“There is pressure to make the program a highly memorable educational experience for students. Instructor precarity is certainly not helpful in this regard.” 
R G-M

I am an adjunct professor running the Barcelona study-abroad program of the University of Calgary School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape since 2006. Once a year, a group of around 20 students travel from Canada to Barcelona for three months to study its built environment and to design architectural projects for sites in its urban environment.

Learning from a city that is radically different from one's own is very important for North American architecture students, most of whom have grown up in suburbs. Barcelona's climate, urban fabric, and way of life are not what Canadian students are used to, and so it is a challenge for them to design architecture in such a context, especially when compactness, mixed use, public space, and affordable housing are involved.

Unlike my Canadian teaching experience in the late 1990s and early 2000s, here my students require much more of my guidance and my time. I take them on regular excursions throughout the city, and spend a great deal of time explaining the important urban differences between Calgary, one of the world's most sprawling cities, and Barcelona, one of Europe's most densely populated.

The possibility of studying abroad in Barcelona is of the reasons students choose University of Calgary over other architecture schools, and so there is pressure to make the program a highly memorable educational experience for students. Instructor precarity is certainly not helpful in this regard.

Rafael Gómez-Moriana