a traditional career, but most still plan on pursuing registration.
• Nearly all respondents indicated an interest in mentoring, although only half indicated satisfaction with the mentoring they were currently receiving.
• Almost half of respondents indicated that they had received practical work experience while in school.
• The average time to complete the National Council of Architectural Registration Board (NCARB) Intern Development Program (IDP) was significantly longer than the three years it is designed to take.
• A majority of respondents who work in architecture or architecture-related firms reported that their firms exhibit good commitment to interns, yet half of all IDP interns reported that they would have to switch firms to complete IDP.
• Most respondents who completed all nine divisions of the Architect Registration Examination (ARE) took one and a half years to complete the exam.
• Of those eligible to take the ARE, lack of time to prepare was the most common reason for not taking it.
• Approximately half of respondents who had started taking or completed the ARE indicated both education and internship prepared them adequately for the exam.
• Nearly 90 percent of all survey respondents, including interns and registered architects, supported giving architecture school graduates access to the ARE concurrent with internship.
• Community service was cited as a priority for most respondents, but less than one-third reported doing it regularly.

Narrative comments paint important picture
In addition to the question/answer responses, the 2003 Survey elicited 986 narrative comments. Although not part of the official scientific data that form the basis of the survey report, these comments paint an equally important picture of the landscape and the internship process.

“For many respondents, this survey represented the first time that they were ever asked to evaluate their internship and early career experiences," said Vicky Boddie, Assoc. AIA, a Minneapolis intern and co-chair of the ArchVoices/NAC Survey Task Force. "Their responses were illuminating, but I was equally moved by the passionate comments that included startling misconceptions about the basic fundamentals of IDP [Intern Development Program]. It is clear that it remains one of the most complex periods in the development of emerging professionals. These personal stories and statistics have really given us a window into how the IDP process is, and is not, working for the profession.”

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