Learning Resources

Abstract: Institutions need innovative student engagement strategies that cultivate collaborative governance in order to reflect changing learning paradigms and evolving societal needs, including recent pandemic-fueled inequities. This session will share diverse planner, leadership, faculty, and student perspectives on engagement and collaboration at North Orange County Community College. Join our panel to discuss how traditionally underserved students are reshaping higher education and gain tools and solutions that you can apply to engagement efforts on your campus.

Abstract: This article presents the research, design options, and space planning guidelines prepared for Montgomery College specifically for spaces designed to address the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. The guidelines cover gender-inclusive restrooms and locker facilities for transgender people, lactation rooms for nursing mothers, and serenity space for an increasing Muslim population and others. Extensive research conducted by Stantec and Inquiry2Solutions informed the guidelines. The research included a review of the college’s institutional policies and governance structure; interviews with students, faculty, and staff as well as colleagues across the United States and personnel from relevant professional associations; and discussions with associations that support the needs of LGBTQ students and institutions that have begun to address these kinds of space planning. Foremost, the planning team learned that there are few space planning guidelines to meet these needs.
Montgomery College is charting new territory with the adoption of these space planning guidelines and has helped establish an important benchmark in this emerging area of campus planning.