Jennifer Yoos on Her First Year as Head of the University of Minnesota School of Architecture
Interview by Joel Hoekstra | May 6, 2021
Architect Jennifer Yoos, FAIA, at St. John’s Abbey Church in Collegeville, Minnesota. Photo by Eric Mueller.
SPOTLIGHT
Last summer, amid the economic downshift caused by COVID-19 worries and the social upheaval ignited by George Floyd’s murder, Jennifer Yoos, FAIA, took the helm at the University of Minnesota School of Architecture in the College of Design. In many ways, she was a natural for the position—an alumna who had taught as an adjunct faculty member from 1997 to 2005 and whose firm, VJAA in Minneapolis, had collaborated with architect Steven Holl two decades ago on the creation of the program’s iconic home on campus. But in other respects, Yoos was an outsider—a practicing architect and leader of a firm rather than a professional academic and administrator, and just the second woman ever tapped to lead the school. Her insider/outsider perspectives have helped Yoos navigate a year in which students, faculty, and staff have simultaneously pushed for change and yet yearned for normalcy and stability. Here are excerpts from a conversation she recently had with ENTER about her first year on the job.
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Before I began my role, I talked a lot about my hopes and ambitions for the program, and while these are still at the forefront, the process is quite different from what I anticipated. When I started in July, we were preparing to return to teaching in the fall, but we didn’t know what fall was going to look like—whether students would be on campus, whether enrollments would drop, what the impact on budgets might be. We had to be prepared for anything; I think we cycled through seven different budget scenarios. While working with students and faculty and adapting to current circumstances, I’ve also spent a lot of my first year analyzing, evaluating, pivoting, and planning long-term, because the short-term has been so fluid.
I’m excited that the department was open to having an academic leader who is also a practitioner. I really believe that integrating the perspectives of practicing architects into the program enhances the overall value of the education that we offer students. Although I’ve been a practitioner for the past 30 years, I’ve also continually taught, most recently as a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and at Cooper Union in New York. Most important, because I’m a University of Minnesota graduate and have taught at the U for decades, I know the culture. I know the community. I empathize with the students at the school because I used to be one, and I know many of the alums because I once had them as students. I also already had very good relationships with the faculty and staff, which has been particularly valuable during the pandemic, when we’re otherwise so distanced.
“We are invested in the transformation of architectural education to address the most significant issues of our time, especially around social equity and climate change—all through the lens of design and our shared belief in the value of making great architecture.”
I’ve been doing quite a bit of outreach to different schools and communities to increase our visibility and support our enrollments. This is also part of a larger effort to diversify our students and faculty. We’re relaunching the college and school website and have increased our presence on social media. I hope to see the school be more recognized for its education and more visible in terms of its design work. Our school has a very strong relationship to our practicing community, and many of our students enroll in our program because of these connections. This means that many of our graduates stay and work in the region. Because of this success, I feel like the program isn’t as known or understood as it should be outside of Minnesota. I’m hoping to bring more practitioners from outside the region into our school and have more of our graduates become known and connected to firms outside this area.
I’ve heard from many people—practitioners and academics—that the pandemic has created a situation that supports change. In the school, we’re focusing inward and rethinking and reassessing the work we do and its impact; at the same time, we have this amazing ability with the new tools we’re using to collaborate, to easily connect outward and bring new people into these conversations. It seems to me that the pandemic, while physically distancing us, has simultaneously made us more locally and more globally interconnected.
We are invested in the transformation of architectural education to address the most significant issues of our time, especially around social equity and climate change—all through the lens of design and our shared belief in the value of making great architecture.
A big part of what has always made the school successful is being part of the strong design community and culture in the Twin Cities. There are wonderful design firms here. We have great museums, great arts organizations, and great architecture, and we’re engaged in serious conversations about social ideas, the future of cities and communities, new technologies, and the environment. All those things come together to make an education at the U attractive to students.