Agenda for Wednesday

When you walk into a room, you can tell right away if the space is one that students migrate to for energy and inspiration. In this session, Susan Hutson, Purdue University's assistant director of space planning, and two of BSA LifeStructures' higher education designers will discuss strategies to incorporate zones that accommodate students' core behaviors in learning environments. The session will identify how these zones combine to influence an individual's mobile study space, and provide impromptu areas for conversation and flexible areas where groups can work towards a goal.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Explore the three core student behaviors that are shaping modern day learning environments.
2. Discuss trends in planning for mobile technology use and its application.
3. Investigate how students take ownership of a space and transform it into a learning environment.
4. Review changes in how students are using campus space.

The University of Illinois at Chicago's (UIC) recent master planning effort resulted in a flexible framework for cohesive campus open spaces, integrated infill development, and functional circulation. A plan was created to "stitch" together unconnected districts to provide a greater cohesiveness, clarity, and sense of place while removing physical barriers to the surrounding communities and between two distinct sides of this very urban campus. The plan also identified high-impact, low-capital projects to strengthen and enhance the student experience.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Identify and analyze the legacy of campus planning on an urban campus to highlight the strengths and weakness of the campus connections to its neighborhood and the city.
2. Recognize the value of open spaces to the campus experience and how disparate areas can be leveraged for improved campus character.
3. Assess opportunities to locate new cross-disciplinary facilities that support integrated teaching and research between the colleges and academic units and to make connections to the community.
4. Identify the implementation of high-value, low-capital projects, which can make an immediate impact on the campus assets and environments.

St. Olaf College's recently completed renovation of Tomson Hall strives to serve the whole student by crossing traditional organizational, operational, and physical barriers and bringing together faculty offices, classrooms, staff, and administrators under one roof. Tomson Hall's central design principle is to serve a collaborative community. St. Olaf's registrar and co-chair of the design team and its vice president for facilities join the design architect to share the results of this mission.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Determine how to successfully identify and break down impediments to a collaborative working environment.
2. Describe strategies for achieving cross-discipline, cooperative dialogue among administration, facility, faculty, and design team members.
3. Summarize how to implement a collaborative building program during the design phase and post-occupancy.
4. Outline how to evaluate and utilize design-build as a construction delivery method.

Information technology is a ubiquitous feature of building design, construction, and management. The desktop computer and graphical user interface (GUI) transformed the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry over the last three decades; natural user interfaces (NUI) are poised to have similar transformative effects in the next decade. In this presentation, we discuss preliminary findings from an ongoing research project that explores the potential of NUIs, with new hardware and software technology, to transform the ways that projects are conceived, built, and managed. Using new touch technology and digital sketching environments for design collaboration and presentation, the presenter and his students are exploring and developing design, drawing, and management interfaces that will become key components in the design, construction, and management of the built environment in the near future. Participants in this session will have the opportunity to interact with these new digital devices. 

Learning Outcomes:

1. Review how new IT technologies are poised to transform the ways we design and manage the built environment.
2. Compare new and emerging software and hardware tools with existing IT used in the AEC industry.
3. Test new hardware and software in a hands-on experience.
4. Discuss the potentials and difficulties of new IT for the AEC industry.

This presentation discusses how a large research institution leveraged networks created in an informal group to build momentum and partnerships for making transformative shifts in how we design and plan space improvements. From navigating standard-changing designs to understanding how faculty engagement is key to effective learning space design, this group transformed successful networking opportunities into successful working opportunities. Not only is this group mobilizing the institution, it is crossing organizational boundaries and creating enthusiasm leading to sustainable and successful partnerships.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Manage strategies for achieving cross-departmental, collaborative dialogue among administration, facility, library, IT, and design team members.
2. Discuss how traditional and emerging learning spaces are changing to accommodate collaborative learning and to leverage space utilization.
3. Identify how to incorporate emerging pedagogical practices into large scale campus building initiatives.
4. Compare identified components of general assignment classrooms and approaches to support emerging curricula.

Northern Kentucky University (NKU) has bridged the cross-divisional gap to create a "one-stop" center that focuses on enrolled students. The planning effort included extensive collaboration across administration and finance, academic affairs, and student affairs. Learn how NKU and the planning team designed an engaging, student-centered facility that will become the central destination for registration and financial services, advising, IT engagement, and more. The presenters will use the NKU project as a case study, but will also include planning concepts applicable to all campus projects.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Collaborate across university divisions for successful on-campus projects.
2. Evaluate and prioritize program components to achieve high customer satisfaction.
3. Develop an implementation plan for a one-stop center.
4. Assess trends in one-stop center planning and operations.

Higher education faces the challenges of social inequality, cultural identity, and institutional complexity. Planning offers the most promise as a response to the issues of complexity. I offer a pragmatic conception of planning well suited to the demands of complexity. I describe how we might conceive more pluralistic, resilient, and collaborative planning efforts, offering examples to illustrate how these might work. The good news is that most people possess competence for making plans and find satisfaction in purposeful deliberation about the future. The bad news is that there are no short cuts. We accomplish convergence on campus though practical collaboration solving shared problems together.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Reconsider current classification and ordering of campus relations susceptible to purposeful planning.
2. Try on some revised conceptions of pragmatist planning that enhance practical insight and resist popular conceptions of rationality and strategy.
3. Recognize how recasting familiar institutional dilemmas as practical problems involving familiar social learning and collaboration can improve shared purpose and joint effort across institutional divides.
4. Strategize how to solve complex problems collaboratively, leveraging the skills and motivations stakeholders on your campus already possess.