Webcast

Top rated program from SCUP's international conference

Inward Journey:
Neuro-biology, and Student Responses to Campus Spatial and Strategic Archetypes

Original Broadcast: March 15, 2005 Cost: $50 USD Buy an archived CD of this program

Program Overview

The way students perceive their physical environment impacts critical issues such as: student retention, campus housing models, commuter student engagement, and effective learning formats. Gain new insights in this fascinating broadcast.

Susan Painter returns with more insights! Comments from her previous broadcast:

• "Very informative and a topic that deserves wider recognition and study."
• Stimulating and thought-provoking."
• "Fantastic—Great lessons to utilize in every day applications."
• "As an architect, it is valuable information that can be directly applied to design.

What is it about a campus that makes it a potent and compelling instrument of the educational process? New research makes it clear that the physical campus plays a significant role in nurturing students' maturing brains, supporting their social and emotional development, and contributing to the likelihood that they will achieve graduation. Join us for this visually rich and fascinating look at students and the campus environments in which they thrive.

Campus planners and those responsible for student life and academic program development must strive to create environments which recognize that the essential and integrative university experiences take place—not only in classrooms—but at meals, in residential settings, through informal and chance encounters, and in the course of extra-curricular and recreational activities.

Recent formulations in cognitive anthropology demonstrate that the physical elements commonly used to plan college and university campuses have a profound impact upon us because their configurations are hard-wired to our species-survival instincts at the neuro-biological level. Although we are all affected by these campus spatial archetypes, their impact is even greater on our students, whose brains are developing with unprecedented rapidity during the adolescent and early adult period.

This webcast will provide campus planners and architects, student life coordinators, academic counselors, distance learning educators, admissions staff and counseling center staff with a broad view of human behavior that will provide a theoretical and philosophical underlay to the very practical and budget-driven campus planning and policy processes. Susan Painter will apply this theoretical material to critical issues such as student retention, campus housing models and effective learning formats.

This webcast refreshes key points from Susan Painter's highly rated 2004 SCUP webcast, and introduces new ways to apply this information to campus planning and policy issues.

Moderator

Richard L. Thompson, is dean of student and enrollment services, at Central Oregon Community College, a college of about 4,000 FTE covering a district of 10,000 square miles, in Bend, Oregon. He has devoted over 30 years to Oregon community college teaching and student services administration. Over his career, he has worked at five of Oregon's 17 community colleges and one Oregon private college. He is involved in campus master planning, and is overseeing the program development of a new 28,000 sq. ft. campus center building on his campus. Early on, he developed a special interest in helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds and transitioned from the classroom to a broad-based 20+ year career in student services including academic support services, student financial aid, veterans services, disability services, residence life, health services, diversity services, sports programs, and student leadership.

Presenter

Susan Painter is a senior urban and university campus planner with AC Martin Partners, a Los Angeles planning, architecture and engineering firm. She also serves as a faculty member in the UCLA Architecture, Interior and Environmental Design program, where she has taught Human Factors in Design, and Fundamentals of Interior Design for eleven years. Previously, she was associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Painter received her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of British Columbia and subsequently received her training in design at UCLA. She was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association for distinguished service in 1989.

Painter has served as a campus planner for a variety of large and small campuses in Southern California, including California State University at Fullerton, Chico and Humboldt, Claremont Graduate University, and Azusa Pacific University. Her background as a specialist in human behavior and her twelve years as a university professor provide her with a unique perspective on the design of the university campus, and the impact of the campus plan and its buildings on students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Along with other colleagues in the fields of psychology, architecture and design, she has pioneered the new field of Design Psychology, in which psychology is used as a design tool. She has been a frequent presenter at professional psychology conferences and received an award from the Center for Healthcare Design for her design thesis, a pediatric clinic designed from a psychological framework.

Questions? Please contact Kathy Benton, profdev@scup.org, or call 734.764.2001.