Thinking of returning to school? Designers share their journeys

Continual learning is integral to the identity and success of many designers. But sometimes, a person’s current role or firm can’t meet their education needs. One option is to reenter higher education as a non-traditional or mid-career student. 

Learners who return to school are far from alone; for instance, more than one in three master’s degree candidates are 25 or older. Still, going back affects one’s lifestyle, finances, and career, as the four designers in this article found out. They’ve shared their journeys and advice for others considering the decision.

Taking care of business

After six years as a full-time architectural designer at Hamilton Anderson Associates in Detroit, Tiffany Brown, Assoc. AIA, felt increasingly drawn to construction management and business development—two areas traditionally lacking in design school curricula. She already held a Master of Architecture (M.Arch) from Lawrence Technological University. She believed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) would make her a more well-rounded professional.

Though Brown was the only architecture professional in her MBA program, she felt right at home because she had returned to Lawrence Technological University for it. She secured grants and loans for her tuition and continued working full-time. 

Help from family was critical for Brown, who juggled academic work, her job, and advocacy as the founder of 400 FORWARD while raising a young daughter. “Time management and setting boundaries were hard but critical,” Brown says. “Having an amazing support system made all the difference.”

Upon graduating, Brown joined SmithGroup as a project manager. Then, an opportunity arose to become executive director of the National Organization of Minority Architects. Brown never thought she’d be working in association leadership, but five years later, she continues to thrive in the sector while keeping a foot in the AEC industry.

Programming switch

For two decades, Karen Bala, AIA, excelled on the traditional architectural path: She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture, achieved licensure, and then received a promotion to director of design at Dyer Brown & Associates in Boston. But her strong entrepreneurial spirit continuously asked, “What’s next for me?”

Then the world entered a pandemic. When project work slowed and she gained back her commute time, she enrolled in a virtual UX design course with CareerFoundry. “I fell into a whole new network of people in tech,” Bala says.

For two years, she took online coding classes, which she was surprised to find more interesting than UX design. But eventually, she couldn’t go any further with virtual coursework. She and her family had to decide whether she should step away from her architecture career. Her son, then a teenager, was becoming more independent, and her wife assured her they were financially OK. Bala enrolled in Launch Academy’s coding boot camp. 

Bala gave notice at work and took out a loan for the program, hedging that she would be able to pay it back with a future signing bonus in tech. Soon, she was spending every waking hour coding. She found that mental fatigue hit her faster than her younger peers. “To be young and … have your mind be very elastic, I appreciate it so much more,” Bala says.

Understanding how she best learned and retained information, such as visually or hands-on, helped her adapt.
Upon graduating, Bala was hired by National Grid, which put her through another rigorous training course. After a year, Bala was missing aspects of design and questioning a future solely in tech.

But then circumstances changed. Her family relocated to Kansas City, Mo., for her wife’s job. Bala became the director of sustainability at DRAW architecture + urban design, where she could apply her new data visualization abilities into developing a sustainability dashboard for the firm. “I knew at some point I was going to come back to design,” Bala says. “I just didn’t know what it would look like.”

Flipping a downturn up

Since drawing her first floor plan at age 5, Allison Smith, Assoc. AIA, knew she wanted to work in the building profession. She earned a degree in environmental design and a master’s degree in interior architecture from two schools with a sustainability emphasis. Shortly after she relocated to Seattle for work post-graduation, the Great Recession hit, and her employer eliminated her position.

With architecture jobs scarce, Smith returned home and found a marketing job in a field outside AEC. But buildings were her passion. She enrolled in a master’s program at Colorado State University for construction management. Returning to student life was difficult, particularly since Smith still held her marketing role. She also worked as a teaching fellow and research assistant, which helped offset tuition costs.

She says she always thought she “would be more in a designer role.” Nevertheless, her strong foundation in sustainability plus her newfound construction knowledge led her to HKS’s Dallas office, where she is a vice president and sustainable design leader. Additionally, her temporary foray in marketing strengthened her appreciation of the field. “We are always marketing,” Smith says, “whether it’s internally with our colleagues or when we are putting our best foot forward with our clients.”

No school break after all

With a degree from a program not accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), KSS Architects principal Alicia Heinsen, AIA, was considering returning to school for her M.Arch. But six years into the profession, she was just starting to manage her own projects. “It was hard to think about stepping away from that momentum,” she says. 

She also worried about paying her bills alongside tuition, so she began looking at work–study programs. During her research, she learned about the additional experience path toward licensure, which lets architects use on-the-job experience as an alternative to holding a degree from an NAAB-accredited program. For Heinsen, who had lots of work experience, the path was a natural fit.

She applied to the Pennsylvania State Architects Licensure Board to sit for the Architect Registration Examination (ARE). Initially, the board denied her but advised to strengthen her application and resubmit. The second time, she presented exhibits at a board hearing and brought a firm partner to testify on her behalf. Approved, she sailed through the ARE, all without a significant career hiatus.

“I found a path that aligned with my goal of licensure that made sense for the things that were important to me,” Heinsen says. “I put extra legwork in to get there, but that outweighed going back to school, having student loans, and temporarily pausing my professional growth.”

Peer advice

For architects and designers considering a return to school, understand your “why,” says Brown. No single answer is right, but “having a clear purpose will help you maintain motivation and navigate challenges.” Smith agrees: “It’s not always the degree, so be honest with yourself about your expectations because it’s a big change.”

“For some, the structure of graduate school offers [a dedicated time] for reflection and creative rigor,” Heinsen says. “For others, practice itself becomes the best teacher.”

“Career transitions are super messy,” Bala says. “I wish they were nice and tidy, but they’re not. They’re a financial hit. They’re an emotional hit. It’s a roller coaster.” To navigate this, she leans on her tech background. While the traditional architecture path emphasizes “mastery,” she says, “tech taught me to be proficient: Do it well enough to get through [the current] challenges.” And you can always change directions if things aren’t working out.

Wanda Lau is a freelance writer covering architecture and design and a former editor of ARCHITECT magazine. She lives outside Chicago.