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I like the careful distinctions that Bryn has made in the relationship of practice and research in the educational environment (post of 17 October). And I am equally interested in Nigel's view on this matter as well (post of 17 October). I tend to agree with both--as if my agreement was relevant! More to the point, in creating our Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon, we have been careful to maintain the value and importance of "making"--or "designing," if you will--as part of the preparation of our students. Hence, we require students to complete the terminal degree of professional practice as a preliminary for doctoral study. And, in the course of doctoral study we also expect our students to teach both studio and seminar courses as preparation for a career. I think this is the direction that Alain has in mind, as well. However, we are not dogmatic on this point. We have tried to anticipate the possibility that an excellent student may come to us from another field and have the potential to contribute to the design field. In such cases, we still require studio work as a preliminary, but we do not necessarily demand expert making or designing. A degree of familiarity with design process can be very valuable for, say, a design historian. Frankly, I do hope that most of our Ph.D. students in the future will be highly skilled in design practice, and certainly that they appreciate the problems and difficulties of designing. But we recognize that this may not always be the case. In fact, it is by no means inevitable that a brilliant designer will also be a brilliant teacher or researcher and writer. The human reality is that few people can--or wish to--do all things equally well. Novelists, for example, are seldom more than moderately good critics or literary theorists--and often they are much less adequate. I do not wish to compromise the high quality of design practice that our undergraduate and masters programs seek to develop, and I also do not wish to compromise the high quality of investigation that we seek in our doctoral program. Isn't this the dilemma of all of our efforts--to combine thinking and doing in proper creative forms for each kind of student that we seek to educate? Thanks, Bryn and Nigel. Regards, Dick Richard Buchanan, Ph.D. Professor and Head School of Design Carnegie Mellon University %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%