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In the 20 years that Len Charney taught at the BAC and served as Dean of Practice, he never once came to class and lectured.

He always considered his major role as helping students to assess what they were learning outside the classroom as an essential element of their BAC education. He relished asking them key questions directly and standing back as they answered, jumpstarting a customized path of self-discovery.

"You ask questions and then you wait for the lightbulbs to go off in students' minds," he said of his teaching philosophy. "What you teach should always be based on what students want to learn." He went on to emphasize, “It is about trusting students and supporting them as they gain a clear sense of what they need to know to excel and achieve their goals.”

Today, on the second floor, BAC students in blazers are shaking hands with potential employers and practice supervisors at a career fair. Many of the firms and Boston-based organizations that have taken the time to meet with and recruit students were first cultivated by Len–who, over many years, built rock-solid relationships between the school, design professionals, and community stakeholders that continue today.

He waves to a few of them and then takes the elevator up to the third floor, where he pulls off his black fingerless gloves, sips from a thermos of coffee, and reflects on his BAC chapter outside one of the offices where he set up shop two decades ago.

When Len joined the BAC in 2004, the school was already deeply committed to its long-standing belief that students learn best through experiential education—bridging academic study with real-world concurrent practice in supervised settings. At the time, students submitted reports or drawings to volunteer practice faculty, who typically approved the work without direct interaction. There were no formal systems to help supervisors and students connect workplace experiences to classroom learning.

Len said, "The concept of an individual learning contract was good, but the learning program assessment process needed serious updating." With the administration's support, he accomplished exactly that. Documentation of work became more rigorous, and students were expected to present their progress in-person to trained practice examiners each semester. Supportive critique, mentoring, and career networking all came into play.

"It wasn't about theoretical concepts that BAC students were taking away from their experiences," Len said. "Practice was preparing them for the workplace where you've got deadlines, colleagues, and schedules, and sometimes face conflict and resistance.”

In his own life, Len has always had his biggest lightbulb moments during experiences that embraced a "learning by doing" philosophy. He never planned to become an architect or an educator. But while studying government at Cornell in the 1960s, he and a tight-knit group of friends—something of their own “merry pranksters”—convinced a local farmer in Ithaca, New York to let them create an off-the-grid collective deep in the woods. That semester, they built and lived in a makeshift village of cabins, yurts, and even a salvaged train caboose, turning theory into practice long before it became his profession.

"From there,” Len explained, “I got permanently involved with the vernacular of art, design, and community building. I also managed to write the only book on yurt building ever published.”

After graduation, he taught woodshop at an alternative high school. John Dewey, the father of experiential education, profoundly influenced him as an educator. "His philosophy was about social learning, critical thinking, solving real-world problems, and civic responsibility." Interestingly, Len would bring those values to the BAC Practice Department decades later. First, however, he pursued a Master of Teaching at Antioch College, followed by a Master of Architecture at MIT.

The next chapter of his career involved design and construction interventions that made a difference in the lives of everyday New Englanders. His work ranged from directing design and construction for a nonprofit affordable housing developer to project management for a health facilities design and build company and serving as Director of Planning and Development for the Cambridge Housing Authority.

When an MIT peer leading the BAC search committee for Len's future role persuaded him to apply, Len was so intrigued by the school's pedagogy that he jumped in without hesitation.

Reflecting on those early years, Len said: "The BAC was the only school in the U.S. with such a rigorous practice environment at the time. We were the outlier. Only in the last decade has the mainstream of design education begun to listen to and learn from what we have been doing since my predecessor, Don Brown, started the Practice Department six decades ago.”

In 2006, Len developed and led a multi-year American Institute of Architects (AIA) Practice Academy Grant, through which the BAC partnered with Boston-area firms to study how firms—and the architecture industry—were adopting the transformative new technology of Building Information Modeling (BIM). Then in 2008, when the economy came crashing down and many firms couldn't hire practice students, Len launched the initial version of the Gateway-to-Practice Initiative, a nationally recognized model in which teams of BAC students and faculty provide pro bono planning, design, and modest construction services to more than 200 nonprofits, neighborhood associations, and municipal agencies.

More than 2,000 BAC students have participated in the Gateway program to date, lending their skills to everyone from the Girl Scouts to nonprofits supporting unhoused populations, government agencies in need of master plans, or a garden club in need of a new toolshed.

Sarah Howard, MDS-SD'21, was once Len's graduate assistant and considers herself a mentee. A BAC education was so pivotal to Sarah's career that she now serves as Interim Vice President for Advancement and Strategic Relations.

"You let us in as your mentees," she said to Len during our conversation. "It wasn't hierarchical. It was always two people having a dialogue. Your role was helping us along with what we needed to learn, but you always gave us room in the sandbox to figure things out in ways that made sense to and had meaning for us."

Len nodded thoughtfully. So much about mentoring students is about not having a one-size-fits-all prescriptive solution. "It's about running quietly on the sidelines and supporting," he said.

Newly retired, Len has never stopped learning and growing. He founded a men's memoir writing group set to release their first anthology this spring: Four Old Men Writing Together: 40 Tales Told with Grace and Humor.

Len takes inspiration from American writers and poets. During our interview, he quoted Wendell Berry, who wrote about the need to lose yourself and your own selfish needs rather than pursuing the typical modern-day quest of "finding yourself" as an individual. "Losing yourself means becoming part of something larger than you are, becoming part of the community," Len concluded.

Interestingly enough, Berry’s name and philosophy also came up when I spoke with Ed Toomey, who served as the BAC’s first provost, about the work that he and Len accomplished while working together closely. Recently, Len called up Ed and they spoke about Berry's writing for hours.

According to Ed, growing and strengthening the community has been his colleague's life mission: "Len always kept an eye on what was being taught and how it was being learned. He was interested not only in the product but also in the process," Ed said. "Teaching and learning are a joint venture for a purpose–and that purpose, for Len, is making a cultural impact."

The full impact of Len's work at the BAC will continue to have a ripple effect for decades to come.