Dr. Mahesh Daas, ACSA Distinguished Professor, serves as the eighth president of The Boston Architectural College (BAC). With over thirty years of experience, Dr. Daas has held academic and leadership roles at prominent research universities in Indiana, Kansas, and Texas and at architectural firms in Chicago and Kansas City. He is a designer, academic leader, and author as well as a prolific speaker, poet, and technologist exploring ‘humanness’ in the age of robotics and artificial intelligence. Boston Magazine hailed “The BAC’s Mahesh Daas is on a Mission to Reinvent Design Education.”
Founded in 1889, The Boston Architectural College (BAC) is an internationally recognized institution with a diverse student and alumni population representing more than 54 countries. Providing excellence in work-integrated design education, the BAC was Ranked #1 for Best Graduate School in Architecture for Earning Potential and #4 for Best Architecture School Offering Bachelor’s Degrees in the U.S. in 2020 by GradReports. The BAC offers bachelor and graduate degrees in architecture, interior architecture, landscape architecture, design studies as well as offering continuing education certificates and courses. The BAC upholds the importance of inclusive admission, diversity, innovation, dedicated faculty, and the intrinsic value of both academic and experiential education.
Our vision for the future of the BAC has six dimensions.
We envision delivering on our educational mission of diversity and inclusion to help our students fully actualize their potential.
We envision the college as a global network, a cloud canopy with virtual aerial roots that capture social differences and facilitate the learning of the curious, the creative, the ambitious, the exemplary traditional and nontraditional students irrespective of social identities and geographic location.
We envision a network of seamless flows propelling students from preK-12 systems and across national and international postsecondary systems into design education.
We envision our institution becoming an epicenter for cutting-edge intellectual leadership and technological innovation to diversify and drive the architecture and design professions forward.
We envision a world where design literacy is an essential quality of global citizens, and design thinking becomes a basic skill for all to build a sustainable, thriving, and resilient society.
We envision the BAC evolving into a robust and growing institution, and the BAC's educational innovations become models emulated across the higher education spectrum.
Using the six dimensions of the college that emerged through the visioning session, we have developed a set of goals and several strategies for achieving those goals to further enhance the college as we move toward the future. Achieving these goals leads us to long-term institutional viability as a midsized institution with ample and optimized financial resources that support multi-year operations to deliver on our mission.
Increase resources allocated to support students to:
$26,000
(Average per student)
Increase average amount of endowment fund spent per matriculated student to:
$775
(Average per student)
We will develop a culture of academic excellence, a diverse mix of program offerings to serve different kinds of students, and global systems of support focused on crafting exemplary student experience and success.
As we focus our attention on achieving academic excellence for student success we will:
• Retain more students in their first year in the program
• Graduate more students within 100% of their program length
• Increase our recognition for distinction in our academic programs
Increase the retention of first year matriculated learners in graduate programs to:
90%
Increase the number of graduates by:
Increase recognition for distinction in our academic programs by:
Number of recognitions, awards, citations, publications, that recognize the strengths/ accomplishments of academic programs, number of students winning regional/ national disciplinary awards .
We will support, develop, and empower a culture of social justice, engagement, and leadership for students and for all community members, expanding the organization to best match the scale of opportunity to serve our mission in the world today and tomorrow.
As we focus our attention on cultivating and empowering our people we will:
• Increase the diversity of our employees and student body*
• Increase the engagement of our employees**
• Increase the maturity of the BAC systems and processes***
We will build on our history of innovation and work-integrated education to spur new models of partnership and entrepreneurship in the design professions.
As we focus our attention on advancing practice, entrepreneurship and design-driven innovation we will:
• Increase the number of start ups, patents and licenses in progress
• Increase the number of students engaged in entrepreneurship training
Increase the number of start ups, patents and licenses in progress to: 21
Increase the number of students engaged in entrepreneurship training to:
We will develop multi-year, data-informed strategic resource planning models for the institution and all BAC programs, develop long-term institutional advancement plans, and find and activate synergies between available assets (programs, people,properties, legacy, education models, etc.) to maximize resource potential.
As we focus our attention on realizing our vision through innovative resource models we will:
• Reduce student debt incurred at the BAC
• Increase the diversity of sources of revenue
• Increase recognition for our innovative resource model
Decrease student debt at the BAC to:
$20,000 (Per student)
We will lead the way in sustainable and resilient operations and in facilities planning for stewardship of mission and resources.
As we focus our attention on leading with sustainability and resilience in operations and infrastructure we will:
• Reduce our carbon footprint
• Increase our investment in sustainable technologies and preventative Facilities support
• Increase liquidity/reserve for emergencies and unexpected events
• Increase resources allocated to support students
• Increase access to funds to support mission-centered programs through philanthropy (major gifts, grants and campaigns) as well as other sources
Reduce carbon footprint by 50% to:
1,100
Metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MT CO2e)
5%
"Selfless Labor of Love" Image created through Midjoumey AI by Dr. Mahesh Daas ©2022
"Ruche en Béton" Image created through Midjoumey AI by Dr. Mahesh Daas ©2022
"BAC: The Great Banyan Tree of Boston" Image created through Midjoumey AI by Dr. Mahesh Daas ©2022