• middle colleges,
• a Suffolk University restoration, 
• mission driven planning,
• UMass Lowell Inn and Conference Center,
• landscape urbanism,
• Gordon College science center,
• a new housing project at URI,
• taking stock of existing buildings,
• campus heritage, and more.

Interviews with four SCUP members have been compiled into a Building Design + Construction magazine article offering advice to professionals who work with higher education institutions. 

In response to these concerns, we recently spoke with four veteran university architects responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of construction at their institutions: Barbara White Bryson, FAIA, Associate Vice President for Facilities, Engineering & Planning, Rice University; Pamela Palmer Delphenich, FAIA, Director, Campus Planning and Design, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Maxwell Boone Hellmann, FAIA, Associate Vice Chancellor and Campus Architect, Facilities Design and Construction, University of California, San Diego; and Alexandria Carolyn Roe, AIA, Director of University Planning, University of Connecticut. ...

“Another one of my pet peeves is dealing with architects that don’t know who the [real] client is,” adds Delphenich. “I’m not only the representative of the institution and the budget watchdog, quite often I’m working with end-users who aren’t financially responsible for the outcome.” End-users—faculty members, program directors, department heads, etc.—may want features that the budget can’t support, and if the design firm believes that a certain costly feature favored by the end-user is best, that puts the campus architect in an uncomfortable position. “To play the stakeholder against the client [the institution’s architect] is a real mistake,” says Delphenich. “But I don’t see that as much as I used to. I think our role as campus architects is becoming better known, and I think people realize that they need to work with us.”

Roe (at left) was recently a member of SCUP's Board of Directors and currently services on SCUP's North Atlantic Regional Council.

Delphenich, who also serves on SCUP's North Atlantic Regional council, is currently co-chair of the national Campus Heritage Preservation Symposium scheduled for November 2–3 in Washington, DC.

As reported by Lisa Wangsness in The Boston Globe, when Hebrew College moved into its brand new Moshe-Safdie-designed building in 2001, it had high hopes. But those hopes were financed by borrowing, perhaps too much borrowing. Now the school is selling its Newton campus and moving into rented space nearby at Andover Newton. The new president says that the school is a community of learners, not a building:

The deal, which relies on private donations as well as the proceeds from the building’s sale, is a painful sacrifice for an institution with dreams of becoming a preeminent Jewish cultural center and academic powerhouse. But it is also a relief: Mortgage and maintenance costs far exceeded the college’s fund-raising capacity, particularly amid an economic downturn that has badly shaken the financial stability of colleges and universities nationwide. In the past three years, Hebrew College has slashed its operating budget nearly in half, and it has no equity in its building.

Lehmann, who replaced the school’s previous leader, David M. Gordis, in 2008, said the debt settlement will reposition the college to continue operating — and growing — albeit in rented quarters.

“We are excited about what our financial stability is going to allow us to do, moving forward — and I can say, taking the pulse of students, faculty, and staff here, that there is a sense of real opportunity and energy in this community about it,’’ he said. “It wasn’t an easy decision but . . . the board and I felt very strongly that Hebrew College is not about a building. . . . This is about a community of learners.’’

We missed this article from the Village Voice when it was published in late July. It's a nice survey of the various campus building projects in New York City, with some introspective commentary. 

But will these schools really need all of this space once it comes online? Ten years from now, will we be downloading courses via Facebook apps onto iPads? Could all that classroom space end up being about as useful as the new home once planned for the New York Stock Exchange? In 2002, the Big Board walked away from a $1.1 billion deal with the city, realizing advances in technology meant it no longer needed a physical trading floor.

It’s easy to understand why New York’s universities are optimistic. Last year, NYU saw a record 38,000 applications for freshman admission, four times what it received 20 years ago. Nationwide, college enrollment is predicted to grow 13 percent by 2018, but the U.S. Department of Education cautions that its forecast doesn’t factor in such potentially disruptive forces as the rising cost of college, the changing economic value of a degree, and “the impact of distance learning due to technological changes.”

You would expect Yale to do a good job on a sustainability plan. Use the comments box, below, to let you know what you think of this one.

The Yale Sustainability Strategic Plan is a framework of goals and targets designed to advance Yale’s efforts over the next three years (2010-2013). The Plan recognizes the complexity of the University as an organization: the campus serves as a living laboratory, work place, learning environment, home, cultural repository, research enterprise, and more.

This sustainability framework deliberately focuses on campus and administrative systems in an effort to strengthen the foundation of Yale’s sustainability commitment. Our success in this endeavor depends upon leadership at the individual, unit, and institutional levels. We must work together and embrace each of the goals as a community effort, not solely a unit commitment.

If you find this item to be of interest, then you need to be checking out SCUP's Pacific Region's annual conference next spring: Inspiring Community, March 21–23, 2011 at Seattle University.

Consider the case of Lowell, Mass., located on the banks of the Merrimack and Concord rivers and once coined mill city. Named as one of five “innovative cities” by the Innovative Cities consortium, the City of Lowell’s dramatic reversal of fortune was driven by lean manufacturing and, significantly, a robust appetite for commercial and retail development, cultural diversity, and community engagement. The key ingredient in Lowell was that business and civic leaders united behind a co-development strategy, attracted investment from outside the community and leveraged capital financing for building out town/gown infrastructure, like sports stadiums, residential commons, and state-of-the-art student fitness and recreation centers.

A recent USA Today feature reported on two types of recession-proof economies: the first, state capitals and the second, collegetowns. In these latter cities, higher education institutions created transportation linkages, river walks, bike paths and pedestrian pathways to guide, inform, and enhance the urban life experience. Increasingly, Americans are seeking out these river mill collegetowns as powerful options for retail, hospitality, and ecotourism investment and as wise choices to live, learn, start a business and raise a family. This new wave of urban homesteaders has learned that collegetowns are now lifelong destinations and more than temporary undergraduate residences.