Dimensions in Practice Profile: Professor Jenn McArthur

Architectural Science professor Jenn McArthur doesn’t just teach students, she teaches buildings, helping them become smarter, reducing their carbon footprint, and becoming more inclusive of the people who occupy them.

“I take developments from big data, cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence to help us operate healthier and more sustainable buildings.”

How does that work? “Buildings have a management system that controls all the different devices – like the air conditioners, the heaters, and the fans. I take the data that’s collected from that system and diagnose how the equipment is working to find the optimal points – in different weather, in different circumstances -- to decrease energy use and better suit the building’s users.”

Optimizing those systems can result, for example, in the building “knowing” a particular occupant’s preferences for their office temperature at different times of the day or year. Making those systems smarter also helps everyone by achieving outcomes like cutting the natural gas consumption of a building by 50%.

“The idea of smart buildings is that the systems can talk to each other. I’m really interested in making existing buildings smart, buildings that are 30-40 years old. They’re a huge part of the carbon footprint of Canada and of our everyday lives.”

McArthur brings to her teaching and research that same passion for getting complex systems to talk to each other and become more inclusive. Thinking through and applying issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) optimizes the work of engineers and architects:

“People do better design when they think about EDI. Things go wrong when you don’t think about it. I’ll tell my male students ‘Look, when you’re designing your building’s entrances – especially if you’re a 6-foot tall white, straight man – find one of your classmates who is smaller than you, or has a different gender, sexual, or racialized identity, and ask them if they’d feel safe leaving your building at 1 o’clock in the morning. Because half the time they’ll be able to look at your drawings and say immediately ‘There’s no way!’. We can learn so much by asking for each other’s perspectives. Those with more privilege can learn to becomes allies and advocates for people with less privilege or power.”

McArthur has witnessed discrimination in the professional context multiple times, sometimes overtly as harassment or discounting a person for a leadership role due to gender, other times in more subtle ways such as all-male panels and proposed project teams. “There is a sense in the industry that clients – especially in construction or engineering – only want to see ‘a certain kind of person’ as a team or project leader. In my classroom, I aim to change that conversation. I challenge my students – who will be the clients a decade from now – to respond to proposals with a very homogeneous proposed team by calling the company out on that, asking them if they simply don't have any racial or gender diversity in their firm or if that's simply how they choose to project themselves.”

For her funded research McArthur makes an effort to reach a diverse applicant pool for positions on her team. “If I’m starting a new project, I’ll think of ways I can reach a diverse group of people. I include as much proactively inclusive language in the posting as I can, I seek out job boards where I know underrepresented groups of people are more likely to see the ad. I can also share the ad with Aboriginal Student Services who can share it with their networks so that Indigenous candidates will be more likely to see it and apply.”

McArthur sees EDI as work we must all take on – it’s not just the job of Human Resources or the team in the Office of the Vice President, Equity and Community Inclusion. Bringing diverse sources of knowledge and experience into our research teams, faculty groups, and classrooms helps us learn how to do the work of creating more inclusive spaces.

“In Architectural Sciences, in our building, we’ve been talking about having an ‘indigenous space,’ making indigenous place-making part of the studio project. We’ve had [Indigenous Human Resources Lead] Tracey King come in a couple of times to the architecture program. She’s talked to the students about what it means to be Indigenous, about what an Indigenous space means. It’s been really helpful for the [non-Indigenous] students because they have no idea how to address what they don’t know.”

Jenn McArthur is well aware of what she doesn’t know and is alert to learning opportunities. “My partner is registered blind and that has opened up my eyes – literally! – to so much of the challenges she faces every day. Disabled people* are one of the least-represented groups at our university. Making the campus more accessible is not just installing a wheelchair ramp or an elevator; it’s much more holistic than that. Putting in elevators is great but that doesn’t address other accessibility issues such as those faced by people who are neurodiverse, blind, deaf or hard of hearing. What does it mean to experience this building if you can’t see the architecture? Can we do things that will allow a blind person to have a positive experience of the building? Yes, we can! But architects are not used to thinking that way.”

McArthur acknowledges that being open to learning and to facing our shortcomings is fundamental to embedding EDI into our research and teaching—and it can be challenging: “It’s very difficult not to get defensive. It’s a natural human response. But I think we can pause, count to 10, and realize that part of trying to be an ally and getting really involved in EDI is being uncomfortable. Being anti-racist means that I, as a white woman, cannot be neutral. When I hear racist language, see racist behaviour, or when I see the systemic racism in our work and culture, I have to call it out.”

Jenn believes that faculty members have an obligation to engage in these difficult conversations with students because they produce mutual learning. “It’s really critical engage with our students. Our student body tends to be more diverse than our faculty. That’s a product of who was doing a PhD 10, 15, 20 or 30 years ago. I’ve been a faculty member for 7 years and before that I was in industry for 15 years. I don’t have the same perspective that my students are bringing. They’re coming from very different contexts, with very different life experiences. We can all share perspectives and insights. We can learn from and teach one another. As a faculty member teaching 100 students, I know some of them will become powerful people with great opportunities. That’s 100 of them to every one of us who will go out and make changes in the world. And that’s a pretty wonderful thing!”

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*Jenn uses disability-first language instead of “people with X,” based on the language preference expressed by many in the disabled community.

To learn more about Professor McArthur’s research, visit her faculty page. For more on Architectural Science’s undergraduate and graduate programs, go to the program’s website.

This article is part of the Dimensions Profiles series for the Dimensions Pilot Program at Ryerson University.