Learning Resources

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: Makerspaces designed for collaborative learning are appearing on campuses throughout the United States, including at Drexel University. These spaces succeed because they permit students to collaborate, observe, and learn from professors and peers. Unique to the Drexel project is the intermingling of engineering undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and commercial interests in one facility with laboratories, machine-shop equipment, and informal study areas. Facilities that give students great visibility into nearby research, contain areas where they can take breaks without leaving the building, and lend themselves to informal encounters with peers, faculty, and others result in better academic experiences for undergraduates.

Abstract: Leers Weinzapfel Associates recently talked with campus planners and facilities directors nationwide about the big issues driving campus planning. Rapidly evolving pedagogies are demanding radical rethinking of effective teaching and learning spaces. Better use and optimal configuration of these venues is key as the stereotypical “sage on the stage” mode of instruction rapidly expands through a wide range of interactive, hands-on, and socially enhanced settings. Several examples of the firm’s work—the University of Massachusetts Amherst John W. Olver Design Building, the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) Stadium Drive Residence Hall, and the Wentworth Institute of Technology (Boston) Multipurpose Academic Building—substantiate these findings in practice.

Abstract: Industry and academia are partnering like never before as entrepreneurship and maker culture become more important to our economy and a regular fixture in higher education curricula. With the influx of allied industry partnerships, evolving pedagogies, entrepreneurship programs, and a maker culture comes a pressing need for new spaces, ranging from fabrication and prototyping studios to innovation districts devoted to new kinds of research partnerships. Schools like the University of Washington, Babson College, and Arizona State University are leading the way on new collaborations. In this article, Sasaki planners and urban designers examine how design disruption will guide the development of campuses that enable 21st-century teaching, learning, and research paradigms.

Abstract: With North Dakota experiencing a significant shortage in all health care-related fields, the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences replaced its aging facility with a new school in order to (1) increase enrollment by 25 percent, (2) attract and retain top-tier faculty and staff, (3) encourage inter-professional collaboration, (4) colocate all eight medical, health sciences, and basic sciences in one building, and (5) retain more in-state graduates. The facility is now a shared collaborative learning environment, the result of the university “rethinking everything” about how it delivered health sciences education.

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.

Abstract: The thickening and expanding digital layer of our world has prompted us to reevaluate how we navigate through it and also what, why, where, when, and how we read the things within it. In an institutional setting, reading for learning and research is no longer confined to the printed page or the campus; this has led to a hubbub by those who fear an embrace of digital technologies will in some way diminish students culturally, intellectually, creatively, and emotionally. Sorting through the hubbub, there is reason to be optimistic as examples abound of how the digital layer enhances learning and knowledge creation. Institutions have an important role here: they have the heft to help drive innovative practices, policies, technologies, materials, and spaces for reading now and tomorrow in this hybrid physical-digital information landscape.

Abstract: As efforts to stimulate innovation spring up across campuses, institutions need a comprehensive planning framework for the integrated planning of initiatives that support innovation. The campus can be viewed as an Innovation Landscape, and settings for collaborative creative activity—both physical and virtual—can infuse the campus fabric and become part of the daily experience of users. The Innovation Landscape Framework is a tool to help coordinate physical planning with organizational initiatives, engage a wide range of stakeholders, and enable a more widespread culture of innovation.

Abstract: Transdisciplinary learning is the next frontier in higher education. Our innovation economy is applying tremendous pressure on all types of organizations to innovate and re-innovate at increasing speed. Transdisciplinarity requires us to engage and co-depend on others to co-identify humanity’s challenges and co-investigate and co-implement solutions in integrated and collaborative processes. To adapt and succeed, higher education needs to shift to a transdisciplinary mind-set model of learning in new environments. The Transdisciplinary Atelier is a concept for understanding space as a facilitator of disciplinary integration that can be used by all universities and colleges whether in new or existing buildings.

Abstract: “Designing Innovative Campuses For Tomorrow’s Students” explores increasing investment by higher education institutions in new programs and facilities that boost on-campus innovation and entrepreneurship. This trend is a response, in part, to the changing expectations and demands of Millennial and Generation Z students and their future employers. The impact of this movement, though, goes far beyond those constituencies—changing everything from campus housing to the economic development role of higher education institutions. The examples of Clemson University’s Watt Family Innovation Center and the University of Florida’s Infinity Hall are provided to illustrate the scope of influence and success of these changes.