Learning Resources

Abstract: Consortia, their impact on cooperating institutions, and critical factors in inter-institutional planning were the subject of a recent study for the United States Office of Education, directed by Harold L. Hodgkinson of the Center for Research and Development in Higher Education at the University of California at Berkeley. The critical issues, according to the study findings, are problems of reciprocity and autonomy, coordination of programs among diverse institutions, and strategies for campus involvement and leadership. The following article, by three staff members of the New Hampshire College and University Council—one of the consortia in the Hodgkinson study—is devoted to a discussion of the process of consortium decision-making, touching on the three key issues. The authors are: Lynn G. Johnson, the Council's associate director in charge of academic programs; Dr. William W. Barnard, consultant and coordinator of a two-year Cooperative Curriculum Project, and Douglas W. Lyon, coordinator of January Term Programs and communications coordinator.

Abstract: The concept that innovation and change in curriculum and teaching patterns will affect the arrangement and utilization of physical facilities is hardly novel in 1972. But perhaps nowhere has the principle been demonstrated more dramatically than at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. The college, with a faculty of 125 and a student body of 1,650, in September 1970 adopted a comprehensive plan that involved an almost total revision of the concepts of a course, a classroom, a contact hour, a unit of credit, scheduling procedures, and definitions of academic and non-academic space. This article is adapted from one by Dr. Glenn Brooks, professor of political science and assistant to the president, and Malcolm Ware, administrative assistant to the dean, describes both the planning process and the ultimate results. The original appeared in Higher Education Facilities Planning Manuals, published by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.