Tag: Flexibility

SCHRADERGROUP Seeks a Marketing & Proposal Coordinator

Position: Marketing & Proposal Coordinator

 

Company Overview:

SCHRADERGROUP architecture LLC is a full-service firm offering architectural, planning, programming, interior design, and structural engineering design services for a variety of project types, with specific expertise in the areas of academic and public safety facility design. Founded in 2004 and providing services from offices in Philadelphia and Lancaster, SCHRADERGROUP is recognized both locally and nationally for design that offers the highest degree of service to the user, responds to and respects both the built and natural environment and demonstrates inspired aesthetics.

Position Description:

SCHRADERGROUP seeks a Marketing and Proposal Coordinator to join the team in our Manayunk office. The position calls for a self-motivated and flexible team player to provide a full range of support for the development, production, and maintenance of all marketing communications. The candidate must possess a strong attention to detail, be able to manage/prioritize multiple tasks, function effectively under strict production deadlines and time constraints, and schedule workload to meet deadlines. The candidate should preferably have a background in graphic design and must also exhibit excellent writing skills.

Responsibilities of the Position Include:

  • Coordinating and preparing proposals and qualifications, including researching and compiling information, formatting, copy writing, and proofreading to present customized, high-quality responses
  • Attending pre-proposal meetings occasionally
  • Writing, organizing, and maintaining other marketing materials such as project fact sheets, staff resumes, and other project-related data for ongoing use in marketing/business development efforts
  • Attending marketing meetings regularly and coordinating with principals and project managers to advance marketing efforts
  • Coordinating and preparing advertisements and award submissions
  • Ensuring content/messaging is consistent across all media and adheres to firm brand-standards
  • Creating blog posts and other social media postings
  • Maintaining schedules and deadlines for marketing activities
  • Updating and maintaining the website through regular content reviews and updates
  • Maintaining marketing files

Candidate Must Demonstrate:

  • Excellent skills in proof reading, editing, and writing
  • Excellent attention to detail and accuracy
  • Strong graphic design capabilities are desired
  • Ability to work as part of a team to accomplish goals and meet deadlines
  • Flexibility and responsiveness, with excellent time management skills and a proven ability to meet deadlines and shift priorities when needed
  • Ability to multi-task and prioritize tasks
  • Strong problem-solving, organizational, planning, and administrative skills
  • Excellent production skills

Requirements:

  • Applicant should have a minimum of 5 years demonstrated experience for a professional services firm (design firm preferred) in the preparation of marketing materials including writing, editing and desktop publishing.
  • Knowledge of/experience in the architecture/engineering or related industry and the RFP and RFQ process is a plus.
  • A degree in Communications, Marketing, Graphic Design, or a related discipline is preferred but not required
  • Proficiency in Adobe CS, MS Office, strong skills using InDesign, and other graphic programs

Benefits:

SCHRADERGROUP offers a competitive salary and benefit package commensurate with your level of knowledge and experience including health and vision insurance, short- and long-term disability, 401k, and bonus structure.

Contact:

To express interest, please forward a resume to:
Regina Jean-Claude
RJean-Claude@sgarc.com
215.482.7440

What We Understand About the Next Generation of Learning Environments

by David L. Schrader, AIA, LEED AP, LE Fellow

Globally, the learning process is evolving at different rates.  With respect to change in the educational process, the old idioms that apply are: “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” and “Change is inevitable.”  These opposing thoughts can reflect that differing rate of learning process as it evolves throughout the world.  And yet, learning spaces must somehow universally provide the container within which learning occurs, regardless of the evolution of the educational process.

As planners and designers, the best that we can do to react to this confusing rate of change is to provide for flexibility.  Flexibility does not necessarily need to mean large, open, sterile spaces.  Evolving educational trends are marrying flexibility in space through a wide variety of solutions.  Internationally, we are seeing spaces that provide for varying opportunities for learning.

Among important learner traits for the future, researchers say that the next generation of learners will grow to their fullest potential if their educational experience includes honing their skills in the “Four-C’s”: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking.  The “Four C’s” require that the learner be provided with spaces for instruction, research, development of projects (making), and presentation of ideas.  In support of these learning styles, we are seeing a move towards flexibility that makes the most use of space, and supports intriguing solutions that include but are not limited to the following:

STE(A)M Centers – What conversation about next generation learning environments would be complete without mention of STE(A)M (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math).  The tradition of a science lab in a cluster or in a department, an art room in the visual or performing arts hallway, and the technology education space down by the loading dock is no longer.  Fresh clusters of technology spaces gathered around a central project area have replaced those old configurations with the intent of inspiring technological growth for our learners, thus promoting an increase in those entering the technology fields so critical to the world’s development.

Student Commons – Combining public interest in more efficient footprints with stimulating social opportunities drives this merging of space.  Treatment of the library and cafeteria as spaces used only three periods per day no longer makes sense when confronted with the need to create more efficient multi-use spaces.  The commons are an any type of learning-anytime-anywhere space, supporting the various social interaction levels required by today’s learner and their technological needs.  While commons are borrowed from their big brother in the higher education setting, when designed correctly with technology integrated, they have a commanding place in the K-12 environment.

Elimination of circulation space – School Districts have the interesting challenge of continuing to provide for new and often-mandated programs within the space developed for an educational program of the past.  District budgets cry for providing less building square footage than previously available.  Internationally, planners and designers are reacting to this unique challenge by further utilizing every square inch of the plan.  With the elimination of corridors, the space previously reserved for circulation throughout the building becomes educational or social space.  Imaginative solutions to this issue often become the most unique areas of the building.

Elimination of specific learning support and special needs spaces – To eliminate the stigma attached to “going to the space” for those students requiring these services, movement to a push-in environment has become a matter of equity. Everyone is familiar with walking down the hallway of a building of the past and finding educators sitting with individual students outside of the classroom or in custodial closets delivering support learning.  The next generation of spaces replaces circulation space with small group and teaming areas throughout the building.  Further, with the exception of the most severe of needs, many learning support spaces are being eliminated and are now pushed in to a small group space connected to the classroom or within very close proximity.  The “owned” learning support space is being abandoned in favor of a push-in structure with a centralized learning support office area for the educators to call home.

Blending of building communal spaces The Four C’s require that we begin to offer a certain amount of freedom to the student previously not provided in a typical floor plan.  Spaces for students to congregate in all levels of social structure from the individual research space to the small group gathering space to the large group interaction space must all be provided as if the learners were gathering in a small town.  The more we begin to think about the aggregate of students integrating in the various social groupings provided by the balance of their social settings outside of school, the more successful we will be at replicating the space required for a true social learning environment.

Support of the Four C’ s through new spaces for researching, communing, building, making, learning, and presentation – Planners and designers have begun to recognize that the typically structured 750-1000 s.f. rectangular classroom with 22-30 desks facing a learning surface gathered on both sides of a hallway is no longer adequate for the next generation. We can now begin to investigate customized and flexible spaces that allow for these specific areas of development.  Technological support spaces for research, commons areas for project development and socialization, maker spaces for production, and presentation areas for the conveying of student knowledge will become the new vocabulary of spaces around which a learning community will be built. These spaces and many other new and unique environments, influenced by higher education and industry, will become the new norms around which planners and designers of the next generation will base their work.

Architects and planners are globally are developing designs and integrating these unique uses of space in educational facilities for the next generation of learning.  The educational outcomes of these many solutions are also being studied for their educational relevance (educational commissioning) by many. As planners and designers, we do recognize that “with change, things will not stay the same!”