SCUP Annual International Conference

Campus Planners Discuss Challenges in Attaining Sustainability

2008-07-24T15:19:00.002-04:00

Scott Carlson notes that SCUP has been a leader in campus sustainability planning and talks about some of the issues currently facing the campus planners among us:

At the annual conference for the Society for College and University Planning, sustainability isn't a foreign notion anymore. After all, SCUPers, as the members of the group call themselves, were among the first to push the tenets of sustainability, whether that be energy efficiency, reduction of carbon emissions, or just plain good design. Here, conversations about sustainability—either the formal ones in sessions or the private, informal ones during refreshment breaks—often start out at a fairly high level.
What's interesting is how those conversations reveal what barriers and attitudes [professionals] face on campuses—and in what areas sustainability efforts are probably going to have significant challenges.

FedEx Global Education Center at the University of North Carolina

2008-07-24T14:57:00.001-04:00

From Scott Carlson on The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Buildings and Grounds Blog":

Montreal — The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill opened a global-education building last year that has helped to ground and unify the various international programs on campus, an administrator told a crowd at the Society for College and University Planning’s annual conference.
UNC has had aspirations for global education, but its international programs and departments were scattered and hidden all over the campus, said Raymond B. Farrow III, the executive director of the university’s Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and the former director of development for international studies. The problem became apparent to Mr. Farrow when foreign dignitaries visiting the university had to be shuttled from building to building all day long.

Spatial Change, Design, Ownership, and Management

2008-07-24T14:52:00.002-04:00

More about SCUP–43 from Elizabeth Redden at Inside Higher Ed:

This year’s Society for College and University Planning conference contained a number of themes: demands for innovative classroom and group study spaces, a need to improve utilization of facilities, rising emphasis on sustainability and energy efficiency, the impact of globalization on Canadian and U.S. campuses, and, in a world of finite and, in some cases, declining resources, a need for smarter strategic planning and budgeting schemes.
But one session Wednesday — the final day of the meeting in Montreal — highlighted the tensions that can arise when some of those themes collide.
The session, entitled “Next Generation Learning Environments: Does One Size Fit All?”, featured an effort to build a 120-seat “theater-in-the-round”-type classroom as part of construction of a new School of Kinesiology and Health Studies Building at Ontario’s Queen’s University.

Energy-Efficient Buildings Can Offer (Seemingly) Paradoxical Results, Speakers Say

2008-07-23T06:43:00.001-04:00

From Scott Carlson in the Buildings & Grounds Blog:

Montreal — Here at the Society for College and University Planning’s annual conference, designers from Moseley Architects took a close (and, some might argue, courageous) look at the performance of some of the buildings they had designed for Virginia universities under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. The buildings were, for the most part, successes — with some interesting caveats.

Analyzing How Students Choose Colleges Is Key Topic at Meeting of Planners

2008-07-23T06:39:00.002-04:00

Writing for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Scott Carlson covers a SCUP concurrent session on a topic near and dear to SCUPer hearts. (We'll have a non-protected link shortly.) It was very well-attended:

Defining students merely as "Millennials" is "a handy shorthand for the fact that kids today are different from us," says Ken Steele, senior vice president for education marketing at the Academica Group Inc., a consulting firm. But generalizations about plugged-in students don't get you very far in determining how they choose their colleges.
In a presentation about how prospective students form impressions about colleges, delivered here on Tuesday at the annual conference of the Society for College and University Planning, Mr. Steele proposed a different set of labels for would-be undergraduates: the scholars, the careerists, the conflicted, and the drifters. Those "psychographic clusters" represent students' motivators—either pushed or pulled into college, either to get the college experience or to advance to a career.

Developing Sustainable Master Plans: Hints, Heartaches, and Home Cures

2008-07-23T06:33:00.001-04:00

G. Rendell liked the session on sustainable master plans. Here are some points he took from it:

Sustainability requires full-time attention. Each one of these can profit from the full-time effort of at least one person: marketing & communication, energy costs, waste management, best practices, fostering behavioral change.
Changing behavior requires making expectations clear. Clear expectations (let’s call them “policies") will be necessary for operation of lights, operation of computers, temperature set points, hours of building operation, comprehensive energy usage, comprehensive sustainability targets, utility metering, and a general philosophy of new technology adoption. (More on that last one, later — the rest should be pretty specific.)
For any construction project, make sure you make your sustainability, energy usage, and LEED certification goals early. Changing your mind, late in the process (even late in the planning phase of the process) costs money.
Make sure the responsible operating staff have the opportunity to contribute to building design decisions. They can provide a useful reality check.

Beyond the Books: Creating Sustainable Mixed-Use College Campuses

2008-07-23T06:28:00.002-04:00

G. Rendell's take on another session from SCUP–43:

From shared-use sports venues to mixed-use campuses, at least in title.
The session was called “Beyond the Books: Creating Sustainable Mixed-Use College Campuses.” Sounds like the college campus will get used by folks in the community, right?

Well, it turned out to be useful, but not quite what I had anticipated. Subject matter was more about how the college or university can facilitate off-campus development, of which a major beneficiary will be the college or university.

Sustainability Failures Session Covered by Inside Higher Ed

2008-07-23T06:25:00.001-04:00

According to Elizabeth Redden:

Mark J. O’Gorman’s presentation stuck out amid the normal conference fare. He wasn’t in town to discuss “successes” or “best practices.” His talk had the word “failure” in the title.
“Whatever scorecard you’re using to talk about sustainability…it’s not good enough,” O’Gorman said Tuesday at the Society for College and University Planning Annual Conference, meeting this week in Montreal. The full title of his session was “Reconciling a Sustainability Failure: Green Planning But No Green Building.”

O’Gorman, an associate professor of political science and environmental studies at Maryville College, in Tennessee, used his college’s example as an avenue into his argument that student demand for sustainable campuses is cresting – to tsunami proportions, to use his metaphor – and, for today’s students, “very good isn’t good enough.”

Thoughts on millenial students

2008-07-22T17:07:00.003-04:00

I attended several sessions over the past two days focused on the millenial generation. What was most interesting were suggestions regarding the the of housing and related student experience this generation of students expects as part of the college experience. Most of us would agree that students arrive on our campuses with different expectations. In addition, we see a different level of involvement by parents of this millenial generation, fondly referred to as helicopter parents, who feel empowered to insert themselves into their children's course registration or roommate selection decisions; or as a colleague of mine once shared, calling our food service operation to suggest we offer their daughter's favorite jam in the dining hall.

Yes, students have changed and our institutions need to change accordingly. I offer these thoughts on what I see may be some fundamental reasons behind the changes we see on our campuses making our tasks as planners ever more challenging.

Jeffrey Arnett suggests that the 18-25 year old cohort defines a new stage in the life-cycle. Emerging adulthood is label for this life stage and it is characterized by five psychological dimensions unique to this age group:

Identity exploration;
Instability;
Self-focused;
Feeling in-between, and;
Age of possibilities.

The presentations I heard in the last two days focused on housing and educating these millenial students reflect these five dimensions of the development of the emerging adult. Emerging adults struggle with finishing the developmental tasks of adolescence---consolidating a sense of self during a period of instability and self-questioning while sorting through and determining vocational trajectories, personal relationships, and civic responsibilities. Students want their living and learning spaces to support these challenging developmental tasks. At times, they want the seclusion of a private space to reflect on the course of their lives, yet at other times they want convenient semi-public or public spaces to share time with their peers. The challenge for planners is to design living and learning spaces to support the diverse character of the life of the emerging adult. My observations over the last two days confirm that our institutions, with the help of our design and construction colleagues, are seeking creative solutions to the challenges posed by the millenial generation.

SCUP's Regional Councils Meet in Montreal

2008-07-22T09:58:00.004-04:00

Pictured above are the members of SCUP's Southern Regional Council at their meeting on Monday. From left to right: Bob Gunn, Lewis Goodwin (kneeling), Tom Woodward, Tim Fish, Ken Higa (kneeling), Lily Berrios, regional council chair Cynthia Holt (seated wearing her crown), Mary Ann LaFleur, and Gita Hendessi.

SCUP's regions, the management and their relationship to the delivery of products and services, has been a topic of great concern, especially for the past two years. As they have stepped up and created a doubling of regional events—primarily by planning and implementing short, one-day (or less) events in metropolitan areas, they both increase society revenues and create a demand on staff resources. One indicator of the growth of the regions is the fact that in the past year, for the first time ever, more members participated in regional events (when all totaled up) than attended the annual, international conference and idea marketplace.

One thing that has meant for regional leadership is more communication and more meetings. Each region had a regional council meeting in Montreal, as well as a regional meeting for all attendees from each of the five regions. In addition, the five regional councils will meet as a group before the conference ends.

Herman Miller, Inc., and the Society for College and University Planning Reveal New Trends Affecting Higher Education Learning Spaces

2008-07-22T09:53:00.002-04:00

SCUP and Herman Miller conducted a survey recently and one finding was the growing strength of student expectations as a factor driving:

Student expectations surpassed technology as the number one factor driving new needs for higher education learning spaces, according to higher education planning professionals in a March 2008 survey. Initiated in 2006 by Herman Miller's Education Solutions team, the biennial survey was developed to identify key trends that may influence higher education learning space planning.

The results of both surveys will be the focus of a presentation led by Jeff Vredevoogd, Herman Miller's Education Solutions lead, at the 2008 SCUP conference in Montreal, Quebec, July 19-23, 2008.

Space Constraints

2008-07-22T09:49:00.001-04:00

Elizabeth Redden is attending SCUP–43 for Inside Higher Ed. Her latest report from Montreal is titled Space Constraints:

It was standing room only; there were calls for extra chairs. One man made himself comfortable on the floor. “Talk about the obvious irony of this,” Tom Shaver, founder and chief executive officer of Ad Astra Information Systems, said to the group of university administrators and consultants squeezed in for the presentation: “Growing Enrollments in a Fixed Amount of Space.” “Space utilization” is a buzz-phrase on college campuses, and indeed it’s also in the air at the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) Annual Conference this week in Montreal. But space utilization, in itself, is not the problem, as Shaver told the SCUP crowd. And solely focusing on average usage rates of existing facilities, he continued, leads universities to ask the wrong questions.

Academic Planning, Assessment and Accreditation Roundtable

2008-07-22T07:59:00.002-04:00

This roundtable brought together an eclectic group of higher education professionals interested in a variety of topics including: program review, regional and specialty accreditation, academic planning, assessment of student learning, institutional research, and measuring institutional performance. With such a rich selection of topics it was difficult to determine where to begin!

A great deal of heat was generated around the topics of program review, measuring quality, assessment for improvement v. assessment for accountability, and sharing of good practices from across our institutions. Our discussion opened with the broad question: "What are the benefits of program review and how do we convince stakeholders of the benefits of engaging in the process?" This question carried the conversation for nearly 40 minutes, as we discussed how program review may stimulate institutional change, aid in the garnering of resources, identify programs for investment or sunset, and serve as a platform to educate internal and external constituents of the mission and place of the college in the constellation of higher education institutions.

Our discussion changed direction when one of the participants, a colleague from a Canadian institution, observed that Canadian institutions are not yet required to engage in the type of accreditation and institutional program review processed now commonplace in American institutions. She asked: "What's the value-added for my institution to engage in program review?" A interesting question----some around the table suggested the information surfaced through the program review process may help an institution identify area of excellence that may be communicated to stakeholders through marketing or recruitment efforts. Others suggested the results of program review helps internal stakeholders gain a better understanding of how units within the institution contribute to the overall mission of the institution. Finally, one person pointed out that periodic program review is a good organizational practice that may help institutions shape their identity and refine their organizational practices.

Overall, our roundtable surfaced many of the central issues surrounding accreditation, planning and quality facing higher education today. I look forward to our discussion tomorrow morning at 7am (ugh).

Resource and Budget Planning Roundtable

2008-07-21T16:44:00.002-04:00

Over 30 people joined the Resource and Budget Planning Roundtable on Monday morning. Individuals filled three tables and networked and brainstormed about ideas for having more sessions on resource and budget planning at future annual and regional conferences. The group was energetic and enthusiastic about sharing ideas and information on items such as unit reviews, tuition pricing, budget and planning tools, revenue sharing, capital budgets, research infrastructure, resource allocations, alternative sources of revenue, the budget process, aligning resources to priorities, funding international activities, and linking strategic planning, budgeting and re-affirmation.

Individuals were encouraged to submit proposals for the next annual conference on these topics, and to link with other institutions or companies in these proposals.

Join the roundtable on Wednesday for continuation of discussion and further networking.

Preparing Students for a Global World Involves Lessons in Sustainability

2008-07-21T13:50:00.003-04:00

Scott Carlson, of The Chronicle of Higher Education, is blogging SCUP–43 on the Chronicle's "Buildings & Grounds Blog." This post is about Martha C. Piper's opening plenary session:

In thinking about the future, Ms. Piper reached back to the past—to a prescient statement made in 1946 by Lester Bowles Pearson, a prime minister of Canada and Nobel Peace Prize winner. “Fear and suspicion engendered in Iran can easily spread to Great Bear Lake above the Arctic Circle in Canada and bedevil economic developments there,” she quotes. “There is, now, no refuge in remoteness.”

Roundtable Sustainability-Related Discussions, Monday Morning

2008-07-21T13:24:00.005-04:00

More from "G. Rendell" on the Inside Higher Ed website—illustrated by a photograph of some of the SCUPers on the ACUPCC side of the roundtable room:

The round table discussions . . . were quite encouraging. Sustainability and the PCC, taken together, attracted enough interest to fill five tables of 10 or so people each, plus a double handful of standees. There may have been even more interest than that, but the room got pretty full and uninviting.
The PCC, as a topic, seemed to attract mostly folks with only an initial understanding of sustainability, and an over-riding concern on the level of “omigod, what do we do now?”

“Sustainability", as a more general issue, however, served as the basis for a much wider discussion, including a large number of participants—both higher ed staff and consultants—with substantial experience and expertise.

IT and AV/Classroom Technologies Roundtable

2008-07-21T12:49:00.004-04:00

The IT roundtable had a few dozen attendees from education, architecture and design. Although some were interested in the educational and pedagogical aspects of classroom IT, most were building new spaces or retrofitting existing spaces and wanted to discuss the best practices. Nonetheless, most of the conversation was on education and not specifically on construction or IT gadgets and software.

In summary, the roundtable focused on concepts and practices that used technology and not on the technologies specifically. The group discussed mass input devices, small team collaboration, large-scale collaboration, flexible spaces, gathering information in real time, simulation as means of creating reality, one-on-one interaction in person and at a distance, high resolution interactions, and probably most importantly, aligning the IT decisions with the desired academic outcomes.

Specific comments included:

Students and faculty are technologically literate (to varying degrees), so now is a good time to examine our academic outcomes and change the way we deliver programs.
The technology adoption process seems to be more successful when the provost’s office is leading the initiative rather than business or IT.
New collaboration environments (i.e. labs and classrooms) are moving toward multi-screen and 3-D technologies. Several people noted that these technologies are already here, and it is just a matter of time until they are available widely at a reasonable price.
There was not a definitive answer for “What is really good IT?” A good classroom meets the educational objectives of the institution, has flexibility for the future but is not so overdesigned as to make the room hard to configure or use.
What your institution sees as important is an individual discussion, that is, are you trying to get students to show up or do better on exams or are you trying to meet a goal like creative writing across the curriculum? These lead to different IT solutions.
There was some discussion on the current trends and tools, and the group recognized that these tools will be different in a year or two, or maybe tomorrow. Examples were the wii and DS (http://www.nintendo.com/), Second Life (http://secondlife.com/), various consumer electronics and educational technology shows, Xbox LIVE (http://www.xbox.com), and finally, different bits and piece of virtual reality tools and equipment.
There was some disagreement to the degree that we should build technologies to respond to student communication needs or adapt technology to faculty needs for teaching. One of the driving factors is that student needs (or desires) change so rapidly, while faculty needs evolve more slowly. Regardless, the focus should be on how the technology is adapted to, and how it changes, the human interactions.
We need to selectively leverage the technology that is already in the hands of the student, the most recent example being the use of podcasts in education.
The use of real-time information in the classroom was discussed from the perspective of the “Google jockey” and collaboration software. Specifically, the Google jockey is a student that is assigned to Google (verb) terms and concepts in front of the class during the lecture. It was noted that there is some very good collaboration software called TeamSpot and ClassSpot (http://tidebreak.com/).

This group meets again on Wednesday morning at breakfast.

Globalization of Higher Education in "The Second World"

2008-07-21T11:06:00.003-04:00

More about SCUP-43 from anonymous Inside Higher Ed blogger "G. Rendell" from early Monday morning, about our plenary speaker:

“Globalism” is the overall theme here, and yesterday’s plenary speaker spoke on one aspect of it—global citizenship. This morning’s plenary speaker was just such a global citizen, Parag Khanna, whose book “The Second World” recounts his observations of some 40 emerging markets, many of whom are emerging as significant educational, as well as economic, players.

Meeting SCUPers and Getting Confused

2008-07-21T11:02:00.003-04:00

The anonymous blogger, "G. Rendell," who posts "Getting to Green" at Inside Higher Ed, is attending SCUP incognito—and posting about it.

His first post from the conference reveals some confusion, but I bet everyone else here who's been here before know exactly the feeling he's writing about:

OK, so I’ve met a bunch of SCUPers (at least that’s what some of them call themselves—I always thought a scupper was a hole just above deck level to let the water drain), I’ve attended a “newbie” orientation, I sat through the opening plenary, and I’m confused.

Creating Global Citizens for the 21st Century

2008-07-20T18:53:00.004-04:00

The opening plenary speaker for SCUP–43 on Sunday night was Martha C. Piper, former president of the University of British Columbia. In a speech delightfully tailored to the large SCUP audience, she addressed the specifics of managing the strategic plan at an international university like UBC and also addressed the challenges she sees facing higher education in a world that requires that colleges and universities education "global citizens," who, BTW, do not need to travel to the globe to earn that designation.

In beginning, and again in ending her presentation, she quoted from visionary former Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson. For example:

We are moving into an age when different civilisations will have to learn to live side-by-side in peaceful interchange, learning from each other, studying each other’s history, and ideals of art and of culture to mutually enrich each other’s lives. The alternative in this overcrowded little world is misunderstanding, tension, clash and catastrophe.

In conclusion, Piper challenged the SCUP audience with this question:

The stakes are high and all of us are implicated in answering the question: 'What if we don't succeed in meeting the educational challenges of educating global citizens?'

SCUP's 2008 Distinguished Service Award

2008-07-20T18:36:00.005-04:00

Joan Racki has never held a highly visible position in SCUP, but she has been committed to SCUP's vision mission and goals for over 20 years and epitomizes similar work by a host of other valuable SCUPers. Read more about her service here. At the award ceremony, Joan (in the middle in this photograph, with SCUP executive director Jolene Knapp on the right) recognized her mother, Jane (left), who was in the audience, and then shared Lesson #10 Learned from SCUP (the others will be shared here shortly, there was only time for one):

If you enjoy this conference and find it valuable, realize that you are surrounded by opportunities to volunteer to support it and other SCUP activities. I guarantee you that you will gain more from the experience than you will put into it.

SCUP's 2008 Founders' (Casey) Award

2008-07-20T18:20:00.004-04:00

Perry Chapman has raised the standard of planning theory through his research and analysis of the relationship between the campus as a place and its impact on the learning experience and the sense of community; and has been deliberate in cultivating and disseminating knowledge to the campus community and larger communities through writing and speaking. Read more about why Perry was awarded SCUP's 2008 Founders' (Casey) Award for Distinguished Achievement in Higher Education Planning here. In accepting the award, Perry noted his mother's sometimes unsuccessful efforts to keep him safe from what she considered some of his less desirable playmates. He acknowledged that:

They would be pleased with the crowd I have 'hung out with' as an adult—people like you, the gang I’ve hung out with for 40 years. I've experienced the irreplaceable joy of being part of a privileged and noble profession.

Building 'Smart' Global Partnerships: Innovation for a New Era

2008-07-20T09:13:00.006-04:00

This workshop is being taught by Linda Baer (a new SCUP board member) and Ann Hill Duin, Linda is a senior vice chancellor with the Minnesota System and Ann is an associate vice president and CIO of U. of Minnesota-Twin Cities. That's Linda, seated in the photo, and Ann, rather animatedly making the point that a lot of people on campus need to better understand the "massive amount of stuff happening around the world," and explaining that when they do understand, planners need to help them further react not with fear but with a curiosity about partnerships that can facilitate their institution's passage through this change.

In the interaction, early in the morning, it was clear that many attendees are actively involved in partnerships and all are seeking additional partnerships. The range of institutions, countries, job titles, and active partnerships represented in this photograph is simply amazing.

P.S. One resource shared in the first half hour of the workship was the very comprehensive and resourceful website of the Knowledge Works Foundation, which provides this Map of Future Forces Affecting Education. Another was a version of "Shift Happens," from 2006. Here is a 2008 version for your enjoyment:

The 'Four Corners' of the Externalities in a SWOT Analysis

2008-07-19T15:20:00.006-04:00

I've written a bit lately on SWOT analyses, as much to clarify what I think I know as anything else, since I am not a planner by profession or training, just a long-time SCUP staffer. In attending on part of the Academic Unit Integrated Planning workshop today, I enjoyed a presentation by John Adams of the University of Nebraska Medical Center that added to what I know, so—partly by way of example for SCUPers who might be tempted to post here, and I hope they do—this is what I learned.

This drawing replicates, partly, what John has on his flipchart. In the upper left (brown) is a typical SWOT analysis grid and, as you probably know, the left hand side is (mostly) a list of internal Strengths and Weaknesses and the right hand side is (mostly) a list of external Opportunities and Threats. What I learned was a way of categorizing that I call The Four Corners of Externalities in a SWOT Analysis—that's the stuff in the lower right, in green.

The rectangle in the middle has a smaller rectangle in it. That smaller rectangle is the unit that is planning. The larger rectangle, around it, is the unit's broader, related environment. In John's example, it was an entire industry. This is to help you keep in mind that the "industry" has externalities that do or do not exert the same influence as on a specific unit.

Starting at 1:00 and going clockwise:

The upper-right corner is politics and regulation, politics being more legislative with regulation being more administration and agency-based things, like environmental compliance, for example.

The bottom-right corner is technologies and all that implies.

The bottom-left corner is sociocultural influences, with a component of that being demographics.

The upper-left corner is economic externalities.

Obviously, as with external/internal, all of these categorizations bleed into each other. But I thought this was a nifty way of looking a little closer at the externalities that are Opportunies and Threats.

Academic Unit Integrated Planning

2008-07-19T12:57:00.005-04:00

Workshop attendees watch and listen to workshop presenter John Adams, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, describing the challenges of aligning various staff motivations and activities in support of a planning process. He had just finished discussion of how "good ideas fund themselves" as part of answering a question about where the resources come from, for a planning initiative. Pauline Melis, of the University of Saskatchewan noted the motivating potential of a good idea with respect to motivating the human resources in a project.

And, speaking of human resources, how are the people in a planning team selected? Are they appointed and elect their own leader? Not likely in a university environment. Does the president, chancellor, or dean appoint a leader and allow them to choose their own team? Does she retain the ability to okay the planning leader's selections? What authority does the planning leader have over the time of people on various roles, over which he may have no direct authority?

Attendees pondered the question. It may boil down to the "moral authority of the plan," which can only be as powerful as needed when the value of the process is clearly and effectively communicated by divisional leadership.

Here is a complete description of the workshop:

Academic Unit Integrated Planning–A SCUP Foundation Workshop
Presenters: John C. Adams, Assistant Vice Chancellor, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Audience: Academic unit administrators, chairs, deans, and directors, and those who work with them. Those who wish to facilitate the integrated use of resources at the unit level.

Academic unit administrators are confronted with some of the hardest decisions in academia. They are closest to the primary mission of thei
r institutions, but not practicing it as they have before. When faculty members become leaders on their campuses, they often come with few examples of how planning works in academic settings.

Integrated planning, the process whereby all planning and budgeting activities are linked, makes running a department more transparent and increases the likelihood that the unit will be successful. Learn how to manage across the resource portfolio of an academic unit in a way that engages faculty, staff, and students. Accrediting agencies and program review programs are increasingly requiring integrated, strategic planning. This workshop focuses on getting the most out of a planning process at the unit level.