Learning Resources

Abstract: Historic buildings often occupy prominent spots on campus and serve as touchstones for alumni, faculty, and current students. Institutions must work to keep them viable and efficient to ensure their usefulness and sustainability in the future. In this session, we'll detail a 15-year history of updating historic campus buildings to remain functional, effective, and compliant with campus-wide sustainability plans on Washington University's Danforth Campus. Come learn from our proven methods of evaluating, prioritizing, and implementing measures that modernize historic buildings for maximum efficiency and compliancy with campuswide sustainability goals.

Abstract: Generation Z is now on campus and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has been preparing. Different from Millennials, Gen Z are digital natives who need campus spaces that engage with this expertise and their preference for hands-on learning. In this session we'll share two recent CMU projects addressing Gen Z's preference for experiential learning, their digital proficiency, and their entrepreneurial spirit. Join us to find out how CMU uses space to engage Gen Z and apply these methods to learning spaces on your campus.

Abstract: Creative emergency response activities and fledgling partnerships within academic medical center (AMC) campuses and communities have broken down institutional, municipal, healthcare, and corporate silos to improve public health and quality of life. The pandemic has revolutionized business-as-usual across higher education and AMCs are equipped to respond to such crises through partnerships. Given strained fiscal resources, an atmosphere of uncertainty, and an outcry for innovation and collaboration, a framework for building partnerships is critical. Join us to discover how you can apply AMC pandemic responses for long-term best practices at your institution.

Abstract: Nobody knows when campus will return to full capacity, but in the short term, there are things that can be done to bring students, faculty and staff back smartly and appropriately. Campus life will look different, but what’s wrong with different? We want our students to feel safe, supported, stay healthy while maintaining a different on-campus experience for every student.

Abstract: Underserved and underrepresented students form a large and rapidly growing portion of student bodies, but current planning practices do not address their needs. This session will help you create meaningful change at your institution to accommodate these students by exploring new practices for social equity in campus planning and building design. Come learn about new engagement and assessment tools that can reveal and remedy disparities that students encounter and use them on your campus to deliver a better experience for marginalized students.

Abstract: Underrepresented students increasingly form the majority of most student bodies, but most built environments are not designed with these students' needs in mind. Why? Because most facilities planning processes do not engage underrepresented students in a way that elicits their experience of the built environment. This session offers new practices that yield social equity in campus planning and building design. You will learn new engagement and assessment tools that you can implement now to reveal and remedy the disparities that underrepresented students encounter in the built environments of the campus.

Abstract: Societal challenges and opportunities no longer fit in departments. Future success requires business researchers, educators, and students to interconnect across the entire campus and beyond. In this session, we will explore how to plan a campus ecosystem that connects business with people, ideas, and resources to drive a new research and education model. You will learn key strategies and find opportunities—encompassing planning, programming, design process, and lessons learned from building use—to advance your institution's mission and build a framework to implement your initiatives.

Abstract: Connection hubs re-vision the traditional campus commons so it encourages community, personal interaction, and wellness. These flexible and transformable spaces allow students, faculty, and staff to gather, collaborate, and emotionally bond with the environment. We will look at examples of connection hubs and discuss how they are designed, their benefits, and how their impact is measured.

Abstract: While nontraditional students now make up the majority of most student bodies, we continue to use physical planning outreach and engagement tools designed for traditional students. This session shares how we developed new practices and tools to deliver better campus experiences for students from nontraditional backgrounds, yielding social equity in campus planning and building design. You will learn about new physical planning engagement and assessment tools that reveal and remedy the disparities nontraditional students encounter in their lives on campus.

Abstract: Today, the amount of space devoted to research at research universities exceeds that of classrooms and class laboratories. This research space portfolio presents important policy and management challenges. As stewards of this portfolio, universities must address issues of funding the construction of research facilities, equipping and maintaining them, allocating and accounting for space used for research, and managing, in broadest terms, the physical and administrative infrastructure in which research is conducted. As this article illustrates, managing the balance between the growing demand for and the supply of research space is complicated. To address the issues of research space, universities have developed a variety of space management methods to fit their unique research missions, priorities, and operational culture. This article provides important insights into this little studied aspect of higher education space planning. The article is an overview of research space management across the U. S. on general campuses and in health science centers. It is based on interviews with senior administrators in selected research universities conducted specifically for this study, information about research space management available on university documents on the Internet, and on the work of Ira Fink and Associates, Inc. in programming research facilities on a multitude of campuses nationwide.