Columbia's Preservation Program - America's first - continues to deepen and extend its traditional focus on the public interest in Historic Preservation. The core of its curriculum continues to be the training of professionals in the understanding of historic architecture, artifacts and landscapes, their ability to read and argue for the important lessons historic buildings uniquely offer as public objects. Its two interdisciplinary First Year Studios – Why Save This Building? and How to Save this building? - put in place the basic tools, first, for the appreciation of the meaning to be preserved in historic buildings, including the contributions of design, history and materials to the creation and communication of that meaning, and, second, for the process of the preservation of historic meaning, viewed always as a creative process for the management of change. Around this core are a strong array of required introductions to the history, theory and practice of preservation, including an exploration of all the techniques and disciplines of conservation in the Program's laboratory, the original preservation lab."