In this article from Planning for Higher Education, Claire L. Turcotte, a member of the research team, writes about ten themes commonly reported back to the Getty Foundation from the 86 campuses which undertook campus heritage preservation planning initiatives.

• Architectural style
• Importance of landscape
• Stewardship of the land
• Adaptive Reuse
• Mid-20th century buildings
• Importance of additional design elements
• Use of students
• Development of systems used to evaluate and prioritize landscapes and buildings

Gregory G. Dell’Omo, president of Robert Morris University, writes about the symbolism and practicality of selling a building and breaking with tradition in favor of innovation:

Like many who work in higher education, I love university traditions—the rituals, events, and stories that carry on and bind together each generation of students. Those traditions engender devotion to our institutions on the part of our alumni and make us feel a part of something bigger than ourselves.

But as much we love our traditions, they carry a risk. They can render us slow to adapt to change. Sometimes colleges allow tradition to tie them to outdated practices that no longer match the institution’s mission or the external environment. We need courage and wisdom to discern when it is time to hold on and when it is time to let go.

That’s the choice Robert Morris University (Pa.) confronted when we decided to put up for sale the classroom building we had owned in downtown Pittsburgh since 1959. Three years later the university had purchased property for a residential campus in suburban Moon Township, 18 miles from downtown, but the city remained a focal point of the school for many more years.

Charles A. Birnbaum says that there is a lack of landscape architecture criticim and media coverage, and, he says, writing in The Huffington Post, that's a problem.

Birnbaum is a keynote speaker at SCUP's national Campus Heritage Symposium next November 2-3 in Washington, DC.

Here's a game I like to play. Try to find decent criticism about landscape architecture, planning and design, particularly regarding public space, in any of the major US dailies. Go ahead... I'll wait why you think about that.

Actually it's no game... it's a problem, especially considering the role that landscape architecture and planning plays in shaping our communities and cities. We have no shortage of architecture critics (who on occasion cover landscape), and there are a fair number of garden writers, but criticism about landscape architecture, planning and design is essentially restricted to publications geared to professionals, and largely absent from major dailies.

So will design coverage in New York and elsewhere transcend traditional buildings as objects (Zaha's latest) or industrial design (sleek toasters and iPhones) and recognize the new possibilities that public landscape offers? The time is now for mainstream print and web to pick up on the signals in this white noise, because the future resides in systems-based design solutions that affect our everyday lives in new and sometimes unconventional ways. If not, design remains marginalized as a commodity and the public is poorly served.

State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPO)

The SHPO is part of the National Register, however, it is the state agency that oversees historic preservation efforts in their state. There may be state or local preservation laws that they should be aware of before they undertake a project with a historic property. State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPO) play a critical role carrying out many responsibilities in historic preservation. Surveying, evaluating and nominating significant historic buildings, sites, structures, districts and objects to the National Register is one such key activity. To help find out if a historic place meets the National Register criteria and how the nomination process works in each state, citizens may contact the appropriate SHPO for assistance. The national website provides links to all states for their individual help.

In the state of Michigan for example, the following programs are available.

• National Register of Historic Places Historic buildings, districts, and sites
• National Historic Landmarks in Michigan The state's most significant historic resources '
• Historic Preservation Financial Incentives Grants, tax credits, and more
• Cultural Resource Protection (ER) Section 106 responsibilities
• Historic Resources Survey Program Surveys of architecture and history
• The Michigan Lighthouse Program Preserving Michigan's maritime heritage Michigan Main Street Program Rejuvenating downtowns, large and small
• Local Historic Preservation Process for establishing local historic districts and more
• Michigan's Historical Marker Program Signposts to our history

Bronx Community College of the City University of New York is the Getty Foundation-funded campus heritage preseervation project for the month of December, 2010.

The Stanford White Complex is an architectural and landscape complex designed by McKim, Mead and White in the late 19th century (1892-96). It includes a cluster of artistic buildings including the Gould Memorial Library, The Hall of Fame of Great Americans, Language Hall, and the Philosophy Hall. The elegant interiors of the library were done by Tiffany Glass and Decorating Co. plus a dome and tiles by Guastavino Co. The college is located on a landscaped 40 acre site. The entire complex is listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places and has landmark status in New York. The team of researchers and consultants developed a comprehensive Conservation Master Plan for the buildings and cultural landscape.

Click here to learn more about this project on SCUP's Campus Heritage Network.Bronx Community College page with links to their report to the Getty Foundation.

As part of a $65M multi-phase project, Purdue is renovating its Windsor Halls: Five women's residences that are quite old (buildings built between 1930-1950, mostly), linked by underground tunnels. This brief article by an architect working on the project, Sanford E, Garner, is from University Business magazine.

An external and an internal image of part of the work (Phase II, Duhme Hall) are available. Here is a brief report on landscaping and here is the overall master plan for the campus.

‘New’ doesn’t necessarily mean better. Shiny and new does have its appeal. But Windsor Halls also has a place in Purdue’s history. Students like to know that famous people, such as Amelia Earhart, once stayed there. That history was preserved during the renovation. Date rooms, once used for young women to meet their dates as men weren’t allowed on the residence hall floors, have been replaced by common areas. The renovation included restoring the ornate coffin ceiling, original woodwork, formal fireplaces, window seats and the fieldstone floors. The character of the residence halls was preserved in a variety of ways throughout the collegiate-Tudor-style facilities. Students want and need their privacy. After all, most students grew up with their own rooms and private bathrooms. When possible, we worked to create more private rooms and bathrooms. Because of the age of the buildings, however, we were limited by the mechanicals system to create an abundance of private rooms. To compensate, we used residential-style finishes and created more amenities so Windsor could compete with newer campus living options.

A University of Colorado outpost, by architect Harry Weese, in Aspen, may be demolished. The school wants to close the Given Institute and sell it. The most likely buyer will pay $15M but only if the building is demolished first. It's a tough time for Modernist buildings in locations where people who actually have money want to put something else. It appears as though the only possible hope is that the city of Aspen might purchase it. But no one's real optimistic about getting residents to vote positive for that.

The dispute over the Given comes at a time of renewed interest in Weese, who died in 1998. A recent article in Chicago magazine chronicled the architect’s thriving career in the 1960s and 1970s and his alcohol-fueled decline. And architectural historian Robert Bruegmann has written the forthcoming bookThe Architecture of Harry Weese, the first critical study of the architect’s work.

In College Planning & Management magazine, William S. Harris uses case studies of MIT's Building 10 and Brown University's Lyman Hall to illustrate how "renovations of iconic campus environments can look great and perform well without breaking the bank."

Both institutions had limited budgets and schedules fixed to the summer recess, since neither institution could operate without these facilities in active use during the school year. The task and challenge of each project was therefore to exercise restraint, prioritize a menu of possible improvements ranging from structure and infrastructure to layout and function, and to implement those within the tight budget and schedule. In addition, being iconic and treasured buildings in an academic environment, there was no shortage of input from administration, faculty, and students.

Despite the challenges and differences in programs, sizes, and budges, each project was approached in a way that balanced their myriad competing priorities and resulted in success. This process can be distilled into the following guiding principles.

[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.

Many small museums, in an effort to capitalize on the success of larger institutions and fads like the Jurassic Park moment of the early 90s, have made themselves into second-rate imitations. Their displays have a boring sameness, like standardized hotel rooms, rather than the complex accumulation of furnishings one finds in a home.

In a quest to stand out, small museums purchase replicas and displays from the same suppliers, which they lack the resources to update, while larger museums have moved on to new things. Ironically, the small-museum displays end up displacing real specimens. After a couple of decades, hardly anyone remembers anything about the museum's distinctive identity.

"I have a theory, albeit an untested one," said Ceiga, "that one of the ways to lure adults back isn't the latest high-tech gizmo, but rather the old-fashioned, nostalgic stuff that only visitors over a certain age can appreciate. At the academy, we have everything we need to create these kinds of exhibits. It's just waiting in storage."