 Welcome to you all and thanks for for joining us. We thought it might be useful just to go through some facts about the program and its ambition and its structure and some of the events affiliated with it and maybe speak a little bit about the application process before before opening to questions that you might have, whether more specific or or other aspects that you think are important to discuss. So on a very basic level it's a two year program, very open in terms of its structure and that openness is intended to facilitate the possibility of many different ways of coming through the program of using the program to suit your own sort of interests and aims like career aims and intellectual and research aims. So in the first year, the courses are structured around required CCCP colloquial that are taught by myself. So the remaining coursework is largely electives and we work with students to to help understand which electives might best suit their, their interests and ambitions and those electives come both from within GSAP the coursework offered in the history theory part of the curriculum in the visual studies curriculum and elsewhere but also our students have often taken courses in other parts of actually both GSAP in terms of planning preservation etc but also in other parts of the university. And then the second year is centered on intensive independent research thesis in which students work with with individual advisors but also collectively both through a thesis workshop and through a series of sort of collective program conversations in the form of thesis reviews. And I guess just around the coursework students also take one, possibly two sort of elective courses in the in the both semesters of the of the thesis year. What do you say about the coursework actually before we move on to. Oh, you're still muted I think. Sorry, I'll try to do some noise back here construction New York City. I'll just try to add a little bit to that. The one thing to say about the coursework is as Felicity has pointed out that the program has an open structure for the reasons she's identified which is mostly to allow students to develop their own particular interests and those interests might be related to courses that are offered within the school of architecture they might be else within other programs. And often we will discuss with incoming students which courses they should take in the first year of the program, either to floor what we think are really important classes. We'll also be talking about different methods or methods or modes of approach to research that will be helpful for CCCP students in their second year and within the program broadly. Or in other cases will help students identify courses in other departments which might be really useful for the ideas that they are developing for their thesis research so some students will be thinking about doing research in. The history of media projects in Africa and so we will try to help them identify courses which might allow them to know how to approach a very complicated topic like that. So just to say that the programs are open. I mean the program allows course selection to be open, but that doesn't mean it's unstructured or or just lost within a sea of possibilities. Those possibilities are there for you to to script and craft path through the program that is most useful to your interests and your research plans. Yeah, no that's a, an excellent way of putting it. And, and I think, you know, one of the reasons that the, the program offers a lot of flexibility is that people come in from very different backgrounds, and, and have very different sort of career ambition so so in addition to something you know, a geographical framework that might be of interest or even a sort of thematic program that might be of interest some students are coming straight from under undergraduate degrees other students have been out working as, as curators are as as editors for many years under a really returning to school to sort of retool their, their sort of intellectual framework or the sort of methods of to expand their framework and so people are coming in with a very broad range of backgrounds but also are, are identifying as well or many of the seas and the in the program's title so might well be that somebody's coming into the program to think about developing a critical voice as a writer, or as an editor, or actually and many other frameworks of research or somebody might be coming to frame a curatorial practice or even an exhibition design practice so to forge new models of research based thinking and, and, and, and work within architecture or even within an affiliated field or related to an affiliated field and and so the idea is, you know, is not to forge a very singular type of student may with the exception of encouraging a sort of attitude towards what research and towards understanding how to make a contribution to the, the field or fields that you're interested in, but the question of what that field might be. Often for many students actually remains an open question and they really develop the framework for a future career within the program so maybe to add that people don't always come in, knowing where they want to hit they want to come into use the program to test out different modes of practice different, you know, again research frameworks intellectual frameworks within architecture or adjacent field, some people even come from very different backgrounds and use the program as a way to actually get a full within architecture to learn about its, its concerns its possibilities its possible futures and so there's many again many different, many different sort of streams of students coming through the program, some are coming into to go on to do an academic PhD and architectural history and theory. Others have very little interest in a more academic career and a very very interested in forging alternative modes of practice within the field of architecture. And so this is the idea of the of the open framework within which is not rightfully pointed out, there is indeed a certain amount of curating both on behalf of the students and and through conversations with us as directors or even with, with the cohort above them with people that have gone through the program and, and, and develop the best way for them to, to use this flexibility. And the thesis year, you know, again is an opportunity to develop not only a dense, rigorous piece of research work. But to think through how to, to understand that is helping launch people in a particular career path which is not to say, you know, has to be a curatorial project if you want to be a curator but to say that it's an opportunity also to, to really focus on a body of work in a structure of feedback and conversation and, and with you close dialogue with with both your colleagues and an advisor so to really develop a piece of work to to a significant level and this of course is enormously important in terms of presenting the sort of voice that you tend to have in moving forward. Let's see what else can we discuss. I can just add a little bit more to that velocity because I, I think it's a, at least from our perspective and I think from most of our students perspective that's important to understand that relationship between the relatively open structure of the program that allows students to develop their own self directed form of research and to think through their program what type of practice they want to establish by the time they leave, and the role of the thesis because in many ways we can think of this structure as a way in which students gain familiarity and expertise and forms of working, and in the second year they get to deploy that in their thesis and, and, and the hope is not only that by the time they finish their thesis they had developed an incredibly strong and rigorous and originally research project. But a few other things that I guess the second thing that's important and we see all the time is that students leave with a remarkable confidence in their ability to do that research and to be able to use that research toward a practice that exists in the world or, or within academia. It's not just as an original piece of research it's a piece of research that allows you to establish a voice within the discipline and within the public institutions and public spaces of communication and public for for the way in which we present that work to the world. And I think it's really helpful to understand that that's one of the objectives and aims of the program. I would segue also to just speak briefly to some of the career paths that you know have been forged coming out of the program. Again, they're enormously heterogeneous some people have gone on to to become teachers and architecture schools and elsewhere. Others have gone on to to become curators or Institute directors, or to forge their own sort of research based modes of practice and I'm thinking for instance of Jose Esparza, who's now the executive director and chief curator at the storefront for an architecture here in New York and actually we're collaborating on an event in a couple of weeks where Jose is going to, you know, take the students or us and the students through an exhibition on the occasion of the 40th anniversary at the founding of storefront. Or we think of colors mingas who's a curator doctors in Stockholm, or the fantastic F arc collective students who developed a feminist architecture research collective in a, you know, quite unique way who produce exhibitions and publications and you know, it's a widely sought after for for lectures and interviews. Other students have gone on to to edit magazines like pinup or to to found their own galleries in Mexico City so there's a lot I don't know, I mean we could go on and on with where the students have headed up. But to say that, you know, what to a certain degree would you know would tailor tailor your choice of courses. Yep, in order to set yourself up to have the, the, the education and really the opportunity again to develop research that would help in fostering these types of different career paths. The number of people have ended up working in architectural offices but not as designers of course as, as the person that runs the research on or the exhibition on the publication of an architectural office or other people have gone on to actually forge artistic collectives that have done incredibly well and in Chile and Argentina so there's lots and lots of sort of potential career pause. Again I mentioned a number of our students have gone on to very successfully gone on to to become historians. I'm getting lots of people mark that you have. That sounds like that sounds like a pretty good spectrum. The. I thought you added the historians because a number of our students do use the program to help decide and help prepare them for doctoral studies in America and elsewhere and many of those. Many of our students have done that and they've launched very successful careers and others have also continued within academia and slightly different modes not as historians and theorists per se in the professional professional sense but have are working at schools teaching design and running degree programs and doing developing research programs within universities in a sense continuing the type of multi disciplinary practice within their own institutions that we pursue within CCCP. Another great addition actually a number of students also have been running, running the publications office in an architecture school. I'm thinking of Francisco Diaz in San Diego to Chile, or are running the public events and and exhibition program in their schools and so I think this is also definitely a career path that quite a few of our students have pursued in the wake of, in the wake of the history. That's very useful. I also know just to come back to like very very practical concerns I, I know a lot of people have questions about the application process and what we expect and what the best way to approach things like the application statement or the portfolio and I think these are a good questions because the program, you know, is neither a design program so what does the portfolio look like I mean these are good questions nor is it a sort of generic history theory program or you know strictly a design program and, and so we, we, maybe say a couple of things about what you know how to approach again how to approach these parts of the, of the application process and, and with the statement the statement you should actually both of these documents you as an opportunity for you to tell us a little bit more about yourself and why you have identified CCCP as a, as a program that, that you think is a good fit for your interests and, and, and, and sort of ambitions and, and it's not that we only admit people who have a background in critical or curatorial or you know conceptual and theoretical work obviously some people are coming in to develop those voices. But it is important to us that, that you care about, about developing one of those types of practices, and that you've identified CCCP as a, as a, as a means to do that and, and so we're really looking for that statement. There's a way for you to introduce yourself and your interest ambitions, certainly you can tell us about your background if there's something that, that you think is relevant but it's sort of really a space to, to, to identify, identify how you imagine that the program is, is the right place for you, and, and the portfolio, again, given the fact that people come from many different sort of backgrounds and practices, the portfolios can range from something that might look like a design portfolio if you don't have a body of other types of work, whether that be writing or, or other forms of creative practice or curatorial practice, it can be a studio portfolio, but it can also be entirely text based if you have really been focused on writing whether short form writing or, or, or, you know seminar papers, then you can send us an entirely text based portfolio, because really we see that as another channel for you to tell us about your interests about your, you know, just to sort of as a way to describe where you've been and what you hope to do, you know, I don't know Mark do you have something to add that was a, I don't know that's, I think that's really helpful to understand how you should approach the application and I'm sure you guys will have questions, and maybe in a minute will turn it over to your questions, but I think it might also be interesting just to say a little bit about where Columbia is for those of you not from New York. One of the, one of the reasons that the program has been so rich and such a success is because of brilliant students that we have and because of our great colleagues and because of Columbia University, but also because of New York, many of our students are interested in the types of cultural institutions that New York has to offer and so as Felicity mentioned, we're having a conversation with Jose Esparza at storefront, a very important institution for the ways we think about experimental research and exhibition practices not only in New York, but I would say in the world and within architecture very broadly. But we also often have conversations with people at other institutions we speak to people at PS one we've set up conversations with people at the foundation and we have conversations with the curators at MoMA. So it's helpful to understand CCCP as surrounded by all of these cultural institutions a kind of satellite of of of spaces where we have ongoing conversations and discussions which are really helpful forms of encounter and learning but also a place to meet people and the place to have conversations about the type of work that you might be wanting to do once you graduate. I was just going to say that's actually very useful reminder that this is the sort of formal part of the pedagogy but there are also a series of workshops where we bring curators or editors or people working in the forms of practice that are identified with CCCP to talk to us, you know, not specifically as they might talk to a broader public but really about how they practice you know how they got into the type of what they're doing you know how they launched a project. And so we also stage a series of conversations typically at school like sometimes we go to other institutions to have them tell us about something that is going on at the moment, but sometimes we have people come in and talk through from a very sort of professional perspective of how they crafted their practice and we find these conversations very very useful because to of course the coursework and thesis and the sort of more research oriented intellectual work that is done in the context of the university is finds a sort of interesting balance I think through through conversations about more hands on practices and, and we also have a series of frameworks in which the students also launch initiatives. And these have taken the form both of a series of student run symposia around the language of CCCP interpretations that have been going for more than a decade and these are literally student initiatives where students decide whether they're going to host a symposium, you know how they're going to frame a topic who they're going to invite the students run at themselves and, and so it's, it's a really a space to, to develop those skills in conversation with your colleagues and of course us we do you know a number of guidance and feedback about these initiatives but these are, I think very very important other aspects of the training and pedagogy that takes place within the program. Likewise, our students have launched collective travel initiatives to events like the or the Shaja architecture triennial or produce pop up exhibitions elsewhere and so, so these, these activities are are are useful in a pedagogical sense but also in a sort of professionalization sense to give you the skills and voice to to undertake this type of work also upon graduation and so I think just to remember that these are all conceived and framed as both interesting events but also to have a larger pedagogical sort of motive so