New Columbia College Media Production Center, Chicago
 This new media center represents a break in tradition for Columbia College. This post from Lee Bey's Chicago has several nice images. 
"Columbia College is an historically non-traditional arts college housed in series of traditional looking converted late 19th and early 20th century commercial buildings in the South Loop. But suppose–just suppose–the 120-year-old college, whose graduates are an eclectic mix of artists, actors, journalists, dancers, filmmakers, music and television professionals, constructed a building of its own? What would that look like? Many will find out today as the school and dignitaries cut the ribbon on the $21 million, Columbia College Media Production Center at 16th and State Street. It's first building the college has constructed.The 35,500 sq ft building combines the departments of Film & Video, Interactive Arts & Media and Television into state-of-the art shared and separate spaces that allow students across the disciplines to learn and interact. Students are taught everything from set design and construction to elaborate computer-animated motion capture. Classes officially began late last month."
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: architecture, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Columbia College, facilities planning, NC, sustainability new urbanism
SCUP 2010 Joint Committees Meeting
 A number of SCUP committees, and its board of directors, meet each February in Ann Arbor to review the previous year and plan the next year's events and programs. Here's the whole group for 2010, meeting at lunch and listening to SCUP's executive director, Jolene L. Knapp and SCUP president John Ruffo of WRNS Studio. Morning meetings included the board of directors and the regional fundraising chairs. Friday afternoon meetings included the Membership Committee, Professional Development Committee, and Awards Committee, among others. Meetings continued Saturday morning, followed by a second board meeting on Saturday afternoon.
Below, David Miller of the University of Wisconsin System, reporting out regarding meetings related to SCUP's five regions.  Below, Michael Hites of the University of Illinois, reporting out on the meetings of the Professional Development Committee.  Below, Leslie Louden of Bowie Gridley Architects, reporting out from the meetings of the Membership Committee.  Below, Pam Delphinich of MIT reporting out from the meetings of the Awards Committee. 
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: JCM, Joint Committee Meeting, volunteer leadership
AASCU: Top 10 Higher Education State Policy Issues for 2010
The American Association of State Colleges and Universities provides an annual report each year on the top 10 issues relating to policies of the states and higher education. The introduction this year notes what it calls "two contradictory movements" in 2009, in that at the same time as President Obama moved higher education near the top of his federal agenda, most of the policy and budget action was on coping with the effects of some pretty serious funding cuts. Number 1 on AASCU's list is the financial crisis of the states. Number 2 is the federal American Graduation Initiative. Number 3 is tuition policy and prices. Number 4 is enrollment capacity. Numbers 6 through 10 include: State student aid programs, Federal focus on community colleges, Statewide expansion of data systems and new reporting metrics, Veterans' issues, college readiness, and Teacher effectiveness.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: AASCU, capital funding, environmental scanning, futuring, policy, states, trends
Trends in Healthcare Design: Renovations Rule
From the Campus to the Future
EDUCAUSE, and partner organizations from Australia, the Netherlands, and the UK, undertook a visioning of the future of higher education which resulted in a white paper titled "The Future of Higher Education: Beyond the Campus." Just in case you don't want to read the entire white paper, "From the Campus to the Future," is an article in EDUCAUSE Review, in which Diana G. Oblinger undertakes a synopsis that stands alone as a good read and a valuable resource.
In looking at the drivers of change and the enablers of the future, several themes emerge. One is that many solutions will be found "above the campus." Although faculty, students, and staff are affiliated with a specific institution, the resources they access, the colleagues they interact with, and their frame of reference go well beyond the campus. Accessing a book may be more easily done online than physically. And the worldwide collections of resources (books, artifacts) far exceed what is available on any single campus. Computing cycles, storage, and specific applications are instantly accessible and scalable as a shared resource aggregated "above campus." As a result, higher education institutions need to focus less on ownership and more on access. Students do not need to own physical copies of books that can be accessed online. Applications such as e-mail can also be accessed in the cloud, and educational resources are often located in freely accessible repositories whose material is owned by no one — yet by everyone.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: environmental scanning, future, learning spaces, Oblinger
Time to Regroup: Staffing Decisions in a Recession
Writing in Business Officer, Karla Hignite reviews the logic and reasoning behind a number of institutions' decisions about how to handle cuts in employment due to the current financial crisis. She describes actions and planning at Florida State University, Skidmore College, St. Catherine University, Valparaiso University, Cornell University, and includes a sidebar with suggestions from the College and University Personell Association (CUPA-HR). In response to market realities and the uncertainties that remain, colleges and universities across the country have engaged in major cost-cutting initiatives to meet budget. They've done so with extreme care, however, knowing that faculty and staff are critical to institution mission. Even in situations that have required elimination of whole programs and associated personnel, decisions have been largely collaborative and transparent, as leaders aimed for the right combination of actions with the least impact on students—and that avoid outright layoffs wherever possible. In the process, tough conversations and strategic review of priorities have given many leaders renewed energy for repositioning their institutions and rethinking how people are organized and how work gets done. This article highlights the recession-related staffing decisions implemented at several institutions, where leaders are focusing their sights for the out years.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: human relations, human resources, resource and budget planning, strategic staffing
Pursuing Needless Innovations
Richard Ekman, president of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) argues for the value of "traditional" learning and matriculation, and wonders why America's elites don't seem to want the great education they got, for the rest of the population. (Here is the Zephyr Teachout essay that we think is the one he refers to. It's also worth reading. Ekman's essay is here, from University Business: Most Americans today don’t harbor resentments against their alma maters. Nor is the popular critique of higher education mainly a matter of outrage over high tuition. Rather, the public criticism of colleges is, to a surprising extent, aimed at the educational experience itself. Discarding the baby with the bathwater, Zephyr Teachout’s widely-circulated essay argues that the traditional classroom-based college will soon be replaced by online education, and that the differences in reputation among colleges will no longer matter. I don’t know where Teachout went to college, but her view—especially that a college’s prestige won’t matter—seems more wishful than realistic.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: academic planning, innovation, institutional planning, learning, learning spaces, liberal education
Driving Your Budget Message
Writing in University Business, president John J. "Ski" Sygieski of Mt Hood Community College (and chair-elect of the American Association of Community Colleges) shares a few useful items about how to best communicate about budget issues:We’ve all heard the phrase “communication is a two-way street,” and in the best of times, that street is wide open, allowing communication to pass freely between individuals. However, when budget crises arise or times otherwise get tough, the street seems to narrow. People get nervous, and there is much more anxiety involved in the communication process. If the street is suddenly closed because administration is fearful of communicating bad news, there is a massive traffic jam and accidents and fatalities begin to occur. Whether good or bad, institutions must embrace the “communication is a two-way street” philosophy and stay connected with their constituents.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: academic leadership, community colleges, financial crisis, recession, resource and budget planning
Ambitious Design FAIL
We know that SCUPers will like this, although there may be nothing new for those who are experienced in the history of architecture. When something like it is presented at the annual conference, it's always a huge success. Of course, this is just one person's view but, through Slate, Witold Rybczynski shares what he calls some "ambitious architectural failures," including the East Building of the National Gallery (DC), Hancock Place (Boston), Falling Water, the Stata Center (MIT), and more.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: architecture, facilities planning, starchitects
Update from the Buildings & Grounds Blog
Time for another roundup of recent stories from the Buildings & Grounds Blog at The Chronicle of Higher Education. As of February 4, 2010, some of the more recent posts include information about, or links to: - Adding stories on top of a building at Tufts
- $32M academic building at W. Wisconsin at Superior
- U. Arizona gets $15M stimulus funds for underground animal research facility
- Barnard opens new student center
- Southern Florida celebrates its Frank Lloyd Wright campus heritage
- Aiken Hall at Champlain College
- Sherrod Hall at Princeton
- Opening up a 60s concrete box at U Wisconsin at Superior
- Breaking ground for new campus of Lone Star College in Conroe
- Berkeley Art Museum to move to former printing plant
- and more!
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: architecture, facilities planning
After Katrina, Delgado Community College Slowly Climbs Back
Delgado Community College leaders have had a rough road to repairing their campus. For one thing, federal funds were allocated based on the original cost of facilities and equipment, not replacement cost. And post-Katrina building codes created more expense. Then, of course, the recession hit. And the chancellor says it's hard to compete for state funding with the big institutions. In her article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Katherine Mangan writes: It's a scene one might have expected months—even a year—after the 2005 hurricane, which devastated New Orleans and forced most local colleges to close for the fall semester. But this August will mark the storm's fifth anniversary, and only now is the state's oldest and largest community college able to move ahead with reconstruction. Seventy percent of the buildings on Delgado's campus were damaged by floods and wind, and as the spring 2010 semester begins, 30 percent of the building space is still unusable. Still, students are coming in droves, looking for affordable ways to retool their skills and find work in a city that, like the college, is still in recovery mode. "Last fall we had to turn away around 1,500 people because we couldn't turn another closet into a classroom," says the chancellor, Ron D. Wright. "That was the most distressing thing I had to do. I've never told anyone they couldn't come."
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: community colleges, crisis, crisis and disaster planning, Delgado Community College, disaster, emergency, hurricane, Katrina
New Plan for '21st Century Maricopa'
In an article titled Efficiency from Incompetence, David Moltz, writing in Inside Higher Ed, examines tensions in and around the Maricopa Community College District. Maricopa's board of directors hired external consultants for $1.4M and has asked its chancellor to review for implementation the many changes in the resulting plan, which is titled "21st Century Maricopa." There are many interesting dimensions to the circumstances. SCUPers will be interested in looking at the plan and its supporting documents. According to Molz, tensions are so high that many thought the consultants would be hired for the plan's implementation, but the board has charged the chancellor with the redesign of the entire district. From Moltz's report: Months after it was chastised by an independent panel for displaying “a consistent lack of civility” and creating “a climate of fear and mistrust,” the governing board of the Maricopa County Community College District has asked its chancellor to review and possibly implement a sweeping series of recommendations to improve the “efficiency” of the Arizona system. The plan to redesign the district, marketed under the moniker “21st Century Maricopa,” is the result of $1.4 million worth of Alvarez & Marsal consulting work requested by the governing board last summer. The request, however, was made before the college district’s accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, encouraged an independent panel to examine an anonymous complaint it received alleging that the Maricopa board had put the district’s accreditation at risk by severely micromanaging educators.
The board’s hiring of outside consultants to weed out redundancies in the district and find further ways to save money is viewed by many local observers as a slight against Maricopa's leadership.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:
Labels: community colleges, county community college district, governance, governing boards, leadership, Maricopa, strategic planning
Recession, Recission, and Recovery: Resource Planning and Problem Solving
The following information was copied from the SCUP–45 Preconference Workshops Page on February 1, 2010. Always go to that page for the very latest information. Also, the first iteration of a complete PDF of the entire SCUP–45 Preliminary Program is now available here (PDF). Sunday, July 11, 2010, 8:00 AM–1:00 PM Presenter(s): Thomas Anderes, Senior Vice President, Administration & Fiscal Affairs, University of Wisconsin System Audience: Planners who wish to increase their ability to use financial analysis tools to better align resources on campus. Every indication is that a continued reduction in fiscal resources will be experienced throughout higher education for the foreseeable future. How do you rebalance and learn new approaches to using fiscal strategy to meet your mission? This session provides hands-on, collaborative experience in applying a multidimensional framework that integrates the analysis of key issues and stakeholder expectations, in determining the realignment of resources within alternative scenarios. Working in small groups, participants will assess complex problems in balancing program and budgetary objectives with tools that can be used immediately on their campuses. Learning Outcomes: - Utilize data to determine the program and resource implications of the economic downturn on your campus and how they affect the delivery of programs and services.
- Identify sources of information (evidence) that drive resource decison making.
- Describe organizational and committee processes/interactions and outcomes that contribute to resource planning and allocations.
- Connect evolving financial conditions with program expectations.
- Develop plans to realign resource allocations and adapt to a changing economic environment.
TAGS: Performance Measures, Finance, Budget, integrated planning, Resource allocation COST: $250 USD
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: financial crisis, recession, resource and budget planning, stimulus
SCUP-45 Plenary Speaker: Jerome Ringo
I am more of a conservationist, myself. And people have come to me and said, "Wow, you're an African-American conservationist!" And my response is, "No, I'm a conservationist who happens to be black."
I believe that all of us in the conservation movement – even many of the people that work in the petrochemical industry who love to hunt and fish – we love the environment. Unfortunately there are folks in corporate headquarters who are driven solely by profit do not give full consideration to environmental impacts. That does not apply to every company but there are those that are discharging, know they are discharging, know the impact that they are having, yet they don't act on that. The National Wildlife Federation is on a mission to educate people at all levels and to come up with more reasonable and innovative approaches for energy production and consumption.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: conservation, environment, sustainability
How Effective are the NSSE Benchmarks in Predicting Important Educational Outcomes?
The Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education attempted to measure non-self reported learning outcomes to with regard to the effectiveness of NSSE. As reported in Change magazine by Ernest T. Pascarella, Tricia A. Seifert, and Charles Blaich their research found that on several measures, the NSSE benchmarks do appear to be valid as a measure of education quality: The NSSE benchmark scales were designed specifically to provide another gauge of academic quality—students' participation in academic and non-academic experiences that lead to learning—and there is little evidence that such experiences are substantially linked to the academic selectivity of the college one attends (Pascarella et al., 2006). Since our findings suggest the dimensions of the undergraduate experience measured by NSSE benchmarks are correlated with important educational outcomes, they arguably constitute a more valid conception of quality in undergraduate education than U.S. News's.
Furthermore, the NSSE results point to academic and non-academic experiences that may be amenable to improvement through changes in institutional policies and practices. On the other hand, resources and academic selectivity are much harder to change and therefore may form a much more deterministic institutional identity. To the extent that an institution is actually concerned with the quality and effectiveness of the undergraduate education it provides, our findings suggest that it probably makes more sense to focus on implementing practices and experiences measured by the NSSE benchmarks than on those factors measured by U.S. News.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:
As Higher Education Joins the Consumer Economy, Plaintiffs Abound
In what is a quite lengthy, for Today's Campus, feature, Jim Castagna describes the possibly changing world in which "consumers" may be more likely to sue colleges and universities, and some of the changing reasons why. He goes into a bit of detail about suits at Penn, Michigan, and at Franklin & Marshall, and also provides an annotated list of other recent cases.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: law suits, legal liability, risk management
Strategic Plan to Take Cornell to 2015 and Beyond: Reimagining Cornell
Q: What themes are emerging from the planning process? A: They include how to promote faculty and staff excellence given intense competition and limited resources; diversity and inclusion; a distinctive education; collaboration across disciplines and colleges; and effective assessments of teaching, research and outreach. We're looking at the university as a whole, and thinking of Cornell as a singular unit, while recognizing and affirming the importance of strong and distinctive colleges and other academic units.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: Cornell University, strategic planning
Facilities Funding Thaws? Really?
"Frozen capital markets had a chilling effect on new construction in 2009. But, some resources are still flowing, with developer-financed housing projects, bundled mixed-use facilities, and other creative deals on the rise" is how Business Officer describes this new article by Roger Bruszewski, Sam Jung, and Jeffrey Turner. It's a good resource with lots of brief vignettes, and includes some nice photographs as well as informative side bars. Due to the changes in the financial market, funding options that worked only a few years ago are simply not possible in today's environment. But, the freeze in some funding areas has created new, unique development structures that allow for freer flow of dollars that make such projects attractive and beneficial to institutions. Despite these changes, it is clear that institutions will continue to rely on the private sector to meet some of their important capital project needs. While private partners have also been affected by the downturn in the economy, they remain committed to working with institutions that must move their mission-critical projects forward both effectively and efficiently. The ingenuity of the private sector will continue to help colleges grow and adapt to changes in the higher education marketplace for years to come.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: capital planning, facilities planning, public-private partnerships
The 6 Principles of Facilities Stewardship
This downloadable PDF is of an article from Facilities Manager by Karvey H. Kaiser and Eva Klein, which is in turn an excerpt from a forthcoming new APPA book, Strategic Capital Development: The New Model for Campus Development. [I]n the words of Teddy Roosevelt, the buildings and grounds of an in- stitution must be treated “as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.”The notion of value can, and should, mean financial value. But, value has a broader implication, which includes the value an institution ascribes to its tradi- tions, to the protection of its symbolic features, and to the continued utility of its structural components. Ideally, a statement proclaiming stewardship principles should form the grounding for a comprehensive facilities plan or master plan. Also ideally, facilities stewardship should reflect a broad responsibility of govern- ing board members and senior leaders—in addition to the president or chancellor. Today, as the average tenure of a president/chancellor is less than seven years, their decisions must be part of a lengthy, continuous stewardship process—pro- tected because it is an indispensable, shared responsibility.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: appa, capital development, facilities planning
Transforming Brutalist Architecture With Student and Local Artwok
A new Innovation Showcase report from the League for Innovation in the Community College is about using student and local art to soften and transform Lane Community College's college's otherwise bland architecture from the 1960s: Lane’s learning environment, like many college campuses built in the late 1960s, is classic Brutalist architecture: bare exposed concrete. In a recent survey, students overwhelmingly commented that they experience the Brutalism as austere, cold, drab, and gloomy, especially during the gray drizzly days of a Eugene, Oregon winter. Some likened it to learning in a parking garage!
To help mitigate this experience, a series of efforts have been initiated by the Art on Campus Committee. Prior to the creation of the print collection, a painting collection and a commercial art collection were pulled out of storage and mounted throughout the main campus. An invitational sculpture exhibit was held and a number of pieces were purchased and put on permanent display. Two sculpture faculty members, also members of the Art on Campus Committee, offered several classes that created public artwork. Traditional Japanese carvers were invited to mentor students for a wood sculpture course that resulted in a large joint outdoor sculpture. A metal sculpture class created a multipiece work for the bus stop that garnered partial funding from the bus company. A stunning stone piece now stands in front of the administration building, the outcome of a two-term sculpture course.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: arts, community colleges, facilities planning, learning space design, visual arts
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