from here :
http://www.timesleader.com/news/GRAN...1-04-2009.html
GRAND DESIGN
Architects laud program at Marywood
By Andrew M. Seder
aseder@timesleader.com
04 JAN 2009
Local architects hope a new degree program at Marywood University will produce graduates who can enrich practices that already have won notice in the region, across the nation and around the world.
Instead of worrying about competition, local architects are looking forward to offering whatever help they can to get the region’s first school of architecture up and running and churning out future stewards of the skilled art.
Peter Bohlin, of the firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, with offices in Wilkes-Barre, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Seattle and San Francisco, said there’s “quite a gap” between the number of students earning architecture degrees and the number of positions available for them.
“There’s a greater need in the country for architects than there are architects coming out of school,” Bohlin, 71, of Waverly, said.
Patrick Endler, with the Borton-Lawson firm in Wilkes-Barre, said “fewer and fewer students are entering the profession.”
“Fewer are coming out of school, and fewer still are taking and passing their professional exams. It’s a bit of a crisis,” Endler said.
Bohlin sketched a similar picture of the disparity between the number of available jobs and lesser number of available architects.
“I’m not talking about 10 percent. More like 20 to 30 percent,” Bohlin said while sitting in his 12th floor office at the Citizens Bank Building on West Market Street. There may be more architects graduating today than in years past but there are also more positions and more opportunities outside of the field that lure them, he said.
“Computers have changed architecture to a great degree,” Bohlin said, allowing architecture graduates to find jobs, sometimes much-better-paying ones, as animators or computer graphic artists on films or even computer or video games.
That leaves fewer architects to design new schools, hospitals, libraries, bridges and homes.
Marywood University thinks the time is right to strike to help fill that gap.
Gregory Hunt, a former dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at The Catholic University of America, was brought in as a special consultant and will help to get the Marywood program up and running. When the announcement was made in October, Hunt said it “was clear to him” after meeting with local educators and architects “that from the outset the architecture community embraced, has embraced and continues to embrace this particular enterprise with great enthusiasm.”
Avery Gretton is among them.
“It will provide great opportunities for high school students who might never have considered that pathway in the past,” said Gretton, an architect at Highland Associates in Clarks Summit and president of the Northeast Pennsylvania chapter of the American Institute of Architects. He said the number of architects locally is just right for the area, although he believes population growth and the ability to work long distance via computers and teleconferencing could spur opportunities.
That’s where Marywood University steps in.
The university’s School of Architecture is planned for a fall opening with a first class of about 25.
Gretton said architects “will continue to be in demand and Marywood University will help to satisfy that demand.”
While there are no hard numbers on this, Gretton said he believes a majority of locally employed architects were born and raised in Northeastern Pennsylvania. He is among the minority – non-natives who moved here to take an architectural job.
He said the high number of natives who came back home to work in the field speaks volumes for the region, considering that every local architect would have had to leave the region to attend college since no local schools offer an architectural degree.
Count Bohlin among those who came here and fell in love with the region and its offerings. The world-renowned architect founded his firm with partner Richard Powell in Wilkes-Barre in 1965. The firm has now grown to include 150 employees in five offices.
Bohlin came to Pennsylvania while in his 20s, three years out of school. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate came to design a home in Bear Creek for his parents and wound up leaving New York City for the Diamond City to ply his trade and make a name for himself.
“I felt we could get a faster start here and it turned out to be true,” Bohlin said.
He said that while many architecture degree holders leave college with the goal of working in New York or Chicago, the truth is they usually go where the jobs are and where they can establish a name for themselves.
The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area offers that opportunity.
“We’re not that far from the major cities,” Bohlin said, and there are plenty of projects to be had.
Not all fly the coop to the big cities. Some venture out from local firms by starting more local firms.
Among them are Margaret Bakker and Robert Lewis, who left Bohlin Cywinski Jackson to establish their Shavertown firm in 1988. The two, like Bohlin, are graduates of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Others choose to stay on with the region’s larger practices and even turn down transfers to what might be considered more prestigious surroundings.
Bill Loose, a partner at Bohlin’s firm, was born in Reading, graduated from Penn State and took a job in Wilkes-Barre eight months later. He said he was given the opportunity to transfer to the Seattle office when the firm was hired to design the private residence of Bill and Melinda Gates in the 1990s but opted to stay here in Kingston.
Bohlin said the Marywood endeavor is badly needed.
“It’s an opportunity to bring new life to the region,” Bohlin said. He said anything that encourages local students to get into the field is a plus and local architects are offering to help any way they can, from guest lectures, to taking interns to teaching classes in an adjunct capacity.
Endler, of Kingston, said he can not see a downside to the Marywood plan.
“Having that resource more readily available here can only enhance the profession,” he said.
Patrick Endler, with the Borton-Lawson firm in Wilkes-Barre, said “fewer and fewer students are entering the profession.”
Andrew M. Seder, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 570-829-7269.
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