Learning Resources

Abstract: Before the recession, planning offices were the workhorses supporting institutional growth strategies by translating the ambitions of senior administrators into action. However, the recession derailed many institutional ambitions; austerity suddenly supplanted growth. The future role of planners seems uncertain beyond operationalizing short-term damage control. Yet this article asserts that planners are uniquely positioned to assume an essential role in colleges and universities: sensemakers and sensegivers. Through sensemaking and sensegiving, planners can focus institutional dialogue on the meaning of austerity. Instead of accepting resource constraints as a ubiquitous rationale for retrenchment, planners can guide institutional dialogue toward acknowledging that new constraints merely discipline earlier ambitions within new parameters.

Abstract: Colleges and universities continue to face significant fiscal challenges in the current recession. In response, institutions have identified innovative facilities planning and management strategies that support institutional growth and, in some cases, institutional survival. Strategies explored include deferring capital expenditures and reducing facilities operating costs, increasing facilities utilization, investing in campus sustainability, adapting to information technology, and leveraging the distressed real estate market. The current financial climate has only added urgency to the trend already underway to explore alternative campus development approaches. Indeed, the expectation should be that even more institutions will embrace these innovations and that these new strategies will become institutionalized as an expanded set of campus development planning tools.

Abstract: California State Polytechnic University, Pomona was an early signatory of a climate neutrality pledge. This article draws lessons from the university’s greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction planning effort by explaining the planning process and the plan features. Three themes are explored: (1) creation of the emissions baseline and targets, (2) strategy selection, and (3) the plan’s relationship with the broader change process. The article concludes with suggestions for other campuses entering the GHG planning process.

Abstract: Higher education institutions must be resilient amid vastly increased expectations for sustainable environments, global focus, and technological support. In this article, we challenge all those engaged with planning in higher education to foster shared leadership throughout all levels of the organization as a means to meet these challenges and opportunities. We cite scholarship on shared leadership and provide examples of shared leadership in support of Green, Global, and Google (i.e., above-campus technology) initiatives. We provide a model for shared leadership and conclude with a succinct set of directions for reinventing higher education.

Abstract: The study described in this article examined the development and implementation of a geographic information system (GIS)as a simple sketch-plan tool for analyzing land use, transit routes, student ridership, and bus stop locations in order to improve the effectiveness of transit systems in college towns.The methodology was applied to Auburn University’s Tiger Transit system, which assists students commuting to and from the campus, and the route changes implemented as a result of this analysis significantly improved the system’s effectiveness. Transit ridership increased by 23 percent from 13,000 to 16,000 riders per day. The transit routes were changed to serve almost 90 percent of the student population using fewer buses, compared to 70 percent served before the improvement.In addition, the transit system started to serve commercial locations such as malls, recreational locations, cinemas, and big-box stores.

Abstract: There is a crisis in higher education. With skyrocketing tuition, shrinking budgets, and increasingly complex social problems, it is time to ask: What are public research universities doing—and what should they do—to fulfill their compact with the citizens of their states? Locating some of the major cultural and structural obstacles impeding academic engagement, this article argues that “intellectual entrepreneurship” provides academic institutions with both a philosophy and set of mechanisms to meet the ethical obligation of discovering and putting to work knowledge that makes a difference—to educate “citizen-scholars” who engage in service with rather than to society.