The U.S. became a global leader during the twentieth century, due in part to the creativity and enterprise of its engineers, scientists and inventors. Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) professions were essential to America's past and are critical to the country's future. Currently, the U.S. has lost its competitive edge, and is no longer the world's technological leader. Our once prominent position has diminished, in part, by disparities in STEM education, primarily due to the comparatively small number of students currently pursuing STEM education and their associated careers. By increasing the number of STEM graduates, especially among under-represented groups, the federal government aspires to harness America's full potential. In 2007, President Bush signed the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Act (American COMPETRES Act) into law. While, the American COMPETES Act (2007) covered a wide range of activities, it had little direct impact on minority STEM education opportunities. This article explores various policy issues needed to alleviate the barriers that limit the success of minority students, specifically African American women, at all levels of STEM education; and identifies specific higher education strategies that directly determine the academic success of female minority STEM college students.

Afghanistan is a country rich in culture and history, but also one devastated by decades of war. The destruction extends beyond cities to include the social, economic and educational constructs of life. In 2008, the University of Hartford was awarded a $1.33 million grant to help re-establish the engineering facilities at Herat University. The grant mission also facilitated the creation of a new achitectural programme to address the growing needs of contemporary Afghanistan. Over the next three years, scholars worked to forge an innovative curriculum, one that melds the historic traditions of a centuries-old city with the contemporary needs of a western-style Islamic society. When the ideally conceived curriculum was finally taken to Herat University for approval and implementation, a new and harsher reality emerged. This article chronicles the events that reshaped the proposed curriculum. It relays how the current state of the profession, cultural traditions, gender bias and economic realities came to bear on the development of this new programme, and how western preconceptions were revised by local realities. Finally, it documents how the melding of these realities supplanted initial utopian agendas in the creation of a more viable, integrated curriculum that supports an evolving, unique and contemporary architectural identity.

The paper concludes with an appraisal of the advance of geo-spatial grid mapping and its countervalent potential for design professionals.Among all the arts -those children of pleasure and necessity in which man has participated to help him bear the trials of life and pass on his memory to future generations -one cannot deny that architecture must hold a most eminent place. Even considered only from the point of usefulness, it surpasses all the other arts. It ensures to the salubrity of cities, guards the health of men, protects their properties, and works only for the safety, repose and orderliness of civic life.-Quatremère de Quincy (1832) In review of

This reflection utilizes Kevin Casey’s 2007 article, Truth without Action, as a springboard to address contemporary issues related to autonomy, accountability and accreditation in higher-education. With escalating costs, rising unemployment and deepening consumer debt, it is natural for government officials to seek out a cause, or more accurately, a scape-goat for the evolving crisis. Over the last few decades, starting with A Time for Results in 1980, following with The State Post-secondary Review Entities (SPREs) in 1992; and continuing with the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education Report in 2006, federal agents have politicized American education and issued indictments against higher-education. Tuition costs are too high, graduation rates are too low and student learning-outcomes remain ineffable. With the recent re-election of President Obama, “the Education Department will continue to play an active role in regulating and attempting to influence colleges and universities.” (Nelson, 2012) Amy Laitinen, deputy director for higher-education at the New America Foundation and former Education Department policy advisor, recently stated, “The President himself, not just his advisors, is very interested in the college cost and the college outcome issue.” (Nelson, 2012)

Even with the increased number of minority graduates from architecture programs, African American females still make up less than 0.4 % of all licensed architects in the United States. While, increasing diversity within the field of architecture continues to be a priority for both the academy and the profession, one can ask whether current architecture programs are doing enough to help women of color successfully engage and complete undergraduate, pre-professional curriculums. A qualitative, single case study (2013-14) explored how, if at all, African American female students were able to engage their undergraduate, pre-professional architecture curriculum. The research represents scholarly discourse related to the professoriate and the scholarship of teaching and learning. This investigation examined the characteristics of undergraduate architectural programs, from the perspective of their academic curriculum, faculty teaching methodologies, and the design studio environment. The intention of this paper is to shed light on the educational practices that currently exist within architecture programs and determine how, if at all, they mitigate or extend the barriers that traditionally limit the success of women of color in architectural education. Recent statistics 14 confirm the continued disparity within the architecture profession. Currently, males account for more than 82 percent of licensed U.S. Architects, while "all" women account for less than 18 percent. Even with the increasing number of graduates of color from architecture programs,