Architect, January 2013

It’s 2013, otherwise known as Year 13 of Andrea Dietz’s quest to become a registered architect. Dietz may technically be an intern, but her résumé doesn’t read like it. The assistant graduate chair of the Woodbury University School of Architecture, she previously worked for the activist design practices of Design Corps and Estudio Teddy Cruz—jobs almost any young designer would envy, but which didn’t confer much credit in the Intern Development Program (IDP) because they failed to meet various criteria for work experience as established by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB).

Dietz has now logged around 7,000 IDP hours, far more than the 5,600 required, but with overages in some categories and shortfalls in others. So she’s managing construction projects on Woodbury’s campus to make up the difference. She’s enrolled in a prep course for the architecture registration examination (ARE) and plans to take the tests later this year. “I come from a family of professionals—doctors, lawyers,” Dietz says. “They find it [her path to licensure] mind-blowingly bizarre.”

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