Learning Resources

Abstract: A critical concern of universities today is ensuring that students remain in their selected major and graduate promptly. In addition, there has been a renewed emphasis on scientific education presented to non-science majors. Through the renovation of the Ritenour Building, Penn State’s Eberly College of Science created an Academic Support Center as a hub of advising and assistance for prospective students, science majors, and science education. The center’s layout provides opportunities to share knowledge of science teaching with advising staff and the online learning department. The design of this space has been crafted to enhance these retention and educational goals.

Abstract: Institutions are managing numerous student success initiatives simultaneously, but they lack the necessary data and infrastructure to evaluate outcomes. They also struggle to clearly link a particular initiative to a specific individual outcome. Using prediction-based propensity score matching (PPSM), a methodology compliant with the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse’s requirements, we facilitated the analysis of key initiatives to measure efficacy, ensuring that outcomes of students participating are compared to control students with similar propensity. The recent work explored in this article helps two institutions understand the impact of their innovation and more precisely scale student support.

Abstract: Do you have facility needs, like the need for more/improved space for instruction or infrastructure upgrades? Is it time to address deferred maintenance issues? Do you have reservations about venturing into unfamiliar territory? You’ll have to wrestle with some vexing matters—plan alternatives, big budgets, illusive funding sources, and an uninformed public.
Your concerns are valid. With a rich background as architectural firm principal and later as a community college project manager, the author has been through the drill. This article’s thoughtful advice details a project’s first phases—from initial concepts to developed projects with funding. It will head you toward success by helping to avoid the pitfalls.

Abstract: Health and wellness centers that encourage all students to be active are replacing the traditional gymnasium complexes on campuses throughout the United States. Studies indicate that regular exercise helps students fight off depression, relieve stress, improve grades, and graduate on time. At Cabrini University, Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT) architects designed an athletic pavilion that accommodates a wide variety of wellness, exercise, and fitness programs. WRT master planners used design principles that encourage physical activity to frame the campus reorganization so that all members of the campus community could incorporate healthy activity into their daily lives.

Abstract: Wellness—including mental health counseling, medical care, fitness and recreation, and other services—is now recognized as a crucial service for higher education institutions to provide to their students. This article discusses current trends in wellness centers at U.S. colleges and universities and challenges the reader to consider questions such as how campuses will meet increasing demands for mental health counseling. We describe how institutions are establishing best practices and building state-of-the-art facilities to serve the needs of the person as a whole. In preparation for renovation or new construction, we recommend that higher education professionals and architects implement a data-driven process to determine how best to serve the student population.

Abstract: This article presents a range of approaches for linking budgeting to planning. After briefly discussing the natures of planning and budgeting, it presents four conceptual categories of ways to link the two. The article defines these as structural, adaptive-incremental, devolved, and holistic/advanced. No one approach will be correct for all institutions. Even where there is a system in place to link planning and budgeting, this is unlikely to be enough unless there is firm, skilled, aligned, and distributed leadership to keep the system on track toward institutional goals.

Abstract: In 2009 the Arizona University System (supporting over 130,000 enrollments) through its Board of Regents directed its board president and the presidents of Arizona State University, University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University to create an operational plan that reflected the board’s vision, goals, and strategic directions. A primary objective was to transform the system (or enterprise) vision into concrete goals and outcomes that would directly connect to financial decision making at the system and university level. The backdrop for higher education planning and budgeting expectations included the continuation of severe reductions in state funding, rapidly increasing student tuition and fees, and a call for greater accountability. The planning processes were characterized by the integration of board and presidential discussions, inclusion of constituent debate, identification of strategic choices, and approval of outcomes focused on measuring performance. The integration ran across and within three organizations or levels that included the Arizona Board of Regents, its system administration, and the three universities.

Abstract: After its first application nearly 40 years ago, responsibility center budgeting/responsibility center management (RCB/RCM) is now in place at nearly 70 major North American universities. An unstudied fact is that despite its popularity RCB/RCM is rarely deployed to its fullest extent. Instead, it usually exists in parallel with conventional planning and budget models. This study asks why, instead of fully implementing RCB/RCM, universities have chosen to apply it partially. The study finds multiple explanations. On the revenue side, some universities hold back a portion of income to create funds that are used to underwrite institution-wide strategies or subsidize mission-central academic programs that cannot be fiscally sustained under RCB/RCM. In other cases, revenue is held back to fund shared “public utility” services, while in still others the practice of holding back revenue for allocation by some other means is due to difficulty in drawing a functional line between the “academic” and the “non-academic.” On the cost side, some universities have limited the application of RCB/RCM in order to limit market behavior and forestall “fragmentation” (Burke 2007). The study points to several problems in both the practice and theory of RCB/RCM. For example, models meant in theory to complement RCB/RCM may in practice compete with it or promote monopolistic behavior.