 Super excited to do this info session with all of you. This is a program that was started in 2017. It's a fully funded position as a doctoral student in preservation at G sub. It's a five year program. And during those five years, the candidate will have tuition paid for plus a stipend that will help with living expenses. This is the school. Many of you may be familiar with it, but this is Columbia University's campus. The little blue arrow is where Avery Hall is and I am this window over here. This window over here is that window right there. So now you can you can place me the PhD program is housed in the preservation technology lab at G sub. The preparation technology lab is both a research facility. It's a teaching facility and it's a resource for the PhD students. And as well as for the school in general, but it speaks to the nature of the PhD program. The PhD program really is focused on experimentation is focused on the intersection between preservation, art, architecture, technology, the fields of the built environment, but really bringing together art and technology and preservation and its ramifications and implications in the world which might involve historical questions, policy questions, environmental questions, etc. So it is a future looking PhD program so you're really to imagine, you know, we are looking for research projects student research projects that are going to be really looking to the future future leaning but of course they're going to be informed, you know, by historical research and an engagement in the material world. The lab is has the incredible collection of materials. It also is involved in the kind of long wedge of the future of digital literacy and digital technology so bringing together this material in digital world in a series of experiments that can be grounded in our discipline of preservation and grounded in the problems and the issues that that articulate our current reality so as you think about your application. This is really something to keep in mind and something to keep in mind and relationship to the fact that this is also self guided. It's independent work so in other words, the PhD program is not it's not structured like in some of the sciences where you're coming in and doing work that that is a larger project that you are, let's say doing just a little sliver of like you know the faculty research brand in the sciences that's not how we work. We're really looking to hear from you what is your research project. And, and how does being in Columbia. Make it possible for you to carry out that research project so big part of this of course is also every library. That's the other research base and allow students are going to be involved. It is one of the premier preservation architecture art libraries in the world. It has a tremendous archive, it has obviously a collection, but a lot of the original drawings original manuscripts materials of the disciplines of the built environment are stored here in the archive so archival work is also. of the program itself. Now the school is spread across a number of different buildings and so just this is this is a very hall over here. We have spaces here in this building this building in this building and where you see the sx that's where the preservation technology lab is. And that's where the PhD program is housed. So, as I mentioned, the PhD in historic preservation is housed in the preservation technology lab. It's a five year program fully funded position for one student we admit admit one student per year. That conducts research that is proposed by the student research that has to do with experimental preservation advancing. Experimental preservation, thinking about experimentation as a grounded practice that involves bringing together preservation, art architecture and the fields of the built environment and relationship to issues that are critical to our time. And so those might be questions of environment climate change and might be questions of equity. They might be other questions that you bring to the four, as you put together your application, which is, you know, the topic that is pressing on all of your minds. Think about what that project is in relationship of course to your background what you bring to the to that research but also what Columbia's preservation program and Graduate School of architecture preservation planning and preservation can offer to you. So think about our resources, think about how our resources are helpful to you. Think about what the preservation technology lab can bring to your research practice on the next. Think about also what every library can bring to your research. Think about the archives, the, the, the collections that are in every library, and how they might be relevant to your research project and think about and I'll have the next most importantly, who do you want to work with the faculty that are here. Next slide please. So, the faculty there's a number of full time faculty here that I encourage you to familiarize yourself with, obviously myself, I'm the director of the program. And I practice at the intersection of preservation art and architecture, thinking about the ways in which art and technology can be ways of advancing preservation but also of questioning the very practice of preservation questioning the very assumptions of preservation and beginning to move the forward through that critical engagement. And so there are a number of books here on the screen that you might be interested in becoming familiar with as you're putting together your application experimental preservation is one of them, but also the more recent historic preservation theory anthology, which really puts an emphasis on the on the intellectual dimensions of the field so every act of preservation preservation is a practice of course but that practice is an intellectual practice it's informed by ideas. It's a practice in that sense and not necessarily only a practice that is repetitive and about acquiring specific skills, but a practice that is informed by theoretical premises and pushing through praxis those theoretical premises forward so you'll find some of that in that book let's have the next please. And so the different kinds of projects that you might find in among the faculty and here some of mine here has to do with preserving and thinking about materiality the materiality of the environment materiality of dust, dust as an architectural material as a fragment. One of the pollution that that that kind of dust is something that comes first and then comes architecture before you put a brick on a job site, you have to manufacture that brick and you have to make pollution. It's part of it's not really just the supply chain, it is part of architecture, because actually when the brick goes on to the building, you then have to heat or cool that building and make more pollution in the process so you can't really make pollution before architecture but is also in in in meshed in the very process of sustaining the built environment. And so, how do we account for that pollution as a significant aspect of our built environment and begin to think about it through some of these projects that have to do with collecting the dust on buildings beginning to both think of them aesthetically so encountering their materiality as an aesthetic composition, but then also beginning to understand them technologically as a cleaning technique through through that latex that is applied as a poultice to remove the dust and also begin to analyze this as a record as an environmental record. So, this is a project that through preservation begins to raise questions about what do we assign value to what are the materials that are considered character defining materials in historic preservation this is a way to begin to think about pollution as a big part of our environment because pollution doesn't just sit on the lot line but it kind of moves around in the air. So it forces us to start thinking about what is the object of preservation itself. And so to move beyond buildings to the whole of the built environment and to move also from the land as a way to establish what is, you know, what do we preserve and not in terms of, you know, lot lines and maps that look down, but also to look up at the sky and to think about how the whole of the sky might be something that we need to begin to engage as a material reality as a constructed reality and one worth preserving and of course there's a long history of this and preservation we talk about view sheds and we talk about swaths of air you know when we talk about a historic view shed. So all of these are ways to begin to think about the object of preservation in a way that that is not necessarily bound to a particular monument or building but certainly encompassing of that and beginning to push that forward. Let's have the next please. And then of course, you know there are other kinds of projects that that have to do with entering into a dialogue with this so many of us on the faculty have professional practices on the side so in my studio you know we've been collaborating on the preservation of buildings. And nationally this is the US Embassy in Oslo, where I actually engaged in a dialogue with a Norwegian national authorities about the preservation of a fence which you cannot see in this photograph, which was put up right after the building was constructed, and was not deemed important to the preservation of the fend of the of the Embassy and so through art, we were able to preserve the fence and integrated as part of what is a relevant piece of this architecture. And what is the kind of ideas that are made possible to transmit over time because certainly that is something that we had preservation are concerned with through the very materialities of our built environment and of course, the idea of thinking through art as a method and design as a method of preservation is one of also pushing the practices of preservation the assumptions about what has value or not so we're definitely looking for projects that are along those lines thinking about those assumptions being critical of those assumptions and thinking about how art design technology can begin to push those that discipline our discipline forward let's have the next other full time faculty include Erica Avrami, and Erica is focused on community engaged research and thinking about policy questions. And how when we as preservationists work at the systemic level of writing policy, we actually sometimes set goals for ourselves and don't go back and check on those goals. And so her work deals with really thinking about what goals are set in the field and then trying to assess whether we've accomplished them and reorganizing rethinking how do we rethink policy in order to achieve those goals more intentionally and working with communities, working from the from the ground up to build those those policies so this means that her work enters into critical assessments of contemporary practices and preservation contemporary policies contemporary institutions to to really move them forward and through through a critical engagement and so she works very internationally through bodies like UNESCO and World Monuments and also more locally at at municipal and state levels or national levels through that process it is it is a process that then leads to the different kinds of research outputs that that are you know books or in different reports, but that Erica is intentionally focused along a series of questions such as equity, the narratives the social narratives that have been left out by by a kind of top down preservation institutions, and also climate change so she works through technologies such as GIS visualization mapping and other kinds of data gathering she's really thinking about how data is part of the part of the way that we inform policy but data itself is problematic and comes with a lot of bias and we need to engage with it so there's a lot of the students that are, you know, interested in these questions of data will find, you know, she really look at the, you know, Erica's work and let's have the next some of the other faculty in the in the program oh here we go there looks like there is a delay in this so I don't know how we we move that forward but some of the other faculty which are affiliated part of the PhD in preservation are low love and alone who is an engineer and an artist and directs natural materials lab within the within the school very connected to the preservation technology lab she's interested in sustainable materials and the way that those sustainable materials affect social formations and institutional relationships so she is very much within this experimental preservation fold Mabel Wilson who is both professor at GSAP and professor of African American and African diasporic studies and director of the Institute of Research and African American studies and co director of the global Africa lab. Mabel's work really looks at the way in which racialization is part of the modernization project of the enlightenment, and how we begin to engage with it in critical ways so as to think about how we as a discipline begin to move beyond the, the through and beyond the, the, the problematic relationships that are set up when racialization becomes a means of structuring knowledge. So theoretical but at the same time very engaged in practical questions maybe also led a whole research project on on who builds your architecture so the question of labor and who does the labor and, and, and certainly that touches upon who does labor in preservation. Lucia, a lay who is architectural historian and has been doing a number of different projects on various materials that are more historically oriented so using historical research as a way to up and or critique or rethink how we consider materials in historic materials and the, the flows of materials through our built environment. As institutional flows as social flows as political flows as environmental flows. So she's been working on concrete for a number of years you also published a book called designs of destruction, which looks at the way in which the ways in which the United Nations and UNESCO really set up a whole infrastructure coming out of World War two to to protect the to protect World Heritage as a geopolitical move so she's very interested in these intersections between materiality preservation and the political economies. She's really running a major conference set of conferences on the question of land as a material so land differently conceived as soil as property, etc. So these are, these are some of the figures we can talk more about them if you ask in the Q&A. I want to think about how these, this faculty will be able to move your project along. Obviously, there are intersections here among all the faculties that that we're interested in the question of materiality, the question of materials, the question of the digital, the question of how art intersects with that the aesthetic dimension and the experimental dimension that art and technology bringing forth different experimental projects that begin to test and contest preservation praxis and also preservation ideas preservation theory so let's go to the next. We have a broader PhD faculty in the school, which you should be aware of and of course you're going to, you don't have to identify an advisor when you apply, you will figure out when you, you know, when you're here who will actually you will want to, you know, work with them closely, but here's some of the people that are affiliated with with the program they're both at GSAP, they're at Barnard and they're at the Department of Art and Archaeology there are others that we could direct you to but these are people that are teaching PhD level courses that intersect with preservation in one way or another there's Kenneth Frampton is no longer on the faculty he retired recently. So this this list is just bear that in mind next go to the next. Next slide please. Yes, and then there's of course the master of science and historic preservation faculty as well. Who you should be familiar with they're all on the website, and also research centers so very strong applications to the program will also begin to imagine how by being cited in the preservation technology lab and focused on experimental preservation research projects. These, your research project will connect to different research centers and institutes at Columbia University. And that will make it very of a strong application why because it will show to us that this can only happen at Columbia because of the various research infrastructures that are here the different people that are here that this is the place where you really research so this gives you a sense of the different research centers and again each student will have a different way of framing their research project and we will help you once you get here. Connect to some of those people at those other research centers and institutes and bring him into your research project so let's go to the next. You can also familiarize yourself with these research centers and Institute so just an outline of the program real quick here we go could we have the next slide please you're probably all familiar with this already. You take classes for the first two years. During your third year, you are taking exams your so called qualifying exams, which enable you then to move to your dissertation phase what's called ABD all but dissertation, and then you have two years to write that dissertation for a total of five years. During the first two years when you're taking classes are some required classes that you must take their PhD colloquium which is a methods class in preservation, and then some other doctoral colloquia in GSAP, and some electives in and outside of the Graduate School of Architecture, planning and preservation, and within the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, you can also take classes. Now, during your first year you don't teach during the second and third year you will be teaching so this is also part of the PhD program is to train the next generation of scholars. We are interested in people who want to pursue an academic career, an academic career that has many many ramifications of course because you can go that you know that is more research oriented. But certainly the we're looking for the people who are going to shape the preservation discipline in the future. So here you have some of the other requirements I mentioned the duration and the MPhil exams. There's also a language requirement so you need to speak a foreign language and pass that it said you have to have it at the reading level. So you have to understand texts, you don't necessarily have to speak it. And then, you know, the PhD requirement there is a there is a time limit. So we want to make sure that you're finished in five years. Sometimes things happen, we just had a pandemic some people had to have extensions we definitely want to make sure you finish before seven years so this is think of it as a is this is a long term commitment you are not your it's it's it's work you're your but it's also a great deal of fun you're going to be learning. It's exciting you get to devote all of your time to your research with a great faculty that is really committed to helping you advance your research project. And in the company of a great group of a cohort of other PhD students so we currently have three PhD students in the program. And they are listed on our website let's go to the next. And so I invite you to please familiarize yourselves with them and their, their projects. And this is just to signal to you that you want to just think about the mix of classes that you might be taking so what are the kinds of classes that are being offered here that might be and informing your research project what are the, what is the knowledge that you need to be able to move your research project forward. So look at the classes that are being offered in GSAP to imagine who you might want to take classes with really plan this out I think we can skip through these GSAP elective classes because they're really meant for people to have a moment to just make sure you look at those. Now, you will all be putting together an admissions dossier and so we're very interested in learning about you. But more importantly, what you bring to this research project so this is really about the, you know, how you're going to your interest and desire to put together a experimental preservation research project. How do you define that how do you define experimental preservation what are the disciplines that you are connecting what is your background how are you putting together these different, you know strands and threads to advance this this research project. We will want transcripts, but the key here is be is your statement of academic purpose this is something that I really want to draw your attention to. This is where you describe your research project and and that description should really show that you know what the discipline is about that you are familiar with some key texts in the discipline some key projects, and that you've identified a missing component within this experimental preservation research area that you want to advance. And so you want to state that in that's what your statement of academic purpose should really lay out this is think of it as a dissertation proposal. I say that and I put it in brackets because we all know that this might change. When you get here, this might be something completely different you'll take classes that will rearrange and you'll end up doing something, maybe slightly different. That's totally okay, but we definitely want you to have a clear and intentional purpose coming in five years sounds like a long time it goes by in a blink of an eye. So we really want you to be intentional and directed coming in and to know what you what you want to do. How you see the field. Tell us who you see are, you know the major players in this in this field of experimental preservation research praxis action, and what is missing what what do you want to bring in in terms of methodology and bringing together art and technology and materials and, and perhaps design policy history. How do you envision that. And who do you want to work with and what are the institutes and centers that you want to bring together in to advance your project, and what are what are the kinds of archives, probably how do you want to structure this so the more you tell us the better. So curriculum vitae is important. Three letters of recommendation from academic sources please ask people who who've conducted a PhD that can speak to your ability to conduct doctoral level work. I suggest that you call these people and you ask them point blank. Do they feel comfortable writing a strong letter of recommendation for you. What you don't want is somebody writing a letter of recommendation for you that's luke warm, and you don't want people that don't know you writing letters of recommendation so these are people who are your champions that that you want to really reach out to. If you're an international student you have to show proof that you can speak English grs you don't have to take it if you haven't if you have we're very happy to to see it. But that's not a major. That's not for us something we're really looking at it's the statement of academic purpose your CV those letters that are really the focus of our attention and the writing sample. These can be writing sample these can be projects this can be designs they can be things that you've done. But you if it's the project just don't just send a few pictures of a project you know send a project narrative that's really articulating how this relates to your statement of academic purpose to your research project. Okay. So that's a bit of the schedule, you know you'll apply. And you'll hear back by by March.