Gretchen Schneider '92 "I'm happy to talk about what I've done with a B.A. in American Studies. However, the real question, it seems, is 'what don't you do?' Seriously. Because at one level, American Studies is all about recognizing and understanding connections among the multiple disciplines and audiences that make up life. Let me see if I can explain what I mean. Just last week, I described my work in the following way: My work focuses on the evolving American city… …researching, exploring, understanding and most importantly teaching. I am a student of architecture and American Studies, who uses interdisciplinary methodologies, everyday sources, and primary source materials. Though informed by a historical perspective, my emphasis is on the current day. This approach percolates through all that I do. I attempt to cross boundaries, exploring intersections and overlaps of scale (detail and urban), of discipline (architecture and urban planning), of audience (academic and professional and popular). My work doesn't fit neatly into categories. I am an architect, who is trying to create a career mixing architecture teaching and practice. Immediately after graduation from Smith, I interned in an architecture office, also waiting tables to make ends meet while I applied to graduate schools. I graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in January 1997 with a Masters of Architecture degree. In graduate school summers and since then, I've worked in architecture offices in Boston, New York and San Francisco, and taught architecture classes in Boston, Providence, and now Lexington, Kentucky. I'm currently teaching full time at the University of Kentucky College of Architecture. Since Smith my academic focus has been studying the overlaps between a culture and its built environment; that is, how our built environment both affects and reflects our culture. For instance, my Master's thesis was a research-oriented thesis, inspired by the broad notion of 'building community,' specifically focusing on the current new urbanism movement. I attempted to construct a balanced analysis of the movement, as well as frame it within its broader historical and cultural context. In subject matter, in methodology, in source material I relied directly on my Smith American Studies background. I'm now trying to develop strains of this thesis research and all of these methodologies as I explore 'the evolving American city' in my university position today. More importantly, a B.A. in American Studies makes me a better architect. Today's architect must not only be a designer, but also businessperson, politician, salesperson, negotiator. We must communicate with everyone from local residents to academics, demolition crews to CEOs, those skilled in the lingo and those who think 'space' goes with 'outer.' Architecture does not operate in a void. When done well, architecture is poetic, spatially exciting and formally beautiful. Absolutely! But it doesn't stop there. For better and for worse, governments, owners, users, policy makers, review boards, history, economics, precedent all play a role in what gets built and how. By nature architecture is a broad interdisciplinary process, part of a larger physical and sociological web. One must understand American Studies to successfully make architecture. And I suspect other professional disciplines can say the same thing. Dan, I hope you can find a few sentences in this pile that make sense to your current students. As you can see, my BA in American Studies is alive and well. (Now teaching in an undergraduate professional architecture degree program, I'm continually shocked at my student's limited experience, academic outlook, and ability to make broader cultural connections. I'm grateful I took the path that I did.) I'm convinced more and more daily that liberal arts American Studies makes an excellent and necessary base for any career that needs to be fully engaged with the larger world."

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