Statistics and Expectations The following statistics over the last several years speak for themselves: • Academic year 2014-15: 85.6% graduation rate, 603 college credits earned and 60% of graduates with full-time employment. • Academic year 2015-16: 90.8% graduation rate, 764 college credits earned and 58% of graduates with full-time employment. • Academic year 2016-17: 95.8% graduation rate, 1,460 college credits earned and 76% of graduates with full-time employment. • Academic year 2017-18: 95.1% graduation rate, 1,057 college credits earned and 77% of graduates with full-time employment. • Academic year 2018-19: 100% graduation rate, 1,347 college credits earned and 68% of graduates with full-time employment. • Academic year 2019-20: 100% graduation rate, 1,452 college credits earned and 71% of graduates with full-time employment. • Academic year 2020-21: 100% graduation rate, 1,438 college credits earned and 66% of graduates with full-time employment. While the architecture program is still working to achieve full build-out, ACE expects to see approximately 45 students in the upcoming academic years, with an average of 15 students graduating each year. The goal is to get those students interested in architecture early on, so after graduation from ACE, they’re on the fast track to their degree. With the development of the Bachelor of Architecture, the ACE curriculum will soon change to ensure alignment between the lower- and upper-level courses. The goal is to allow students to earn certificates during their time with ACE, then continue through the AAS and eventually into the BArch seamlessly. First Year In the first year of the ACE architecture program, students will complete three college courses, earning up to nine credits, where their creativity and problem-solving skills will be challenged, as are the roots of architecture. With that, the focus is on the architectural process of programming, schematic, and design development stages. Naturally, students will be introduced to their first college-level lecture and the architecture studio environment. They will be expected to perform at the same level and successfully complete the same curriculum as typical college students. The first-year curriculum will begin with the introduction of different careers in and types of architecture, understanding legal terms and responsibilities, and potential salaries. Students will be exposed to profession-standard symbols, terminology, and workflow as well as theories and concepts of design, styles of architecture, sketching and representing ideas graphically, the design process, scaling and modeling. The first year currently consists of five projects intended to get future designers thinking about form, programming and planning, and the design process. Here’s a breakdown: • Residential Design Project: ACE begins students with residential design, assuming that most students are more familiar with a residential project than they might be with a commercial project. Students are presented with an L-shaped building footprint in which they must design a three-bedroom, two-bathroom residence, including a two-car garage. Students must create an accurately scaled floor plan, roof plan, elevations, and cross-section, then use these drawings to create their first scaled model. The materials used are graham crackers and frosting, familiar enough that students go in confident and difficult enough that they must do some problem-solving. • Primary Elements: Students are introduced to the primary elements of architecture: point, line, plane and volume, and the concept of emotion related to a building. Every day we are
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