20th annual college research symposium set for Oct. 29

The wide variety of research and creative work by Texas A&M College of Architecture faculty and doctoral students will be showcased at “ [Natural, Built, Virtual] (http://symposium.arch.tamu.edu/2018/) ,” the college’s 20 ^th annual research symposium, October 29, 2018, at Preston Geren Auditorium, Langford B of the Texas A&M College Station campus.

The symposium, which begins with an 8 a.m. continental breakfast and registration in the Langford B Exhibit Hall, features lively, five minute presentations abbreviated from talks previously delivered at scholarly venues around the world.

A keynote address presented by Carol A. Fierke, provost and executive vice president at Texas A&M and a leading biochemistry researcher, is scheduled at 1 p.m.

The event is open to the public for no fee, but due to limited seating, registration, [available online] (http://symposium.arch.tamu.edu/2018/registration/) , is required. Breakfast, lunch and refreshments will be served to all symposium registrants, and college classes will be suspended for students to attend.

Presentations of the research projects, many of them performed with teams of scholars from different disciplines, reflect the event’s theme, “interdisciplinarity.”

“Our college’s researchers have always prized the value of working across disciplines to solve problems in the natural, built and virtual environments,” said Dawn Jourdan, the college’s executive associate dean and chief orchestrator of the symposium. “And new grant programs funded by the Texas A&M [President’s Excellence Fund] (https://today.tamu.edu/tag/presidents-excellence-fund/) have enabled our scholars to deepen existing interdisciplinary partnerships and create new ones.”

Presentations are arranged in multidisciplinary sessions of four speakers, with each taking five minutes to describe their work. The sessions are followed by 10 minute question and answer periods.

“We’re going to have a multidisciplinary dialogue on a wide range of topics running all day,” said Jourdan. “In a session with construction science, planning, architecture and visualization topics, audience members might hear about something they didn’t know existed.”

The symposium, she added, also provides an opportunity for faculty to hear intriguing ideas outside their specialty and consider new, innovative research collaborations.

Established to underscore the influence of research on teaching and practice, the symposium serves as a catalyst for research-informed teaching in the college's degree programs. And, because many of the presentations were originally delivered at scholarly venues abroad, the event also showcases the global influence of research conducted by college faculty and Ph.D. students.

Visit the symposium [website] (http://symposium.arch.tamu.edu/2018/) for more information and event updates.

Richard Nira
rnira@arch.tamu.edu