Dean Liu's Updates
First Year Reflection
Just 365 days ago, I collected a full bucket of courage—mixed with plenty of curiosity and a small dose of confidence—and drove to Blacksburg to start my journey as the new dean of the recently reorganized College of Architecture, Arts, and Design at Virginia Tech.
The Blue Ridge Mountains felt a little hazy, and I wondered if my 20 years of higher ed experience in land grant, research universities and 13 years of adventure in industry had fully prepared me to lead this vibrant community of 1,800 talented students and 200 dedicated faculty and staff members. When I saw the college flag in the lobby of Burruss Hall, along with those of all the other colleges, I had a moment of surreality: the responsibility and expectations were clear and present.
Four seasons have come and gone since July 1, 2023. The warm welcome of Virginia Tech and the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design community remain fresh in my heart. The conversations with students in the studios and classrooms, collaborations with colleagues inside and outside of AAD, and connections with alumni during my travels to all the major cities in the U.S. have been incredibly inspiring and motivating.
As a community and family, we have made remarkable progress in many areas based on the aspirations and ideas that everyone has been sharing. We launched a community building endeavor to enhance a culture of trust, respect, collaboration, inclusion, creativity, equity, service, and excellence. A new strategic planning process is well underway that is engaging the entire college community and will allow us to build a roadmap that will drive the college for the next 5-10 years.
A comprehensive space assessment is also in progress and will create a vision for how we learn, create, practice, collaborate, and play together as a community in the next few decades. New faculty and administrators have been joining AAD on an unprecedented scale. In August, 27 new faculty members will arrive, bringing new expertise, energy, and scholarship to our four extraordinary schools: School of Architecture, School of Design, School of Performing Arts, and School of Visual Arts.
We sincerely appreciate the tremendous support of Virginia Tech and the generous philanthropy of our alumni and friends who have provided much-needed new financial, academic, and professional resources to the college. Student scholarships, internships, and design project opportunities have been introduced. Students are receiving exciting job offers and winning national and international awards. Faculty are working on research and scholarship projects with global significance and impact, as well as reviewing and renewing curricula and academic processes to prepare our students for future career success and professional leadership.
I am grateful for the incredible dedication and support of the AAD faculty and staff for all these accomplishments during the last 12 months. We are keenly aware that we still have a lot of work to do together, but I believe we are poised to achieve a new level of academic excellence as a college, aligned with the Virginia Tech Global Distinction and the Virginia Tech Advantage initiatives.
This morning, the sun rose above a clear and green mountain skyline, shining on the capstones of Burruss Hall. The college flag stands proudly in its lobby. My gratitude for our community and optimism for the future of AAD are both glowing. I brought a bucket of courage to Blacksburg; it remains full, and I am delighted to see the community coming together. A faculty member shared with me a statement that captures our common vision: “Four schools under one roof.” It metaphorically and figuratively presents the community that our four schools aspire to be.
Onwards and upwards!
Lu Liu
Dean of the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design
It has been more than 250 days since I joined the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design. As I stroll around the studios and classrooms, the conversations, stories, and projects still fascinate me. It's indeed a true privilege working with all of you. Some important updates for your attention:
1. Community Building:
In my 100 days letter to AAD (below), I began with the call for "advancing an inclusive, respectful, collaborative, and caring culture in classrooms, studios, labs, and offices throughout AAD." After months of collective efforts, I think we are a more welcoming community than before. I have been encouraged by the new inter-school interactions, conversations, and collaboration. The beautiful music performed by the music faculty in the lobby of Cowgill Hall a few weeks ago still echoes in the air. We still have challenges but let's work together to bring more smiles and handshakes to our college. We should all try to listen deeper and empathize more with the colleagues and students who might have different perspectives.
3. Policies and Procedures:
Last year, I set a goal to "Establish and implement more consistent and transparent policies and procedures in AAD so we all operate on a common set of guiding principles and protocols to enhance the sense of trust and fairness among our community." I am very pleased to announce that "Inside AAD", the internal website that serves as the "one-stop-shop" for our policies and procedures, is ready for a "pilot run." I really appreciate the leadership of Kathryn Clarke Albright, as well as the support of Tony Mastracci, Julie Weaver, and Carah McMahon. The policies and procedures have been vested by all of the AAD school directors. They have also been reviewed by the AAD faculty association and staff senators. This is a "soft launch," and we welcome suggestions and comments. As you can imagine, not many systems are perfect when first introduced. We are implementing these policies/procedures while inviting input and suggestions. Before the end of the semester, please send your suggestions and comments to your school director, if you have any. There are two different categories of policy and procedure documents: Category A: Document Prior to July 2023 and Category B, Documents After July 2023. There is an "Inside AAD Catalog of Documents" in the "Dean's Corner" webpage that lists all the documents. Some documents are university policies and procedures, some documents are existing AAD policies and procedures, some documents are existing AAD policies and procedures that had not been documented before, and some documents are new AAD policies and procedures. For example, there is a new "Creatives in Residence" policies and procedures. It is created as a mechanism for the administration and fund raising of Artists in Residence, Musicians in Residence, Designers in Residence, or Architects in Residence, so extraordinary professionals could spend weeks or months on our campus creating/teaching/collaborating with our faculty and students.
4. Searches:
We are searching for 15 new faculty members for all of our four schools starting in Fall 2024. I am meeting with all finalist candidates to welcome them to our campus. I enjoy listening to their expertise, passion, practice, research, and experience. I feel optimistic about the future of our college because of the new talents joining our community soon. The search for the Director of the School of Architecture is in its final phase. The announcement will be made shortly after Spring Break. In terms of the Associate Dean for Research and Creative Scholarship, we’ll have an update on the process soon.
Today, October 10, marks the 100th day of my deanship in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design (AAD). I am profoundly grateful and humbled by the heartfelt welcoming that I have received since my arrival on July 1 and am very honored to be a member of the AAD and Virginia Tech community. Every day I am fortunate to have inspiring conversations with our students and colleagues in our studios, offices, classrooms, and hallways, and the visits and receptions I’ve participated in with alumni and friends in Alexandria, Boston, Chicago, New York, and Richmond have been exhilarating and informative.
As we approach the midpoint of the semester, I would like to take a moment to share updates and personal insights. After 100 days of conversations, meetings, observations, and reflections, I am convinced that one of our foremost missions is to build an excellence-pursuing community of caring, trust, respect, fairness, inclusion, and collaboration built upon a shared passion and dedication to creativity, beauty, curiosity, and empathy. I think our community building endeavors could be achieved by:
- Advancing an inclusive, respectful, collaborative, and caring culture in classrooms, studios, labs, and offices throughout AAD: Every member of our community, including students, faculty, staff, alumni, and administrators, deserves to be here and should be respected and valued. We are very fortunate and proud to be a community of people from many different backgrounds; our members represent various states, regions, ethnicities, identities, nationalities, cultures, societies, professions, disciplines, experiences, and much more. Creativity and education work best when we learn, inspire, and collaborate with each other. Words and deeds, no matter their intent have impact. They also reflect who we are as individuals and a community. Let us continue our work together to be the community we aspire to be. Let’s cultivate a culture of hospitality where we all respect, care, trust, and value each other. We are launching an AAD strategic planning process. I have asked Associate Dean Ariana Wyatt to co-chair the committee with Lauren Pollard, Virginia Tech’s Director of Strategic Affairs. We would like to call on all students and colleagues to actively participate in the process to develop a strategic plan that will guide our community/culture building, as well as vision forming, priority setting, and goal-achieving for the next five to ten years. I have asked Ariana to present me with a draft of the strategic plan by the end of the Spring 2024 semester. In the meantime, before the official introduction of the strategic plan, all of us should continue to work diligently on building our community where we can deeply enjoy learning, teaching and working together.
- Preparing for student success: Students are one of the main reasons for the existence of a university. We need to continue to recruit and educate a diverse group of promising and dedicated students to support their academic success in our schools so they could make a positive difference to our societies. Under the leadership of Associate Dean Kathryn Clarke Albright and Advising Director Rob Jacks, our outstanding, student-centered advising team has a new structure with a goal of strengthening our student services functions to enhance our student experience and career preparation.
- Establishing and implementing more consistent and transparent policies and procedures in AAD so we all operate on a common set of guiding principles and protocols to enhance the sense of trust and fairness among our community: We need to build trust to build a community. In a month, our faculty and staff will receive an email introducing the new “Inside AAD”, an internal website that contains important operational procedures, protocols, and expectations for the entire journey/tenure as a member of the AAD community, such as recruiting, hiring, promotion, tenure, and honorifics procedures. We will establish more transparent and equitable practices to guide our decision making and resource allocations processes. Associate Dean Kathryn Clarke Albright and Assistant Dean Tony Mastracci are spearheading this important task. Substantial progress has been made and we welcome inputs when the new Inside AAD is available.
- Enhancing AAD facility and environment: The fact that our studios, classrooms, and office spaces are physically located in more than 15 locations across campus is a challenge to our community building efforts, as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of our teaching, research, and learning. Additionally, some of our facilities are in need of substantial improvements to facilitate the best learning, practicing, and socializing experience for our students. We are working with the provost’s office to plan for a space-assessment study to identify immediate/short-term needs and long-term aspirations of the AAD community.
- Exploring new degree programs: We have 11 undergraduate and 6 graduate academic degree programs that are very strong. We need to continue to advance the excellence of our academic programs to further enhance our student success. In the meantime, there are promising emerging opportunities that our current and future students could excel and lead. The directors of the School of Architecture (Professor Jim Bassett), School of Design (Professor Matt Powers), School of Performing Arts (Professor Jeff Loeffert), and School of Visual Arts (Professor Ann-Marie Knoblauch) are reviewing current offerings with faculty and exploring the potential for new degree programs. Associate Dean Paul Emmons is leading the planning of potential new professional graduate programs, both in Blacksburg and North Virginia. We will keep our community updated.
- Reviewing the administrative structures of our schools: We are fortunate to have a strong team of school directors and program chairs. The demand and workload of our school administrators has become increasingly complex and strenuous. As a result, we are examining academic program functions within each school to determine if greater efficiencies for systems and structures may be attained. The school directors are working together on this. A proposal will be presented to me soon.
- Enhancing our research and creative scholarship: As a college within a leading research university, we are encouraged and expected to continue to contribute to the funded research, academic publication, and creative scholarship of our institution. Interim Associate Dean Michael Borowski is establishing a framework to encourage and support faculty to further advance their research and creative scholarship successes, especially in interdisciplinary collaboration. Michael will continue to keep us updated.
- Strengthening the connections with the professional and industrial communities for our student and faculty success: We have many successful alumni, friends, and industry partners throughout professional communities. We will look to them to help and support AAD in many meaningful ways such as student internship and young alumni career placements, faculty research, sponsored projects, creative works, and resource building. AAD’s advancement, research and creative scholarship, and outreach and engagement teams are working with school leadership to explore new opportunities on many exciting fronts for our students and faculty.
There are quite a few other areas that I am focused on; however, this has become one of the longest letters that I have written so I will address those with our community later. As you might know, English is not my first language. I don’t enjoy writing long essays. I am glad that you are still reading this letter because it shows that you care about our college and community.
After my first 100 days as your dean, I am more optimistic and enthusiastic than before about the future of AAD and our community. Human society and planet earth are facing unprecedented challenges. I believe that human-centered creativity and innovation can help us navigate troubled waters towards a brighter and more beautiful horizon.
Together, let’s be imaginative, courageous, and persistent to make this new college a beacon of human creativity, while respecting and taking care of each other! I look forward to continuing to hear and learn from you more throughout AAD’s studios, offices, classrooms, and hallways!
