Annual Intern Event!

Please join us in an enthusiastic celebration of mentorship!

The AIBC and the Intern Architect Committee invite you and your mentor to attend the upcoming Mentor – Mentee Event. This event is an informal and social evening dedicated to building mentor relationships across all levels of the profession, from students and architectural graduates to Intern Architects and fully-registered members.

Thursday, November 4
5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
AIBC Gallery (#100 – 440 Cambie Street at Pender)
Vancouver, BC V6B 2N5

Complimentary refreshments, entertainment and prizes.

While mentorship is a required part of the Intern Architect Program, it happens more informally throughout one’s career as an architect. Mentors enhance education, offer advice and direction for professional experience, and help build professional networks. They are teachers, counselors and friends.

No matter how far you are through the IA program, chances are your mentor has been a large and positive part of your internship experience. This gathering is the perfect opportunity to not only thank your mentor, but to also connect with other IAs and members of the profession.

To confirm you attendance, please r.s.v.p. to Courtney Healey IA.AIBC (courtney.healey@gmail.com) or Registration and Licensing Administration Assistant Emily Tyler (etyler@aibc.ca).

We look forward to seeing you there.

Mentors & Logbooks

As interns we should be meeting with our mentors frequently. What keeps some interns from meeting their mentors as frequently as they should is often a simple case of not getting the experience log book hours ready for review and signature. Since the mentor’s signature is required on logged experience, the frequency of meeting a mentor to discuss work, experience, the profession etc. has become contingent on getting a signature in the logbook - no logbook, no meeting. Logging hours is a task that often gets put on the backburner for months, sometimes years! This is a bad habit to get into particularly if it is causing you to decrease the frequency of meetings with your mentor.

One solution is to create motivation to complete the logbook. There are many ways to do this of course but one we’d like to suggest is to make a meeting schedule with your mentor in advance of completing your logbook. At your next meeting, for example, set a date for your following meeting 4 or 6 months. That will give you a deadline to complete your logbook, make sure you get your experience in on time, and make the most out of you mentor relationship.

Aside from all this – and a much preferred additional option – is to make a regularly scheduled appointment to meet with your mentor to talk shop. You don’t have to, and should not limit the relationship to one of log book signing but rather should seek to gain as much knowledge out of your mentor as you can.

Another solution is to make the process of logging hours easier. Many of us have created spreadsheets to help automate the task. These spreadsheets often start out saving time but end up becoming cumbersome and complex especially as the number of projects increases. At the intern committee we are working on creating a spreadsheet to help handle this task. If you have a spreadsheet that you think works well and would like to share it with us, we’d love to see it. Our email address is interncommittee@yahoo.com. Thank you!