The U-M ArcPrep program, located at the Michigan Research Studio in Detroit, offers Detroit students an immersive, semester-long college preparatory course in architecture, urbanism and studio design. The program meets three hours per day, five days a week over the course of a semester and typically serves 30 students each semester. U-M ArcPrep works to broaden career horizons, meet future demand, and bring diverse voices into the fields of architecture, planning and design by serving students typically underrepresented in American architecture schools and thus the profession of architecture. To date, 300 hundred DPSCD students have completed the program.
Earlier this school year, the pandemic required suspension of in person studio teaching and learning. The program was restructured and ArcPrep: Virtual was launched to conduct instruction online. ArcPrep will use its CTN grant award to purchase additional computers, with adequate processing power to run software crucial to the curriculum, to expand to a 60 student cohort and provide online and/or hybrid instruction thus creating ArcPrep Online as a permanent feature of the program’s delivery system. The grant will also support the program’s goal of empowering the next generation of Detroit leader through design education, directly engaging students with inspiring practitioners, and offering pathways to postsecondary education in professions related to the built environment.