10 WYOMING ARCHITECTURE .22 | aia-wyoming.org I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this year’s annual Publication/Directory with a report from the AIA Strategic Council. The Strategic Council is not new to the AIA, but it has recently evolved from a regional council (the six states comprising the Western Mountain Region, WMR) to having 50 state representatives (California, New York and Texas have two each) as well as six at-large leaders who meet to discuss critical issues impacting our profession. I am privileged to be the first AIA Wyoming architect elected to serve on the Strategic Council. AIA Strategic Plan The Strategic Plan for 2021-2025 is to advance the twin goals of climate action for human and ecological health and the advancement of racial, ethnic and gender equity in the built environment. This long-term plan has been implemented to allow AIA leadership to adopt policies and procedures guided by this mission. Human and ecological health and racial, ethnic and gender equity will guide AIA’s decisions well into the future. AIA Strategic Council The Strategic Council was formed in 2015. It was formed to advance the architecture profession by informing the board and other institute bodies about important professional issues, opportunities, and threats. Although it is not an AIA governing body, the Council’s work is vital to AIA’s ability to serve the profession. AIA Bylaws define in detail the Council’s mission, responsibilities, and composition. The Council approaches its tasks with an emphasis on an outward and forward-focused vision. In this spirit, the Council focuses on long-term goals and outcomes of AIA’s work rather than the administrative or programmatic efforts that achieve those goals. Thought Leadership The Council meets to consider topics based on AIA’s strategic objectives. From that work, it develops recommendations for the Board’s consideration. Council Recruitment The Council is a diverse group of over 60 forward-thinking leaders charged with exploring new ideas and solutions to significant issues facing the profession of architecture and its role in society. The Council recruits members annually with the intention that these At-large positions will bring diverse viewpoints to the Council that might not be otherwise represented. This includes people from allied professions, futurists, educators, and other professionals who would not typically become council members through the state representative election process. Systems Thinking for Cultural Change Systems thinking involves a variety of skills and core concepts, including the ability to recognize interconnections among parts of a system; to identify how interconnections can combine to form cause and effect feedback loops; to recognize nonlinear relationships among elements in a system; to understand dynamic behavior, and to look at a system in different ways to reduce complexity. The resulting solutions are more anticipatory and adaptive, more attuned to underlying problems rather than their symptoms, and more likely to challenge assumptions and norms. By Dan Stalker, AIA AIA Strategic Council The Strategic Plan for 2021-2025 is to advance the twin goals of climate action for human and ecological health and the advancement of racial, ethnic and gender equity in the built environment ... Human and ecological health and racial, ethnic and gender equity will guide AIA’s decisions well into the future.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODQxMjUw