SCUP
Learning Resources

Original Research

Planning for Higher Education Journal

“Be Prepared” for Policy Windows

 How can universities overcome the institutional inertia that impedes successful innovation and change?
Report

2007 Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) Report

 How are institutions using their space? This report from the SCUP Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) aggregates space data submitted to the CFI survey from 2006 and 2007.
Report

2021 Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) Report

 The 2021 Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) report’s valuable facilities benchmarking data will help college and university leaders understand not only what they have now and how it compares, but also how things might change in the future.
Report

2022 Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) Report

 The 2022 Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) report’s valuable facilities benchmarking data will help college and university leaders understand not only what they have now and how it compares, but also how things might change in the future.
Report

2023 Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) Report

 The 2023 Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) report’s valuable facilities benchmarking data will help college and university leaders understand not only what they have now and how it compares, but also how things might change in the future.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

A Framework for Planning Organizational Diversity

 Cox’s model is used to determine whether a unit is on its way to becoming an effective multicultural organization, highlighting strengths and areas for improvement.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Academic Deans Reveal Their Leadership Styles

 Academic deans adopt one of three approaches when developing the annual budget report for their colleges: distributed authorship, delegated authorship, or dominated authorship. Depending on the approach they select, deans can include and collaborate with their senior teams—or exclude, ignore, and alienate them. Their choice demonstrates how they lead.
Blog Post

Addressing Employee Needs in Higher Education:

 In recent years, higher education staff throughout North America have increasingly expressed concern about compensation, work/life balance, and sense of agency over work. 24% of all staff are actively seeking roles outside of higher education, and 70% of staff at large or public universities would consider changing jobs. A recent survey form over 400 college and university staff provides actionable steps for a brighter future.
Webinar Recordings

Advancing Institutional Sexual Violence Prevention Education Through Faculty Research: Part 1

 Vice President Diorio describes how Student Life (or other institutional areas) can successfully embrace faculty researchers to further institutional goals.
Webinar Recordings

Advancing Institutional Sexual Violence Prevention Education Through Faculty Research: Part 2

 Professor Armstrong describes the college's particular interest in sexual assault prevention and highlights the critical role that academic department chairs can play in designing institutional research partnerships that support faculty interests as well as the institution's.
Webinar Recordings

Advancing Institutional Sexual Violence Prevention Education Through Faculty Research: Part 3

 Dr. Cuomo, a pre-tenure feminist geographer, describes the research project at the heart of Lafayette College's initiative and shares her perspective on the potential for similar institutional research partnerships in higher education.
Webinar Recordings

Advancing Institutional Sexual Violence Prevention Education Through Faculty Research: Part 4

 Ella Goodwin, a Lafayette College senior and co-president of a student organization called Pards Against Sexual Assault, shares a student’s desire for clear institutional planning in areas of critical student concern.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

An Analysis of Instructional Expenditures in U.S. Public Higher Education

 Results indicate that, when adjusted for inflation, instructional expenditures at U.S. public institutions increased from 2004–2015; however, evidence suggests that the rise was more modest and less consistent than may be known.
Report

An Exploration of Lactation Policy and Lactation Facilities Across US Higher Education Campuses (Wellness Rooms)

 SCUP and the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing collaborated in a nationwide study to explore lactation policy and facilities in US colleges and universities. Download the report, learn about the study, and find many other related resources here.
Report

Association Between Accreditation & Integrated Planning

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2019–2020 program. What is the relationship between accreditation and integrated planning? This research delves into this question, examining the perspectives from both the accreditor side (in particular, Middle States Commission on Higher Education) and the institutional side.
Report

Connecting the Dots

 This research evaluates the role the campus built environment plays in student retention and graduation, using the California State University (CSU) campuses as the sample.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Constructing the Interdisciplinary Ivory Tower

 An analysis of strategic and campus plans at 21 research institutions reveals lessons learned regarding planning and nurturing interdisciplinary space.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Conversations With Central Administration

 Central administration is not creating curriculum; rather, it is encouraging the faculty to understand limitations and embrace broad institutional visions.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Creating and Sustaining a Culture of Assessment

 The guiding principles of institutions that have established a culture of assessment can be described as internally driven.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Cultivating the Future of Graduate Education

 Like any individual seeking to make a rational decision, doctoral students must decide if the benefits of earning this degree outweigh the costs.
Report

Designing and Developing Mature, Mission-Aligned Online Academic Programs at Jesuit Institutions

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2019–2020 program. Online education should not be perceived as a distraction of the mission—rather, an enhancement of it.
Conference Presentations

Designing for Academic Success

 Discovery, assessment, and scholarship all play a role in how we can shape spaces to meet educational goals.
Partner Content

Designing for Remembrance, Learning, and Healing
Report

Developing Research Methods for Analyzing Learning Spaces That Can Inform Institutional Missions of Learning and Engagement

 This research report explores the value of applying social science approaches to learning space design, toward understanding how students’s perceptions of campus space affect their learning experience.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Does Space Matter?

 Developing an understanding of the lived student experience in relation to physical space is critical in order for designers to create spaces that work for the mobile, fast-paced, and multifaceted lives of university students.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Enhancing Campus Sustainability Through SITES and Socially Equitable Design

 The Socially Equitable category represents a unique and often missed opportunity for academic institutions to further their commitment to sustainable practices.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Evaluating the Policies That Lead to Substantial Tuition Variation at Public Land-Grant Universities

 Certain state policies relate in consistent ways to relatively high, or low, tuition rates.
Report

Examining Naming Issues on Campus

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2020–2021 program. This report summarizes the specific cases of US institutions that addressed a problematic building or facility naming issue between 2014 and 2021 and what each of them chose to do when faced with this challenging decision.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Expanding College Completion

 It is important to ensure that our nation’s open-access colleges can operate at a level where they can provide seats at the higher education table for all who wish to attend.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Faculty Motivation in Challenging Times

 Financial concern influences many of the factors that make up job satisfaction for faculty in small-to-medium-sized institutions; transparent leadership can mitigate some of these concerns.
Report

Fostering Innovation on Ohio’s Co-Located Campuses Through Collaborative Planning

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2018–2019 program. This research project investigates whether co-located institutions, specifically, and competing institutions of higher education, more generally, could use the concept of “collaborative planning” to achieve mutual success.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

How Strategic Presidential Leadership and Institutional Culture Influenced Fund-Raising Effectiveness at Spelman College

 An explanatory case study qualitatively examines Spelman College using the presidential leadership strategy, decision approaches, and preferred institutional culture types of three past presidents as the embedded units of analysis. Despite novel leadership strategies and unique decision approaches, each president's fund-raising initiatives were successful. Viewing fundraising through these lenses provides a good starting point for institutional planners desiring to develop a research agenda for more effective funding-raising campaigns.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Increasing Alumni Giving at HBCUs

 By reviewing historical perspectives and conducting current-day personal interviews, the authors researched ways to engage HBCU alumni in giving back to their alma maters.
Conference Presentations

Informal Learning Spaces

 This session will bring insights from multi-year multidisciplinary research in a large university system regarding planning and designing informal learning spaces on multiple college campuses.
Report

Institutional Decisions of How to Carry On After a Campus Tragedy

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2017–2018 program. This research project focuses on physical memorials that are the result of a tragic moment in institutional history.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Institutions Can Say They Encourage Staff DEI Professional Development . . .

 This study examined professional development strategies for higher education professionals in the context of the post-George Floyd-era.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Keep on Keepin’ on

 A support program for low-income and/or single-mother students to improve their persistence and retention was revisited 15 years after it had been launched at Charter Oak State College. Did follow-up with the graduates show that the effort had aided the former participants in obtaining their college degree? Had the collaboration between the institution’s Academic Services, Enrollment Management, and Financial Aid departments—and the support they offered—help the students to persevere? Based on survey results, was the program still of value, and what improvements needed to be made?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Maximizing Impact

 Only when diversity is purposefully included in a strategic plan can true diversity strategic planning take place.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Mission-Aligned Online Academic Programs at US Jesuit Institutions

 A custom survey measured the process maturity involved in planning, implementing, and evaluating online offerings that reflected the principles of Ignatian Pedagogy.
Report

P3 Performance for Higher Education

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2016–2017 program. The researcher’s intention was to better understand P3 models and learn how they have performed, possibly generating some useful lessons for how P3 models can be applied with desired outcomes.
Report

Peer Engagement as a Common Resource

 This research project introduces a common means for researchers in space design, education, and information science to develop principles and best practices to improve return on investment in the design of informal learning environments.
Partner Content

Planning Diverse, Equitable, and Inclusive Campus Environments

 Student-centered insights on the design of formal learning environments and informal study and lounge spaces can help campuses increase the sense of belonging and improve learning outcomes for underrepresented students. The author is a SCUP Fellow for the 2020–2021 program. Read her full research project final report which infuses student-centered research into a playbook that can guide universities and design teams through key DEI strategies for planning, designing, and assessing physical campus space.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Prioritizing Campus Diversity Budgets

 Researchers learned that if diversity initiatives were a strategic priority for an institution, the 2020 financial crisis did little to reduce budget allocations.
Report

Research on Learning Space Design

 This report is a collection that summarizes and evaluates how far the field of learning space design has come in identifying the elements that will allow us to thoughtfully design learning spaces and evaluate their impact.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Responsibility Center Budgeting and Management “Lite” in University Finance

 Despite its promise of revenue generation, cost reduction, and a host of other benefits, what is it about RCB/RCM that leads universities to deploy it only partially?
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Scaling Active Learning Classrooms

 A large-scale study uncovered factors that led to successful scaling of active learning spaces and pedagogical approaches in colleges and universities.
Report

Smart Building, Smart Campus

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2019–2020 program. This report explores the hypothesis that user-centered design would better address STEM student needs and could increase the likelihood of a broader adoption of remote labs.
Webinar Recordings

Strategic Planning That’s Truly Strategic

 What do strategic plans do? What does it mean to be “strategic”? These are among the questions addressed in a recent year-long study of 108 active college and university strategic plans. Hear directly from the researchers as they highlight a few important insights they discovered during their analysis, like how to avoid the many pitfalls of strategic planning and ensure a process focused on strategy and outcomes.
Report

Succeeding at Planning Survey Report

 SCUP partnered with the Baker Strategy Group in 2015 to conduct a study with more than 2,200 leaders who plan at colleges and universities. Several themes emerged around planning challenges and how to respond, which are explored in this report.
Report

The Connected Campus

 Campus environments play a vital role in student success. By making changes to their combination of spaces, institutions can respond to the shifts transforming higher education. Elliot Felix shares how colleges and universities can prepare for a more blended world by bringing together the digital and physical, enabling greater diversity and inclusion, and implementing flexible structures, staffing, space, and services. Sponsored Content: Knoll and brightspot strategy.
Report

The Planning and Design of Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Campus Environments

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2020–2021 program. Space is not neutral; we perceive physical environments differently based on our backgrounds, experiences, and abilities. This new, research-based playbook can guide universities and design teams through key strategies and possible metrics relative to DEI to use when planning, designing, and assessing physical campus space.
Webinar Recordings

The Strategic Planning Checklist

 Learn from a research-based analysis of over 250 colleges and universities.
Partner Content

The Traveling Mother

 An analysis of lactation spaces in US airports, led by one of the authors of the SCUP–Penn Nursing joint study of lactation policy and facilities in higher education. Originally published by Building and Environment journal.
Report

Using Alumni Surveys to Assess the Impacts of Active Learning Spaces on Development of Collaboration Skills

 This is a SCUP Fellow Research Project Final Report for the 2018–2019 program. The goal of this research was to evaluate the gains, if any, in the collaboration skill development of students who experienced part of their undergraduate or graduate learning within active learning spaces at Thomas Jefferson University, and to attempt to pinpoint the factors contributing to that.
Conference Recordings

Using SCUPs Campus Facilities Inventory (CFI) to Inform Your Integrated Planning

 In this session, we will explore some of the findings from the 2021 CFI benchmarking and hear from a panel of institutions about changes they are making and using CFI data to inform their planning efforts.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

Walking for Wellness

 Planners at the University of Georgia used “feeling maps” to help identify and create healthier connections for faculty, students, and staff traversing between campus destinations.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

What Constitutes Tribal College and University Sustainability?

 Historical successes and challenges join missions, visions, and strategic plans for a glimpse of what TCU institutions are emphasizing, today and in the future.
Planning for Higher Education Journal

You Belong Here

 Many marginalized student populations don’t see themselves as higher education material. Creating places on campus that reaffirm to them that they belong is vital.