These are responses to a recent question on SCUP’s LinkedIn group. You may want to contribute to it?

The question: “Can someone recommend good master planning precedents for campuses that are more wooded, where the traditional collegiate green is not the best answer? I have looked at Wellesley, Mills, UC Santa Cruz and Woods Hole Quissett Campus. Surely there are others?” And some of the responses already:

• Neither Indiana or Kansas have traditional collegiate greens, and both have wooded areas.
• JCU and Griffith in Australia are good examples too (not woods but more jungle like - same theory can be applied though)
• I would look at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley. Both have significant wooded areas on their campuses as part of the overall campus master plan. Here at Wisconsin, about a third (300 acres) of our main campus is within what we call the "Lakeshore Nature Preserve" which is mostly wooded as well. We have a master plan for the latter to manage vegetation and cultural resources along with academic research and outreach activities.
• Lewis & Clark College outside Portland, OR certainly comes to mind.
• You might also want to look at the master planned development of the UC Santa Cruz campus, set on a hill in a Redwood forest overlooking the city and ocean beyond. It was initially planned in 1964 and has undergone more recent planning updates. There are some very distinctive elements in their development guidelines. The campus architect Emeritus. Frank Zwart, FAIA, might be able to help you.
• Smith College. Arboretum master plan by Towers Golde.
• Swarthmore is largely arboretum. Guilford College in North Carolina has a tree filled center and large forested area.

Duke University's mission statement has not been amended for ten years. Its current strategic plan, Making a Difference: The Strategic Plan for Duke University, was produced in 2006. A series of executive summaries of departmental plans is part of the website and an appendix to the document. A link is also provided to a Duke resource on its campus planning.

Duke's plan is only one of about a thousand plans in Links From SCUP to College and University Plans, a Web-based resource for SCUP members. SCUP members can access the links in a sortable online spreadsheet that also includes useful data fields like Carnegie Class, Enrollment, FICE, Unit ID, and so forth. 

If you use it, please tell us how we can improve it: terry.calhoun@scup.org.

University Planning and Architecture: The Search for Perfection is available, as we publish this, to pre-order on Amazon. It is authored by Jonathan Coulson, Paul Roberts, and Isabelle Taylor and will be available both in print and Kindle.

If you read this book, please share what you think about it, below. Meanwhile, here is its editorial description:

The environment of a university – what we term a campus – has long been the setting for some of history’s most exciting experiments in the design of the built environment. Christopher Wren at Cambridge, Thomas Jefferson at Virginia, Le Corbusier at Harvard, Louis Kahn at Yale and Norman Foster in Berlin: the calibre of practitioners that have worked for universities is astounding.

This book comprehensively documents the worldwide evolution of university design from the Middle Ages to the present day, uncovering the key developments which have shaken the world of campus planning. A series of detailed and highly illustrated case-studies profile universally acclaimed campuses that, through their planning, architecture and landscaping, have succeeded in making positive contributions to the field. Drawing on these examples, the book turns to the strategies behind campus planning in today’s climate.

Exploring the importance of themes such as landscape, architecture, place-making and sustainability within university development, the book consolidates the lessons learnt from the rich tradition of campus development to provide a ‘good practice guide’ for anyone concerned with planning environments for higher education.

SCUPers Harvey H. Kaiser and Eva Klein have recently publishing their book, Strategic Capital Development: The New Model for Campus Investment, with APPA. We've already covered it in SCUP Links, and it is being reviewed for Planning for Higher Education. This brief article includes a link to listen to an 14-minute audio interview with them. Here's a link to the APPA bookstore.

"Even if the recession is over with, the point is we can't go on acting like we can make a $2-billion list of wishes when we know we're only going to get roughly $50-million a year at best," Ms. Klein says in the podcast featured on this page. "It doesn't work. We have to completely stop that behavior and get more realistic for the long run."

The two consultants lay out their vision for a more realistic and holistic approach to campus planning in their new book, Strategic Capital Development: The New Model for Campus Investment (published by APPA). The book guides administrators through a comprehensive process that includes reviewing strategy, assessing needs, laying out a capital plan, dealing with financing, and carrying out the various stages of the plan.

[T]he Getty program was not intended to be prescriptive -- that it was formulated on the understanding that different campus constituencies have different takes on design issues, a key theme of the Chicago roundtable.

As a result, what is most striking about the Campus Heritage Initiative is the range of settings it has covered. These include older, moneyed academies like Brown, Bryn Mawr and Middlebury with stylistically variegated campuses; architecturally distinguished state institutions from coast to coast; and several historically black institutions in the South where simple Georgian architecture has traditionally predominated. New York University, Boston's Emerson College and the Savannah, Ga., College of Art and Design have received grants largely or exclusively targeting originally nonacademic buildings they have acquired in historic districts. The initiative also has funded historical research on and the development of conservation strategies for noted landscapes at numerous schools besides Berkeley -- from Pittsburgh's Chatham College, a small women's institution, to the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Here's your SCUP Link to "2010 SCUP 'Triple I' Award Winner: Nanaimo Campus Master Plan – Integrated Planning Process"

Representatives from VIU Nanaimo will be recognized at SCUP–45, and will share their plan and planning process with other SCUPers during a concurrent session.

Here's a link to where you can download the master plan.

The 2010 recipient for SCUP’s Institutional Innovation and Integration Award is Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada for their entry, “Nanaimo Campus Master Plan – Integrated Planning Process.” It was submitted by Ric Kelm, executive director, facilities services and campus development at the university. This award recognizes and honors the achievement of higher education institutions or teams of individuals whose work demonstrates innovative thinking, planning, and implementation in an integrated fashion.

The NCMP involved the work of a dedicated team of VIU staff, faculty, students, external stakeholders, and consultants. This document will maintain a living document format that will continue to encourage the input of the university’s internal and external community and incorporate that input on a 5-year revisit and revise schedule. Facilities Management is seen as the "champion” of the plan and we see it as our responsibility to ensure every development is aligned with the plan.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Here's your SCUP Link on How is the University of Southern Indiana's Master Plan Shaping Up 4 Years Later? 

 Does it always come down to parking? The quote below is from a student news article. As well, here is a link where you can download the actual master plan (PDF).

A master plan is an instrument comprised of principles, objectives, developmental plans and several maps used for “shaping the physical character of a university campus” as the 2006 Master Plan defines. Proposed developments in the 2006 Master Plan included the roundabout, entry treatments and road improvements, all of which have been completed. The uncompleted projects include a visitor drop off, a perimeter loop road, surface drainage, an elevated walkway, and an improved loop road . . . Eventually, the plan is to have the main road loop around the perimeter of the university rather than run through the middle. If this plan eventually goes into effect, University Boulevard will only stretch from the entrance of campus at the roundabout to the Orr Center, where the visitor drop off will be located. This will also eliminate the majority of crosswalks that cause congestion and potential accidents. When it comes parking, Kalvelage believes that problem does not lie with lack of parking spaces.

"Burt Hill was approached to design the new 135,000-sq.-ft. Dorrance H. Hamilton Building, an educational facility that would create an integrated classroom setting in order to foster a team environment among students. During initial discussions, the school strongly emphasized its need for campus identity. For years, the urban Philadelphia grounds had been scattered throughout several city blocks, which made it difficult to unite the campus. The lack of campus identity also made it hard to establish a relationship with the neighboring community. It was clear that the new space would need to be aesthetically pleasing, as well as functional."