CONFERENCE INFO
CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS
Stephanie Bunt is an impassioned educator, researcher, and designer with a background in architecture and engineering. Her research focuses on characterizing, evaluating, and improving the multi-disciplinary design education of architects and engineers, particularly through their design strategies and digital tools. Having a robust background in both disciplines herself, she received her PhD in Architectural Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, earned her Master of Architecture from the University of Michigan, and earned her Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. She has taught at Ball State University and Texas Tech University and has worked for architecture firms and contractors, serving as a project engineer on industrial job sites.
Liane Hancock is assistant professor at University of New Mexico. Her research is divided between innovative pedagogy and scholarship on building materials and construction methods, including co-authorship of the book The Green Building Materials Manual - A Reference to Environmentally Sustainable Initiatives and Evaluation Methods, published by Springer Nature (2021); and her upcoming book Perfect Concrete, which will be published by Belt Publishing (2026). Previously she taught at University of Louisiana Lafayette, Louisiana Tech University, and Washington University in St. Louis.
SUPPORT PERSONNEL
Theresa Lopez, Department Admin
Bobby E. Silva-O’Neill, Fiscal Agent
CONFERENCE
The National Conference of the Beginning Design Student
The National Conference on the Beginning Design Student (NCBDS) is a national peer review scholarly gathering dedicated to the study and practice of beginning design education. For over 35 years, the NCBDS has provided a forum for design educators to present papers and projects and hold discussions related to introductory design issues.
The NCBDS’s origins reside in a small gathering entitled Beginnings. This gathering, held in 1972 at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and organized by Tim McGinty and Gerry Gast, brought together for the first time design educators to discuss introductory design education. Just over a decade later, after a second gathering held in 1983 at Cranbrook Academy, the first Beginning Design Conference was held in 1984 at Arizona State University. Since that conference in Arizona, the National Conference on the Beginning Design Student has been and continues to be the primary venue for discussion about the practice of and research into for beginning design.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the NCBDS’s longevity is that the conference has no formal organizational structure. It has no president, no treasurer, and no dues. Instead, the conference has a dedicated community of beginning design educators whose interest in the educational challenges and attendant pedagogies, projects, and curricular strategies associated with beginning design propel the conference.
Learn more here: NCBDS
LOCATION
The School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico
The School of Architecture and Planning sits along historic Route 66 in the heart of Albuquerque, offering views west to the Rio Grande River Valley and east to the Sandia Mountains. Albuquerque/Santa Fe comprises the largest metropolitan area in New Mexico with a population of about 900,000, within a larger context that includes rural villages dating back hundreds of years, twenty-two Pueblo communities, and the Navajo Nation.
The SA+P is well known for its connections to the region and for understanding the value of working directly on key issues of design and development in the state and region, including critical issues of sustainability and the planning/design of healthy communities. The School has a strong reputation for teaching and providing professional insight into the ways that history, culture, and the physical environment shape (and are shaped in) the region.
LAND
Indigenous Peoples' Land and Territory Acknowledgement
Founded in 1889, the University of New Mexico sits on the traditional homelands of the Pueblo of Sandia. The original peoples of New Mexico – Pueblo, Navajo, and Apache – since time immemorial, have deep connections to the land and have made significant contributions to the broader community statewide. We honor the land itself and those who remain stewards of this land throughout the generations and also acknowledge our committed relationship to Indigenous peoples. We gratefully recognize our history.
