Architecture professor Len Wujcik should serve as a model for teachers at every level of education. His innovative “Body Tectonics” project required architecture students to produce earrings utilizing the three tectonic elements of line, plane and mass.

His students, used to seeing their ideas only at the design and theory level, were impressed at seeing their creations as finished projects.

It is important for students of every discipline to be encouraged to follow through with their ideas and to pursue their own initiatives to completion. Often, students are asked to create a proposal, an outline or an abstract, and are not required to go further with assignments.

Students should leave college with the experience of having followed their own creative initiatives from start to finish, as many graduates will need the skills acquired through this process in their future jobs.

For those interested in graduate school, papers and projects presented at conferences and other public forums can make the difference on a curriculum vitae.

Furthermore, students have many styles of learning. It is important for professors at UK to recognize that different techniques should be employed in teaching their classes for optimum learning.

It may seem strange at first to ask architecture students to create jewelry, but in the end, it is the principles of design that will stay with them, not necessarily just the skills to make jewelry.

Professors should think outside the box as far as how they present the material, what material is used and what projects are assigned.

Perhaps for those students who will go on to be teachers themselves, the lesson to expand methods of teaching will rub off as well.