Learning Resources

Abstract: Planners and institutional leaders need to understand the relevance of digital capabilities and IT capacity as they relate to student success. This session will improve your understanding of digital capabilities needed to achieve student success and discuss how you can inform integrated planning efforts with IT benchmarking data. You will learn how to assess your institution’s digital capacity for student success technologies so you can affect costs and improve outcomes with new analytics tools and services.

Abstract: Information technology (IT) departments need to move from being "order takers" to "strategic partners" for innovative solutions within the institution. In particular, IT partnerships with academic affairs is essential to move the university forward. We will describe how our IT transformed to align with the university strategic plan. We will focus on partnerships that have been created with academic affairs, and explore various strategies for leveraging partnerships within an institution.

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: Colleges and universities are increasingly planning interdisciplinary, inter-college STEM facilities and need tools to address the special challenges that arise when dealing with a diverse set of users. This article discusses the importance of articulating a STEM vision as a means to prioritize building program components while maintaining project goals. It describes effective strategies for organizing diverse user groups, anticipating potentially challenging group dynamics, in a programming process that yields consensus about common goals and shared resources. It discusses layout strategies that support the mission of the building and an approach to STEM building governance that is independent of a particular college or department. The University of Mississippi is used as a case study.