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: 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: This article describes the planning process undertaken at a large, regional comprehensive university to create a space within existing buildings aimed at improving student success in introductory mathematics. It demonstrates the need for integrated planning grounded in academic priorities and student success models.

Abstract: Traditional college and university space planning methods largely ignore issues of quality, money, and mission, focusing instead on the application of formulae to strictly categorized space types. Today’s complex challenges, including a significantly reduced resource base, motivate an evolution in methodology. Opportunities exist to strengthen technical underpinnings and to question key assumptions, particularly the value of benchmarking. This book sketches this evolved comprehensive space planning practice, with its emphases on utilization, economic value, quality, and accountability both to the institutional mission and to stakeholders.

Abstract: This report from the SCUP Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) aggregates space data submitted to the CFI survey from 2006 and 2007. Institutions submitting a CFI survey quantify how their space is allocated using classifications from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Facilities Inventory and Classification Manual (FICM).

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.