Safety from the Inside Out — Designing for Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma-Informed Learning

Course Description

Trauma doesn’t wait in the parking lot. It walks into every classroom, every day — and the space either helps or makes it worse.

One in six students carries experiences that have measurably rewired their nervous system. They can’t just decide to focus. But the right environment can help them get there. This course translates ACEs science into architecture: predictable wayfinding, refuge and prospect, controlled acoustics, regulated light, visible safety cues — not decoration, but structural choices that change how a dysregulated brain responds to a space.

SAMHSA’s six trauma-informed care principles become an architectural brief. Because trauma-informed design isn’t soft — it’s some of the most rigorous, evidence-backed work an architect can do. And it makes better buildings for everyone, not just those with trauma histories.

Learning Objectives

  1. Identify the categories and prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and their measured effects on student neurobiology, behavior, and learning — establishing the public-health case for trauma-informed design.
  2. Examine the six principles of trauma-informed care (SAMHSA) and their translation into specific built-environment design strategies for classrooms and transitional spaces.
  3. Apply trauma-informed design principles — predictable wayfinding, refuge and prospect, sensory modulation, and visible safety cues — to classroom and transitional space design.
  4. Evaluate built environments against measurable criteria for trauma response, including acoustics, lighting, sightlines, and material selection.

Course Credits

1 LU | HSW