AIAS, or the American Institute of Architecture Students, is an independent, non-profit, student-run organization that is dedicated to providing programs, information, and resources on issues critical to architecture and the experience of its education. The AIA is for people who are licensed architects, and then everyone who is a student typically belongs to AIAS. On a national level, the group has influence on what the accreditation standards are for architecture schools and are typically looked at as the representatives of architecture students.
Within Roger Williams University and the Cummings School of Architecture, the AIAS runs a number of events and meetings that help students build a community. They run the Beaux Ball, which is a long tradition in architecture. In years prior, people would dress up as a building that had a meaningful representation to them and it is generally for architecture and preservation students. On the other end of the spectrum, they hold Studio Culture Committee meetings which allows them to look into what the school needs, how things are operating, and if there are any complaints within the system and the school.
Gregory Laramie, the Associate Dean of the Cummings School of Architecture, highlighted that the AIAS has actually made a major change to their computer systems that was brought up through the Studio Culture Committee meetings.
“There were complaints that the Cummings School of Architecture didn’t have enough computers in the building, so we developed this cloud based computing system where anyone who is a student can log on to a centralized computer and have all the programs available to them at no cost,” Gregory stated. There was a constant need to save a spot for yourself at a computer in the lab, and it was becoming inefficient for all students that actually needed that space to work.
One subgroup of the AIAS is called Freedom by Design and they get involved with designing and building structures that help some group of people in the community. Some things that they have been involved in was The Garden of Hope in Bristol, which they won a national award for, an outdoor classroom for an elementary school in Newport, helped Bike Newport build a canopy so that people could work on their bikes where the trails start down in Newport, and more currently are working on a gate house for the beach for the town of Bristol.
The AIAS offers a wide range of opportunities for both architecture students and students in majors with relations to this field, such as construction management majors. If you are a current student here at RWU and would like to further your success in these fields, this would be a great step in the right direction.
