What is ALEP?
The Accredited Learning Environment Planner (ALEP) is the professional designation of the Association and signifies excellence in the industry. It is designed to elevate professional standards, enhance individual performance, and identify those in the educational environment industry who demonstrate the core competencies essential to the practice of planning, designing, equipping and maintaining educational environments.
The Commission, an independent body that governs the accreditation, creates, sets policy for, and bestows the ALEP. This commission serves at the pleasure of the Association's Board of Directors, but has full authority and responsibility for the ALEP program. As such, the Commission has identified core competencies which the designation represents and defines an outstanding professional in the industry of planning, designing, equipping, and maintaining learning environments.
Earning the ALEP credential is the hallmark of a committed educational facility planner. It helps drive professional self-confidence, opens doors, creates connections, and offers widespread value and recognition for candidates.
What are the Core Competencies of the ALEP?
- Educational Visioning: Exhibits an understanding of best and next practices related to educational leadership, programming, teaching, learning, planning and facility design – establishing credibility with educators, community members and design professionals while being able to conceive and lead a visioning process. Demonstrates the ability to articulate the impact of learning environments on teaching and learning and uses that ability to facilitate a dialogue to uncover the unique needs and long range goals of an educational institution and its stakeholders – translating that into an actionable written/graphic program of requirements for the designer.
- Community Engagement: Leads community-wide research processes through group facilitation, strategic conversations, qualitative and quantitative surveys, along with board and administrative workshops to discover, articulate and communicate a community-based foundational vision that will form the basis of a plan for the design of learning environments. Demonstrates the skill to resolve stakeholder issues while embedding a community's unique vision into the vision for its schools.
- Educational Facility Pre-Design Planning: Manages a master planning process that combines educational planning, facilities assessment and utilization, demographic research, capital planning and educational specifications with a community-based vision to establish a plan for learning environments. This includes the ability to translate existing or aspirational instructional models to specific programming and spatial relationships.
- Design of Educational Facilities: Acts as a resource to the design team in providing ongoing guidance and support to ensure that the emerging and ultimate design aligns with the established community vision, education goals, future programming, written design standards, best/next practices and education policy.
- Educational Facility Implementation, Project Management / Project Delivery: Has a working understanding of how the following areas impact the facility program: regulations and policies; project delivery methodologies; scheduling; preventative maintenance; life-cycle planning; and systems commissioning.
- Assessment of the School Facility: The ability to objectively evaluate a learning environment post-occupancy and utilize that data to improve future projects. Implements a plan for educational commissioning that provides guidance on how to use and maximize the learning environment to meet the foundational vision established in the planning phase.
- Ethics / Professionalism: Provides leadership and stewardship for the responsible investment of public and private funding into school facilities – while being a known advocate for the importance of the learning environment on a child’s future. They lead and have a record of leading transparent processes that help communities find common ground in developing solutions to complex and sensitive issues – advocating for long term solutions that address the needs of all children and stakeholders including underserved groups.
Who should become a ALEP?
The ALEP designation is geared towards educational facility planning practitioners, who have a vested interest in advancing their profession and the industry.
What are the benefits of the ALEP?
Earning the ALEP credential is the hallmark of a committed learning environments planner. It helps drive professional self-confidence, opens doors, creates connections, and offers widespread value and recognition for candidates. Some states, counties, and schools districts across the US require an ALEP on the team when responding to an RFP/RFQ.