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Space Time People Resources The vision for TLC is ambitious. It will not be cheap. It will challenge conventional university structures and classifications. In this endeavor UT's College of Liberal Arts will serve not as a "flagship" but as a lighthouse: a beacon cutting through the fog, a sure guide to ships at sea, and a protection from dangerous shoals. Space To foster the high level of interaction within the program, among faculty, grad students, undergrad students, and the larger community, we need a different architecture. We want to support a new model for research, teaching, and community involvement that is more dynamic, more publicly accessible, more interactive. Current architectures tend to reinforce boundaries and distinctions we are actively working to demolish. It should be possible to rethink space to better support classes, lectures, seminars, research, offices, informal interactions, and flexible technologies. We should be able to provide modular units that can be expanded as needed to support studios that are integrated into the intellectual life of the program. The space should invite participation and engagement, for students and faculty and for professionals and other community members. There should be ample opportunities to display examples of ongoing work of students, researchers, and teachers. Basic human needs for food, drink, and naps should be accommodated, to support people working late. In other words, we should take a close look at the working environments that have evolved in professional settings for examples of highly interactive and productive workspaces. Needless to say, such spaces should take full advantage of latest technologies, including wireless networking. Space will need to be purchased, constructed or adapted through remodeling existing structures. Time It should be obvious that teachers, students, and researchers need time for reflection as well as for engagement and interaction. Yet, time is often the most difficult commodity for busy academics. We propose a support model which would assure a basic level of funding for studios, with "targets of opportunity" more flexibly configured to provide support for the often invisible work of planning, development, reviewing, evaluating, and reporting. We will not get truly pathbreaking intellectual work with genuine practical application unless people are provided with the time to accomplish it. People Administration: While TLC has been operating primarily through the volunteer efforts of a handful of dedicated but overcommitted faculty and one staff person, it cannot be sustained, much less advanced without significant increases in human resources. Ultimately, there will be need for administrative staff to fulfill a number of key functions (some of these functions can and for the near term probably will be overlapping within a single individual): Director-a full time position is essential Academic coordinator (advising, cross listings, program development, recruiting faculty, certifying requirements have been met) Research/funding coordinator (grant proposals, IRB forms, reporting requirements) Community Coordinator (internships, events, external relationships with professional organizations, businesses, non-profits, government agencies, educational organizations). Program coordinator (events, budgets, inventory, orientation, publicity and public relations) Systems administrator (hardware, software, networking, accounts, security) Administrative assistant (correspondence, filing, copies, travel and expense forms, office management) Faculty: Faculty will be appointed to TLC both directly and drawing from departments, for varying terms and from diverse disciplines. They are the heart of the Center, defining studio topics, directing and coordinating research efforts, teaching, supervising graduate and undergraduate students, and providing intellectual depth to our community connections. Ultimately there might be 10-20 faculty members involved, for varying percentages of their time. Students: Students are obviously central to TLC's mission of developing the next generation of leaders. They will be active on the advisory board, and participate in courses, internships, and studios. They will also have abundant opportunities to develop their abilities to to present information to audiences. Graduate students will serve as research assistants, instructors, students in seminars, and presenters. They may choose to do their dissertation projects within a particular studio. They will play important roles in serving community connections. Ultimately, TLC will evolve its own graduate program. Community members and organizations: People outside the university, both within our immediate community and across a much larger global community, will play important roles. Individuals, corporations, non-profit or government agencies, or K-12 educators will particpate in internships, serve as advisory board members, guest speakers, student project evaluators, research associates, field trip hosts, and of course, potential employers for our graduates. They will be invited to attend TLC events, from formal presentations to brown bag lunches and seminar series. Visiting scholars/researchers/teachers: TLC will actively seek out and engage people from diverse walks of life, with expertise in relevant areas, to serve as visiting scholars, researchers, and teachers. For example, professional experts on graphic design might teach a seminar for TLC students, or design a workshop for faculty. TLC will be guided, in making decisions about visiting scholars, by the qualifications and potential contribution of the individual to TLC's core mission.

"Well, what makes [an architecture studio] incredibly rich, over and above - I mean, we need to think about how attention ... has a dual, aspect, what you might call "addression." Addression, that is, the ability to - one is addressed. ...Addressing someone is how you get their attention. It's like the opposite side of attention. You're getting attention ....Now, what goes on in the studio is extemely high levels of both. It's 15 people, maybe, and a teacher, in one room, and high powers of attention. And now, in this world, there are people who will barely finish reading a paragraph before they have to keep on going, or do something else - that is a huge amount of attention, a whole world of attention, that the students give each other, that the teacher gives the students. And any number of times, eyes meet; a number of times, your work gets talked about, you know? It's a swimming pool of attention. So, you know, a lot of people have looked at architectural studio as a model, of how almost everything should be taught. But, you just have to know that it's an expensive proposition, attention-wise, and money-wise. " Interview with Michael Benedikt   "Austin is a city that thrives on its notion of both community and I guess, individuality. That it doesn't see itself as - I guess, hopefully - this is my perception, and I could be wrong - but I'm hoping that Austin - this city is not the sort of city that'll sort of roll over and pander to business interests. Though at the same time, obviously, any city wants to develop a solid business sense; a solid economic structure. I guess I'm hoping that in a larger sense, that we, as a society, get over the notion that we're designing now. That this sort of thing - that these things are not intended to last - and if you're going to support a business that's going to last 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, that if you're going to be a part of the community in which you live, in which your employees are going to speak to the world at large in a positive sense of what you've done, both as a business in general, and in a more hands-on sense, with the people who work for you, that you just can't act that way....Austin is in a good position, I'm hoping, because certainly a lot of the businesses that are here seem to want to take a very hands-on approach, both in a public-affairs way and hopefully in education - both in a public and in a ...college aspect. " Interview with Darren Bauler