{"id":1286,"date":"2018-01-11T13:20:54","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T18:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/?p=1286"},"modified":"2018-01-16T09:52:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T14:52:37","slug":"former-dean-who-helped-shape-school-of-architecture-to-retire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/2018\/01\/11\/former-dean-who-helped-shape-school-of-architecture-to-retire\/","title":{"rendered":"Former dean who helped shape School of Architecture to retire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Stephen
Stephen Vogel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Community involvement has always been a theme in Professor Stephen Vogel\u2019s life. It\u2019s a trait, he says he inherited from his parents while growing up in rural southwest Indiana.<\/p>\n

As a student, architect and dean of the School of Architecture, his community as grown. Not only has he impacted metro Detroit, but future architects and city developers who attend University of Detroit Mercy. Now, as he steps out of the classroom and into semi-retirement, Vogel is reflecting on his roots in the area and hopes to continue to educate through books.<\/p>\n

As a farm boy, Vogel didn\u2019t expect his life would be based in Detroit, but from his early days as a student, he immersed himself in the community and established strong roots. After graduating from the School of Architecture in 1970, he got married and they decided to stay in Michigan.<\/p>\n

From architect to educator<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cShortly after I graduated, I began adjunct teaching at the school and that really intrigued me,\u201d Vogel said. \u201cI got my master\u2019s degree and became a full-time faculty for four years.\u201d But Vogel\u2019s Detroit-based architecture firm grew rapidly and he was forced to make a decision \u2014 teach or practice. He decided to practice and left teaching until he was drawn back in 1993.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince a lot of architecture firms had left Detroit, we were getting a lot of business because our firm was in the city of Detroit,\u201d said Vogel. The firm focused on apartments, landscape architecture, parks and other development for the Coleman Young administration.<\/p>\n

Vogel\u2019s firm was hit hard by the recession of the early 1990s, right at the time University of Detroit Mercy announced the School of Architecture was looking for a new dean.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t thought about it before that, but when I saw the information about the deanship, I knew I wanted to do it,\u201d said Vogel. He wanted to teach and he wanted to help the school and students to become more involved with the surrounding area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re the only architecture school in the city of Detroit,\u201d he said. \u201cI really pushed early on for the school to become engaged in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Plans for the Program<\/strong><\/p>\n

As dean, Vogel had ambitious plans for the architecture program and the first was to establish a design center as Detroit Mercy was one of the few architecture schools without one. In 1994, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center began working with community-based development organizations to promote quality design in the area. The goal was to give students hands-on design opportunities while enhancing and investing in the community surrounding the campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became much more than I hoped,\u201d he said. \u201cThe design center really took off. I never imagined it would be as successful as it is today. We get an amazing amount of grants, we\u2019ve worked with over 100 organizations in Detroit and won more awards than I could count.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the DCDC integrated into the community, there were more opportunities for students to advance themselves outside of design and into larger scale planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you start doing affordable housing and that sort of thing, you start working with neighborhood organizations and the next thing you know you are doing community planning,\u201d Vogel said. \u201cAs students, we were infiltrated with the idea that architecture could change and world and that\u2019s not true. When I became dean, I wanted to create an opportunity for students to focus on more than design. They also need to focus on social issues and economic issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a grant from 3M, Vogel created the business plan for the Master of Community Development degree.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe curriculum is quite unique in the country. It is a much more comprehensive view of the community and I think that\u2019s one of the reasons the program has been so successful. It\u2019s not necessarily geared toward architects. Most of the graduates have stayed in the city of Detroit. Combine that with the Design Center and you have a lot of community engagement from our students,\u201d Vogel said.<\/p>\n

Beyond the Borders of Detroit<\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to immersing future architects in the community around them, Vogel understood the importance of a global education. During his time as dean, the city of Volterra, Italy, proposed leasing a building to the School of Architecture for its study abroad program for 30 years at no cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrior to that, I had cut the Volterra program in half,\u201d he said. \u201cThe cost of the program to students was getting higher and higher and I didn\u2019t think our students could afford to live there for half a year anymore.\u201d With the donated building, the School of Architecture could offer the program to students at a much lower cost.<\/p>\n

From that point, the School of Architecture laid the foundation to increase study abroad and exchange scholarships so more students could participate in the programs in Warsaw, Poland, or Volterra.<\/p>\n

Continuing to Educate<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Vogel will spend less time in the classroom, he\u2019s still committed to education. In addition to planning to teach a class in spring 2018 and fall 2018, Vogel is working on two books.<\/p>\n

The first, with the working title \u201c10 Women Teaching Design in Detroit,\u201d tells the story of the 10 women from their points of view. Vogel will write the opening chapter of the book and edit the submitted chapters.<\/p>\n

The second book is based on a course he taught about Detroit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been working on it for quite a few years. Draft five is completed and we\u2019ve done the first layout of the book,\u201d said Vogel, while he doesn\u2019t have a publisher lined up, he\u2019s also considering self-publishing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Community involvement has always been a theme in Professor Stephen Vogel\u2019s life. It\u2019s a trait, he says he inherited from his parents while growing up in rural southwest Indiana. As a student, architect and dean of the School of Architecture, his community as grown. Not only has he impacted metro …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":1311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/88\/2018\/01\/vogel-featuredimage.jpg?fit=600%2C315&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8Kcng-kK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1286"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1290,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1286\/revisions\/1290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}