Renée Cheng, Dean of the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington

Speaker Bio

Renée Cheng, FAIA, DPACSA, is a nationally renowned Professor in the Department of Architecture and Dean of the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. Educated at Harvard College and Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cheng has been recognized for educational excellence with numerous awards from AIA and others.

Cheng has pioneered research surrounding the intersection of design and emerging technologies including work on industry adoption of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), Building Information Modeling (BIM), and Lean. She led the research team responsible for developing the AIA Guides for Equitable Practice.

Cheng was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in 2016, served as AIA Minnesota President in 2009, and on numerous AIA committees on topics related to knowledge, innovation, culture, and equity.

Interview Summary

01:43 What are your areas of research and what is your role at the University of Washington?
01:53 Renee's Professional and Teaching Background
04:02 Equity

04:43 What drew you into equity work?
04:53 Lack of Diversity/Equity in Architecture School Faculty
06:18 Mentoring
07:02 Research for AIA Guide for Equitable Practice

08:28 What is the difference between Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion?
08:46 Defining the Terms: Shoe Analogy

13:18 How does and AEC firm know if it's equitable, diverse, and inclusive?
13:31 Increased Urgency due to the Social Justice Movement
14:25 Markers: High Employee Satisfaction, Engagement, and Innovation
16:57 Including Social Values in the Definition of Success
19:06 Dangers of Focus on Diversity
20:40 Equity Can Draw Diversity

22:42 Would you recommend making those cultural changes before pursuing more diversity?
22:57 Clarify Your Goals: How will you support diversity?

24:20 What barriers do firms face in successful EDI work?
24:40 Fear of Making Mistakes
27:20 Lack of Momentum
29:24 Defensiveness: Rationalizing Intent

30:44 It sounds like there is a lot of personal work that is involved here.
30:50 Personal and Collective Work at All Levels
32:00 Individuals Follow Best Practices of Firm

32:31 How do you create a diverse firm if your leadership, region, and/or industry, is not diverse?
32:54 Architecture Schools are 50% Women, 4% BlPOC
33:28 Leaky Pipeline from Graduation to Leadership
35:27 BIPOC Numbers Extremely Low
36:00 Extra Work to Build the Pipeline: Value Proposition

37:56 What are firms doing to build the pipeline?
38:28 ACE Mentoring
38:56 Student Groups (eg AIAS)
39:12 NOMA Student Groups (NOMAS)
40:12 Recruiting Process: Be Prepared to Address EDI Questions

42:14 What do you do if decision makers aren’t committed to EDI?
42:44 Acknowledge Power Differentials
43:25 Reasons for EDI Work: Moral, Ethical, Business, Professional, Societal
45:00 Understand Goals and Expected Value: Don't Judge
47:58 Clarify Goals

50:23 How do you navigate political political or difficult questions that arise when you work on these kinds of changes?
51:07 Emotions/Stakes are High
52:12 Use Past Experience on Reaching Agreement
54:05 Equity and Social Justice as Standard Practice
55:18 Stress Increases Bias
56:16 Set the Stage for Meaningful Discussion
57:12 Healthy Patterns for Communication Around Conflict
58:40 Conflict Styles Inventory
1:01:26 Agile: Considering Diverse Opinions

1:03:39 Should an AEC firm work on their EDI journey publicly, or internally (just with their staff)?
1:04:05 It Depends
1:04:15 Transparency with Robust Communication
1:05:12 Less Transparency with Communication Challenges
1:06:40 Risk of Opacity is High
1:07:15 Surfacing Chronic Challenges with Conflict
1:08:10 Being Transparent about Being Opaque

1:09:02 How do you balance moving quickly with doing it right?
1:09:17 Change Process Strategies
1:10:22 Learn from Mistakes

1:13:22 Do you have any AEC-specific EDI analogies?
1:14:20 Architect vs Trade Partner Overtime Calculations

1:18:16 Thoughts on engaging marginalized people who do not want to be activists, who do not want to be in the spotlight?
1:18:48 Allyship & Self Education First
1:20:00 Recognize the Difficulty

1:23:36 Is there a better term for “cultural fit” as it relates to EDI?
1:24:30 Resource: New Edition of the AIA Guide
1:24:45 "Fit" vs "Culture Add" or "Value to the Culture"

Read the Collaborative Notes

Members of our team and the KA Connect community took collaborative notes during this Deep Dive using Google Docs. Collaborative note-taking helped us summarize key takeaways, collect related links, and will provide us with a quick reference when we return to this topic in the future. We've found the notes quite useful so far and hope you will as well.

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