UC Architecture Studies Led Alum to High-Flier Career

Alum Tom Smedley, a U.S.Army commander of an aviation (helicopter) battalion, says that UC's architecture curriculum prepared him to become a problem solver in any environment - whether in the U.S., overseas, on the ground or in the air.

The best part of Tom Smedley's college career in the University of Cincinnati's top-ranked architecture program was the team work.

He recalls, "At 2 or 3 a.m., you and your fellow students would be working in studio. There was a bonding and a camaraderie that made us all team mates, all working together against time and a deadline. We were in it together and got through it together. If someone was having problems with the project, we fellow students would lend a hand. There is no other place like a middle-of-the-night design studio for a sense of team work."

Except, perhaps, the United States Army, where Smedley is now commander of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Aviation Regiment, the Knighthawks, currently based at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, but soon to deploy to Afghanistan. That deployment this November will be Smedley's fourth to combat environments.
Tom Smedley
DAAP alum Tom Smedley in the cockpit of his helicopter.
He never expected that his architecture studies would end up taking him so far afield. Smedley didn't start out at UC with the specific intention of a military career, though he is the son of an Army officer, and was in the UC Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) to help pay for his education.
Tom Smedley
DAAP alum Tom Smedley in his "dress blues," standing in front of his UC flag.

He explained that after six years in UC's program and his graduation in 1990, Smedley was just ready for an alternative to the traditional architecture career: "That's really why I ended up in the military. I enjoyed leading others and building a team. And eventually, it became my career."

However, he sees a number of parallels between his studies in architecture and his current career in the U.S. military. Number one is the team work. Number two is an emphasis on problem solving, and number three might be the long hours required. (Design students in UC's internationally ranked design programs are frequently known to pull "all-nighters," and Smedley is routinely up and on the run by 4:45 a.m. every morning.)

Smedley explains, "Architecture starts with a problem to be solved by way of a broad base of tools at hand: building materials, design, landscape orientation, people and more. Any military mission is the same. My subordinate units might be asked to airlift personnel and equipment, conduct reconnaissance, remove wounded civilians or Soldiers from an area, drop supplies to a village or attack the bad guys. It's a day in, day out, full spectrum aviation operation that has to be solved with a broad base of tools."

He added that in architecture, designers have to be willing to look at and learn a problem from all sides: "You can't be afraid to tackle something from a different direction. You have to be flexible enough to look at something from all sides. I can remember be asked while at school: When was the last time you stood on a (project) site, so you could feel the fabric of a neighborhood."
Tom Smedley
Smedley wears his Bearcat pride on the helicopter airfield.

He even sees parallels between UC's vaunted program in cooperative education and the military's traditional means for providing leadership training to young officers. In the army, a young officer is traditionally teamed with an experienced veteran who is a non-commissioned officer. UC's co-op does the same thing: sending young design students into the professional workplace to gain experience (and pay) from veterans.

(UC's cooperative education program, also known as co-op, is the practice wherein students alternate quarters or semesters in the classroom with quarters or semesters doing paid, professional work related directly to their majors. Design students at UC generally graduate with 18 months of paid, professional experience on their resumes. UC is the global founder of co-op, the first in the world to institute co-op in 1906. Today, UC houses a Top Ten co-op program, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report.)

And, indeed, Smedley remembers that co-op helped him to grow not only in his academic career but as a person as well: "I can still remember one performance review that didn't go the way I wanted. It was candid, and it was a challenge for me to hear the feedback that I was cocky and over confident. But, fairly quickly, I realized that yeah, that was me. I was actually receiving a great favor, not to take it personally but to benefit from it."
Tom Smedley
Tom Smedley

He tells younger officers that same story today, when he needs to offer candid assessments.

He also tells them to never give up on a goal or on learning.

Says Smedley, "I was a C+/B- designer, but I got through a difficult program at UC by staying motivated, not giving up and by continuous reading, something I still do today. I'd tell UC design students today that the more you can read on architecture, history, building materials, the shape of the world around us, the more you will have to apply in your work, to bring to any team situation and to problem solve."