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More than finding your way. Touch a screen, and learn about the sustainability inside this building; or about the generous donor whose name is on it.

People see a screen and want to interact with it. Colleges and universities are catching on, finding innovative ways to let their community members do just that.

Among the most common and advantageous uses are wayfinding and donor recognition, shares Spencer Graham, manager of operations of West Virginia University Information Stations responsible for behind-the-scenes operations of WVU’s digital signage network. WVU was an early adopter of digital signage, creating a 10-sign network for emergency messaging in 2005 immediately following the Virginia Tech tragedy. That network now includes more than 100 screens, including interactive ones, across four campuses.

“Higher education is a new vertical market [for interactive digital signage] as far as I’m concerned, because you’re not selling like you are in retail,” says Graham. “This is an area that digital signage has a very specific usage in. Wayfinding certainly comes in. We also see donor walls as a big thing, because you can only put so many brass plaques on the wall.” And for all of WVU’s interactive digital signage installed and to be installed, “the functionality we’re planning on leveraging makes for a very pleasant experience for whoever is interacting with our signage,” from students, to faculty, to visitors to the university.

 ^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

Eran Ben-Joseph is a professor of urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Rethinking A Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking. In this essay for The New York Times, he shares some of the book’s ideas and philosophy. (You can purchase the book at Amazon here and, without increasing your cost, the society will receive a small bit of revenue.)

In Getting to Green, G. Rendel takes on the efficiencies of centralizing a campus motor pool. 

A central motor pool could easily be funded for no more than what we're currently spending. Capital costs could come out of a central account, and departments could pay for vehicles used on some sort of charge-back basis. Drive a smaller, more efficient car or truck, get charged less for the day. Done at all well, the University would save money, virtually every department now buying vehicles would save money, and fuel usage (hence greenhouse gas emissions) would be reduced. Design the charge-back schedule appropriately, and the smaller, lighter, more efficient vehicles would get far more use than the larger models that currently make up most of our fleet and account for most of our mileage.

Additionally, having a central motor pool (with a central motor pool manager, properly motivated) might help the campus to consider sorts of vehicles which never seem to make the short list at present. Manufacturers throughout the country are producing highly versatile all-electric work carts and light trucks. A university campus would seem the ideal environment for short-range electric service vehicles, given that on most days, most of our fleet is driven 25 miles or less (in many cases, far less). A campus can (more easily than many other locations) also install electric recharging stations, making electric vehicles that much more convenient.

This is a brief video talking about and sharing images of the development of a 12'x12' intelligent solar roadway prototype; a roadway intended to carry communications and to generate enough power to pay for itself. Apparently, you can lock up the brakes on a glass road without destroying it. We can definitely see a campus using this as part of its overall carbon management, as well as for the smart connections. The primary researcher says that over time asphalt will become too expensive and these kinds of materials will become cost effective. The Solar Roadways project just won the GE Ecoimagination challenge prize.

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!

Click on the title, Road Diets: Making Streets Slim Down Is Good For Pedestrians, Businesses And Even Traffic, to access the resource described, below.

SCUP headquarters is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the city is engaged in changing some downtown streets, using bulb-outs. From our first-hand experience with one of the streets - before, during, and after the change - this really works.

When a road diet is applied to a road with at least four lanes overall, it often removes one lane in each direction. The space made available by eliminating these two lanes can be used for creating a dedicated left-turn lane, as well as sidewalks, parkways, bike lanes, or a dedicated right-turn lane. Surprisingly, eliminating one through-lane in each direction does not result in a proportional loss of car-carrying capacity, and the addition of a dedicated left-turn lane (and sometimes a dedicated right-turn lane as well) helps reduce congestion. Adding turn lanes in this manner can also decrease accidents, because it results in fewer lane changes and better visibility for on-coming traffic. All of these benefits are useful in explaining road diets to skeptical traffic engineers, or reluctant business or community members.

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 "Debt Hunters: Is Your Campus Missing Out on Megabucks Worth of Unpaid Parking Tickets?"

Inspired by the University of Central Florida's tapping him for $35 for an unpaid parking ticket from a visit nearly three years ago, Inside Higher Ed writer Jack Stripling investigates and finds a trend: Better technology to identify scofflaws and concerted efforts to tap into buckets of money owed to it. Some even hire collection agencies. UCF hired a company to collect from a pool of nearly $400,000 in unpaid tickets and has already collected $71,000. It can be tricky though and you might irritate alumns.

Central Florida’s increased collection efforts predate the deep financial crisis that has led to dramatic budget cuts across the state, but Merck says it’s “serendipitous” that the university was searching for cash under its proverbial couch cushions just before the recession hit.

Florida’s State University System does not receive any state dollars for transportation and parking services, so the brunt of the cost for parking decks and shuttles is passed on to students through per-credit-hour fees and decal charges. Thus, by failing to recoup parking fines, the university ends up increasing the financial burden on students. So while chasing campus visitors across state lines for $35 may seem excessive, failing to do so is unfair to students who end up with the tab, Merck says.

“We owe it to our students to try to collect it,” he says.

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 Go With the Flow: Campus Traffic and Parking Solutions

For University Business magazine, Ann McClure finds 20 tips/best practices regarding campus transportation management. They are divided into categories: Parking Practices, Mass Transit Options, Traffic Flow Tactics, Ride Shares, and Bikers Haven.

“The old-time pressures of parking and congestion are combining with the sustainability issue,” says Philip L. Winters, director of the Center’s TDM Program. Parking lots are not only expensive to build but take up valuable space that can be better used for classrooms or even green space. Solo drivers are also a big contributor to the campus carbon footprint. Safety is another issue because the more traffic you have the more accidents you might have, points out Sara Hendricks, the center’s senior research associate. However, improving traffic flow and parking on campus is very place dependent, Hendricks notes. Not every campus can tap into a strong local mass transit system. “It boils down to making sure you have options and not focusing on a single strategy,” Winters advises.