ARCH 3070

Do not waste your tuition on this class. It started off being quite interesting/intensive during the first group assignment. But then the class began to get very repetitive with the professor repeating the same personal stories over and over again. I honestly did not learn anything in this class. Putting up with all of the pointless projects and "lectures" was not worth the easy A.

I just wouldn't recommend taking this course if you don't have to. I thought "design thinking" would be a really interesting discipline and a cool new perspective to gain, but this class was complete and utter BS. I liked it toward the beginning because you get to do real world projects and think of new ways to solve problems--but soon those projects became repetitive and you realize what you're really being graded on are aesthetics. If your project hits all the analysis points but doesn't look like you're savvy in Adobe Suite, good luck. And that fact would be fine if there were ample time to workshop ideas and get TA help on formatting, but there was never any studio time put into the class, despite Cleckley saying there would be at the beginning of the semester. Toward the end of the semester, classes were spent just sitting around, talking to people about projects instead of actually having time to work on them. This class was just very poorly set up for both A-school and non-A-school students, and I regret taking it.

Professor Cleckley is great! I took this class as it is a requirement for all MLI fellows. I ended with a B+ and I do not know how. In order to get an A you really have to participate in class (a class of 50 people), make sure he knows you, and be extra for presentations and projects. That is basically all he wants. There is no syllabus for the class and no official grading scale which has it pros and cons. The class was very unstructured but was very worthwhile. I would recommend taking it even if you are not in the A-school or in MLI.