On Sept. 22, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) announced two phases of modification to its Intern Development Program (IDP). The changes involve eliminating the required 1,860 elective hours and reducing the current 17 experience areas into six practice-based categories. Today, the licensing board hosted a webinar during which its director of internship and education, Harry Falconer, AIA, and assistant director of member board relations, Derek Haese, answered questions about the recently approved changes. Here are three key takeaways from today’s Q-and-A:
1. State boards do not have to adopt the new IDP changes. NCARB is made up of 54 jurisdictions that have the legal authority to establish and enforce their own licensure requirements. Candidates applying for licensure must comply with the policies of their state’s regulatory board, but candidates may also contest a state board’s decision if they do not agree with its policies.
2. The goal of reducing the program’s requisite elective hours was to focus architecture curriculum on its core requirements of 3,740 completed hours. NCARB defends that the scaling back of elective hours does not diminish the efficacy of the IDP. According to Haese, the the streamlined approach supports “rigor for a reason, not rigor for the sake of rigor.”
3. The Practice Analysis of Architecture is an NCARB survey conducted every few years to define the areas of expertise necessary to complete the tasks required to become a licensed architect. The knowledge and skills identified in the 2012 survey match the information tested in the Architect Registration Examination (ARE) 5.0, which is set to launch in late 2016, while the tasks represent the practice areas covered in the future version of the IDP, planned for mid-2016. The overhaul of the six IDP practice areas will bring the program up to date with the six topics that will be tested in the ARE 5.0: practice management, project management, programming and analysis, project planning and design, project development and documentation, and construction and evaluation.
For more information on NCARB’s changes to the IDP, click here.
This article has been updated to correct the date of NCARB’s announcement on Sept. 22. We regret the error.
