During my youth I played pee-wee football which was exciting at the time and instrumental for building a resilient and ethical personal foundation. That experience has allowed me to take on challenges and succeed throughout adulthood. And although I loved playing the game, at the time I did not appreciate the long hours of grueling summer practices or understand why studying the playbook, having a clean game-day uniform, or staying hydrated were all so important. But I do remember working hard, being inspired by the volunteer parent coaches’ rhetoric, learning the proper blocking and tackling techniques, the various run and pass play formations while all along building mutual trust and camaraderie with my fellow teammates.
Those early fundamental lessons learned in grade school have truly stuck with me, and guided me throughout my professional work journey. As a journalist and publisher, I have garnered a deep sense of belonging and purpose to serve the audience of this magazine and other titles I have produced. I relish the responsibility to seek out trends or research innovative ideas; to meet, interview, and work with other knowledge-seekers; to disseminate proven strategies; or highlight the latest design or business interventions to our readers that help improve your work and the clients and communities you serve. To accomplish my job, just like when I was a “pulling-right guard” on the football team, I now put in long hours of work rather than practice, I present myself with confidence, build enduring relationships, and trust others who write or lend their expertise conveyed within the pages of Learning By Design.
My team in this spring 2024 edition is made up of our esteemed authors, designers, editors, creative architects, visionary interior designers, change-agent industry consultants, and educators. They believe that the whole campus, its facilities and outdoor spaces inhabited by students, faculty, and community strongly influence, impact, and shape lives. As you read through the folio of this issue of Learning By Design make note of these teammates. Leaders, like Charles “Chuck” Saylors, REFP, LE Fellow, Chair of The Association for Learning Environments (A4LE) Global Board of Directors (page 10) or Paul Aplikowski, LEED AP, a partner at Wold Architects and Engineers (page 44) have long been design champions of the benefits provided by the application of modern education design theory. Others, such as Melissa Marsh, Founder and Executive Director at PLASTARC (page 37) or Shaun Fynn, Principal of StudioFYNN LLC (page 22) are proving the impact of environmental design by applying rigor and research to occupancy evaluation.
Like modern sports teams bring together citizens of one community in support of their collective teams’ objective to win. Learning By Design aims with this compendium of awarded PreK–12 schools, institutions of higher education, and other learning facility types to coalesce a field of vetted-projects and forward-thinking knowledge that you and others in your communities can admire, emulate, and apply lessons-learned for improving any type of learning space.
Please enjoy this edition of Learning By Design. And keep an eye out for our June 2024 edition which will include the inaugural class of the ICON in Education Design Award winners, representing the most dynamic professionals in our industry.
Team LBD