Dean's Welcome

The College of Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio is committed to fostering the development of a vibrant academic design culture to promote learning, exploration, and innovation. We are preparing our graduates to be design leaders in creating a better way of life through the improvement of the Dr. Robert Baron built environment. In this vision, design is leadership. Design thinking is the soul of the design studio and the studio is the heart of the practice of all design disciplines. Design studio education is inherently collaborative speculative, contextual, integrative, and interpretive.

The College takes advantage of a unique intellectual, educational, and design culture. The city of San Antonio and the South Texas region is a singular environment where the multiplicity of cultures and memories remain vital: giving shape to and informing the present city. An urban palimpsest, from the earliest, in the late seventeenth century, to the most contemporary buildings and cultural artifacts provokes a dialog between the old and the new. Faculty and students consider San Antonio and the region a unique laboratory for the exploration of design within the context of a rich landscape, history, and culture. Within this rich environment, the architecture, interior design, and construction science programs, emphasizes teaching students how to integrate new ideas and technologies within inherited traditions, places, and urban fabric.

As our graduates enter the age of wireless communication, globalization, and increasing complex professional networks, we are committed to providing our students with the educational foundation that provides the fundamental skills for learning for its own sake and the ability to synthesize specialized knowledge and make value judgments. A general education is designed to equip them with the necessary means, methods, and attitudes to become effective leaders in practice. We seek to inculcate in our students the ability to judge and the confidence to ask the right questions. Such leadership abilities are essential for making a more beautiful and sustainable built environment for the future.

Best Wishes,

Robert Baron, AIA
Interim Dean and Professor