Established in 2020, the Robert L. Wesley Award, named in honor of the first Black partner at SOM, provides a monetary prize and a mentorship program to three or more BIPOC undergraduate students in the United States annually. Eighteen students have received the award since it was first offered in 2020 and are thus still eligible to receive this support.
Black Spectacles offers online learning tools through individual subscriptions and group licenses to help candidates prepare for and pass the ARE. Their members report passing their exams at 34% higher rates than the NCARB-published national average.
“We want to thank Marc Teer and Black Spectacles for their remarkable support of the next generation of architects,” said Iker Gil, Executive Director of the SOM Foundation. “The Robert L. Wesley Award has supported students with a monetary prize and a mentorship program since its inception in 2020. Thanks to this generous commitment by Black Spectacles, awardees will now have even more resources available to them, which we hope will have a meaningful impact on these promising young architects as they develop their careers.”
“I am proud to be able to support the mission of the Robert L. Wesley Award by providing Black Spectacles’ world-class study and test prep materials to help the award recipients achieve licensure,” said Marc Teer, founder and CEO of Black Spectacles. “At Black Spectacles, our purpose is to help architects thrive in their careers, so this opportunity is brilliantly aligned. We are delighted to contribute to SOM Foundation’s goals toward licensure for the Robert L. Wesley Award recipients.”
The SOM Foundation looks forward to seeing Robert L. Wesley Award recipients benefit from this available resource.
