ARE Scheduling

With the June 30, 2009 deadline for completing ARE 3.1 before the conversion to ARE 4.0 fast approaching, the Burnaby Test Centre has been very busy with bookings. Therefore, this site (#5129) has just opened their schedule on December 22, 23, 27, 29 and 30 to deliver exams. Please go online at www.prometric.com/ncarb or call 1-(800) 479-6215 to schedule your examinations for these dates. Don't forget that NCARB has scheduling guidelines and guarantees so if you are having difficulty scheduling an exam please fill out their ARE Scheduling Verification Form and fax to NCARB. If you continue to have difficulty with scheduling please contact Róisín O'Neill, AIBC Registration Coordinator at roneill@aibc.ca and provide the exam information and time frame you are hoping for.

Corrected Intern Committee Email

Last month we published an incorrect email address in our newsletter and 20 x 20 poster. The correct email is interncommittee@yahoo.com. If you went to the trouble to send us a comment or question, please re-send it to this account. We apologize for any inconvenience. Your email goes directly to your Intern Architect Committee (Patrick Schilling IA, Johnnie Kuo IA, Abdel Amin IA, Baldwin Hum IA, Anthony Milkovich IA, Jason Herzog IA, Scott Staniul IA, and Paul Sukava IA). We hope this gives you the confidence to send us your unfiltered thoughts on the program, courses, fees, exams, oral review preparation, and all things intern related. So let’s hear from you!

Intern Architect Committee proudly presents this year's intern annual event: "20x20!"

Since 2003 the creative process of a public meeting at which a series of presenters display and speak about a series of 20 images for no more than 20 seconds per image has become a popular event worldwide. This year we want to unleash intern creativity at our intern event by hosting just such a meeting. Join us on Thursday night, November 6th for this year's Intern Event: 20/20 show, prizes, music, and fellowship.

We have timed this year's Intern Event to coincide with two other AIBC events so that interns from around the province can attend. The November 6th date not only coincides with the Remembrance Day weekend, but also with the 'Law & the Architect' course being held at the AIBC on the same day. The next day, Friday November 7th, David Thaddeus will begin his 3 day intensive ARE Structures Seminar to help prepare interns for the structures ARE exam. We've already had a lot of interest on his second appearance in Vancouver.

We think the Intern 20x20 event will be a great way of showcasing our local talent.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:

To make this event truly successful, we need you to submit presentations. If interested in presenting at this session, please send us your name and a brief description of your presentation. Spaces are limited so let us know as soon as possible.

Here are the rules:

• Every presenter will show 20 slides on a topic of their choice, and will have a maximum of 6 minutes and 40 seconds to talk during their presentation (up to 20 seconds per slide) .
• Each presenter will submit his or her 20 slides as .jpg images no larger than 1024x768 pixels in size and clearly labeled with presentation sequence 01~20.
• Deadline: 5pm PST on October 31st, 2008.
• Email your slides in a zip file to this address: interncommittee@yahoo.com.

David Thaddeus ARE Structures Workshop

The AIBC Intern Architect Committee is bringing David Thaddeus, AIA, NCARB to Vancouver in November to present his hugely popular ARE Structures Seminar. David Thaddeus is Associate Professor of Structures and Architectural Design at the College of Architecture, in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Before that, he was at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture, University of Houston. While teaching at the University of Houston, he developed a review course for the General Structures and Lateral Forces Divisions of the Architect Registration Exam (ARE) and first offered the course to interns in 1989. Professor Thaddeus continues to teach his ARE Review course across North America.

This Structures (ARE) Exam workshop is three full days of workshops, mock exams and questions and answers that focus on preparing Intern Architects for the two structural exams required for licensure: General Structures and Lateral Forces. These workshops present the technique, strategy and skills invaluable to all Intern Architects preparing for their exams. Professor Thaddeus recommends that interns be familiar with the materials for the Materials & Methods Exam before attending the seminar.

Following is a testimonial from a BC Intern who attended one of professor Thaddeus' recent workshops:

He explains basic concepts in a very user friendly way - after the lecture it all started to fall into the right spot. We were shown some tricks - how to tackle some seemingly hard/sneaky questions. I'd call those three days a great primer of basic knowledge we should have in order to make the rest of the material more understandable. It would take me at least two or three times longer to digest the material he covers just studying it on my own. His lecture is worth every penny, also he should come before the ARE’s are updated again next year. With every change the passing rate drops a lot. It's about 67 percent right now and used to be well over 80 percent if I remember correctly.

To see a review by Sean Ruthen, IA who attended the seminar in Vancouver last year, click here: http://aibc.ca/member_resources/intern_resources/pdf/intern_update_november07.pdf.

The workshop will be held at the AIBC offices in downtown Vancouver. Click here to download the registration form. Once registered you will be emailed information about what to bring with you to the workshop. This seminar is not limited to AIBC Interns.

If you have any questions about this seminar you may contact Róisín O’Neill, AIBC Registration Coordinator at roneill@aibc.ca.

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!