NAAB Accreditation

In the United States, most registration boards require a degree from an accredited professional degree program as a prerequisite for licensure. The National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB), which is the sole agency authorized to accredit professional degree programs in architecture offered by institutions with U.S. regional accreditation, recognizes three types of degrees: the Bachelor of Architecture, the Master of Architecture, and the Doctor of Architecture. A program may be granted an eight-year term, an eight-year term with conditions, or a three-year term of initial accreditation, depending on the extent of its conformance with established education standards. Doctor of Architecture and Master of Architecture degree programs may require a non-accredited undergraduate degree in architecture for admission. However, the non-accredited degree is not, by itself, recognized as an accredited degree.

Utah Valley University's Department of Architecture & Engineering Design offers the following NAAB-accredited degree program(s): Bachelor of Architecture (153 credit hours).

Accreditation Update

The NAAB grants candidacy status to new programs that have developed viable plans for achieving initial accreditation. Candidacy status indicates that a program expects to achieve initial accreditation within six years of achieving candidacy, if its plan is properly implemented.  In order to meet the education requirement, set forth by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, an applicant for an NCARB Certificate must hold a professional degree in architecture from a program accredited by the NAAB; the degree must have been awarded not more than two years prior to initial accreditation. However, meeting the education requirement for the NCARB Certificate may not be equivalent to meeting the education requirement for registration in a specific jurisdiction. Please contact NCARB for more information.

Utah Valley University's Department of Architecture & Engineering Design was granted candidacy status for the following professional degree program(s) in architecture: Bachelor of Architecture (153 credit hours).

Year candidacy awarded: 2022

Next visits:

  • Continuation of Candidacy, fall 2023
  • Initial Accreditation, fall 2025

Projected year to achieve initial accreditation: 2025

Earliest graduation date projected to meet NCARB education requirement: 2023

Student Outcomes

  1. Design thinking skills — ability to raise clear and precise questions, use abstract ideas to interpret information, consider diverse points of view, reach well-reasoned conclusions, and test alternative outcomes against relevant criteria and standards.
  2. Technical documentation — ability to make technically clear drawings, write outline specifications, and prepare models illustrating and identifying the assembly of materials, systems, and components appropriate for a building design.
  3. Investigative skills — ability to gather, assess, record, apply, and comparatively evaluate relevant information within architectural coursework and design processes.
  4. Ordering systems — understanding of the fundamentals of both natural and formal ordering systems and the capacity of each to inform two- and three-dimensional design.
  5. Historical traditions and global culture — understanding of parallel and divergent canons and traditions of architecture, landscape and urban design, including examples of indigenous, vernacular, local, regional, national settings from the Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern hemispheres in terms of their climatic, ecological, technological, socioeconomic, public health, and cultural factors.
  6. Accessibility — ability to design sites, facilities, and systems to provide independent and integrated use by individuals with physical (including mobility), sensory, and cognitive disabilities.
  7. Sustainability — ability to design projects that optimize, conserve, or reuse natural and built resources, provide healthful environments for occupants/users, and reduce the environmental impacts of building construction and operations on future generations through means such as carbon-neutral design, bioclimatic design, and energy efficiency.
  8. Site design — ability to respond to site characteristics such as soil, topography, vegetation, and watershed in the development of a project design.
  9. Life safety — ability to apply the basic principles of life-safety systems with an emphasis on egress.
  10. Environmental systems — understanding the principles of environmental systems design, such as embodied energy, active and passive heating and cooling, indoor air quality, solar orientation, daylighting and artificial illumination, and acoustics, including the use of appropriate performance assessment tools.
  11. Structural systems — understanding of the basic principles of structural behavior in withstanding gravity and lateral forces and the evolution, range, and appropriate application of contemporary structural systems.

Accreditation Documents

  1. NAAB Conditions, Procedures, and Guidelines for Accreditation
  2. Architecture Program Reports, Annual Reports, Letters, and Visiting Team Reports
  3. Architect Registration Examination Pass Rates
  4. Learning & Teaching Culture Policy