1. Workshop Outcome and Evaluation
The workshop report was prepared and shared with all workshop participants and submitted to the NSF. In addition to the workshop report, the keynote speakers’ presentations, program, venue information, and workshop pictures are available in the WAFES website to share with the scholars/general public, especially in the area of Architecture. To evaluate the logistics and organization of the workshop, the modules that were presented were evaluated by the participants. Special focus was on what they expected from the workshop before participation, how they liked the workshop overall, whether the programs and materials were relevant to their research/academic work, and how effectively the outcome helped them understand how to develop their own research ideas and proposals (see Survey Overview below). All workshop outputs were shared with relevant Architecture professionals and appropriate scholarly organizations, such as ARCC, SBSE, and ACSA.
1.1. Intellectual Merits
This Architecture-discipline-based workshop program generated the following intellectual merits as workshop outcomes:
- Advanced the understanding of a wide range of research questions in the domains of Sustainable Design and High-Performance Building with an emphasis on integrating research by Architectural scholars in Building Science, Architectural Design, and Urban/Landscape Architecture.
- Identified the current challenges and limitations that affect Architectural research development by faculty and scholars, as well as the research activities of students.
- Provided opportunities to learn and understand how to develop advanced multidisciplinary research driven by expertise and knowledge specific to the Architectural domain.
- Identified key research gaps and potential directions in Sustainable Design and High-Performance Building.
1.2. Broader Impacts
The WAFES workshop aimed to cultivate a research culture in Architecture that advances Sustainable Design and High-Performance Buildings. The broader impacts of this workshop:
- Provided opportunities to 37 Architectural faculty, representing 30 universities in the U.S. to network with research peers and outstanding research scholars and performers.
- Described how to support Architectural scholars in overcoming academic or cultural limitations to their research career development.
- Helped identify institutional and structural barriers and challenges in cultivating a productive research agenda in Architectural Schools.
- Promoted Architectural research to support and motivate junior faculty in their efforts to develop a successful research career.
As such, this workshop encouraged Architectural faculty in the research domain of Sustainable Design and High-Performance Building to successfully advance their research development and performance. In addition, the workshop also helped Architectural faculty to share their research activities with students (i.e., Architectural scholars, who can significantly nurture future research culture in Architecture). Such advancement in Architectural research activities will help generate additional objectives and goals in future research. Therefore, this workshop outcome will contribute to benefiting numerous research domains by providing innovative and creative research elements that can be integrated into multidisciplinary research as a function of Architectural research parameters.