A President Doing Good Things for Iraq Veterans

A president making a difference on many campuses, not just his own:

Several recently wounded veterans have found their way to this snow-coated Ivy League campus, and many more have enrolled in other colleges, thanks in part to a counseling program conceived by Dartmouth President James Wright.

Simultaneously troubled and inspired by the sacrifices soldiers made in the November 2004 battle of Fallujah, President Wright decided to visit military hospitals, walking bed to bed and encouraging veterans to think about college. He says college opened up a whole new world for him after a stint in the Marines as a young man.

"In the course of these conversations they would ask me for advice," Wright says, with questions ranging from how to transfer credits to whether particular campuses had elevators. What they needed, he realized, was ongoing college counseling.

Working with the American Council on Education (ACE), Wright helped raise money to set up counselors at several military hospitals. Since April 2007, they have worked with more than 250 veterans and family members, and about half are now enrolled on college campuses or are taking online courses while at the hospital.

The Future of Scholarly Communication

This is the first reporting out on the beginning of a thoughtful process of looking at this area of higher education, undertaken by the Center for Studies in Higher Education with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The link is to an HTML page, with the link to the report itself (PDF) in the upper right hand corner of the HTML page:

Our discussions included the importance of distinguishing between informal dissemination and formal publishing and the challenges that each presents to the university community. The harsh economic realities of high-quality formal scholarly publication, not least of which are managing peer review and editorial processes, were emphasized. Understanding disciplinary needs was cited as paramount throughout the discussions; the needs and traditions of scholars in the sciences and humanities, as well as among myriad disciplines, will likely demand different dissemination and publishing models and solutions. An additional theme that emerged was acknowledging the diverse forms electronic dissemination takes in the academy and the need to foster a spectrum of alternatives in publication forms, business models, and the peer review process. Budgetary and academic freedom concerns were explored as well. Regarding the expensive infrastructure required for electronic dissemination and publishing, it was agreed that there is enormous duplication among the university press, IT, and the library. The failure to leverage their respective assets, which are already paid for by universities, will be a stumbling block for coordination and cooperation among these key players in the future.

Higher Education Space: Future Directions

This article is available on line by clicking here or on its title in the following citation: Paul Temple and Ronald Barnett. 2007. Higher Education Space: Future Directions. Planning for Higher Education. 36(1): 5–15.

This paper reports on a study of changing demands for space in United Kingdom (UK) higher education. Physical spaces that universities require are related to their functions in complex ways, and the connections between space and academic performance are not well understood. No simple algorithm can calculate a single university's space needs, but a number of identified drivers frame space considerations. Space designations are blurring, increasingly multi-functional, and exploited more efficiently. The planning of institutional estates must be incorporated into strategic planning initiatives if institutions are to achieve their academic objectives.

Capturing Learning Moments Digitally

A nice compilation of lessons learned, tips, and tricks:

Wherever there has been a black board, a white board, or a flip chart, there have been messages left in desperation warning those next in a classroom not to touch what was written or drawn or diagrammed on the particular surface provided. For those coming into the room to teach, it can be both annoying and frustrating.

How can alternative surfaces be found? Who would know if I erased it? This is impolite and not at all collegial! Whatever the actual words expressed, the feelings are legitimate particularly when faced with your own group of students with whom you have to work for the next 50 minutes or so and for whom your best diagrams or notes must be provided.

Innovative Studies: Changing Minds for a Changing World

Innovative studies programs are being looked at, developed, and tested. This article is full of pointers to case studies and innovating organizations:

The difficulty for our existing educational systems in a new global playing field is not only in teaching students to think in different ways and ask different questions, but also in learning how to do so ourselves. Everyone beats the drum of thinking outside the box, but what does it truly mean to think differently? How do we cultivate innovative thinking as organizations? Can we redesign, rearrange, or rethink our organizational boxes so we don’t have to work so hard to think outside of them? If “innovation will be the single most important factor in determining America’s success through the 21st century,” as the Innovate America report and so many other pundits maintain, how do we nurture creativity and innovation during the education process Colleges and universities around the world are beginning to address such queries by creating programs aimed squarely at teaching expertise in innovation, most commonly linked to business and technology.

Is Everything Trending Toward Being 'Free'?

How does this trend touch higher education? This is a good article to stimulate your thinking:

For good reason: It's now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned. Storage now joins bandwidth (YouTube: free) and processing power (Google: free) in the race to the bottom. Basic economics tells us that in a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost. There's never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing.

One of the old jokes from the late-'90s bubble was that there are only two numbers on the Internet: infinity and zero. The first, at least as it applied to stock market valuations, proved false. But the second is alive and well. The Web has become the land of the free.

Fulfilling the Promise of Open Content

A passionate argument for more, and more planned, open content:

Recently, experts in education, open content– along with alternative-copyright advocates and Internet innovators – gathered in Cape Town to explore how to spark a global revolution in teaching and learning in which educators and students could be much more actively engaged as creators, users, and adapters of content. In their Cape Town declaration, they argued that this transformation can only occur if educators, authors, publishers, and higher education institutions make more materials available and accessible for public use. To speed acceptance of open content, the declaration calls on administrators to incorporate open education into policy decisions, making sharing of educational resources a new priority. The document emphasizes that open education is fundamentally about strengthening all scholarship and teaching through collaboration—and developing the technologies to make that happen. Open education should be a “win” for all faculty members and constitutes “a wise investment in teaching and learning for the 21st century.”

***

[F]or the OER movement to have greater impact on higher education, colleges and universities need to create incentives to reward faculty for sharing their content. This might include developing new types of sabbaticals focused on creating the first generation of open educational resources. Foundations could even fund “remixing communities” focused on expanding and refining open educational resources.

In addition to faculty, whose scholarship can advance immeasurably faster with broad adoption of OER, students stand to benefit enormously. Open education holds the promise of opening the door of higher education to millions. For example, open content can reduce the need to purchase expensive textbooks, which can constitute up to three-fourths of community-college students’ spending. But even these benefits are not the final yield of the OER movement, which holds the promise of nothing less than finally ensuring that access to the highest-quality education is a right of all people, everywhere.

What to Measure and Reward at Community Colleges

George Boggs (AACC) and Marlene Seltzer (Jobs for the Future) report on a Washington State initiative of interest:

Over the years, a number of states have experimented with financial incentives based on performance measures like graduation rates; but a newly approved program in Washington state takes a bold and different approach. The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges decided that institutions might be more motivated to improve performance by rewards for student progress past key 'momentum points,' as well as for completion. Under the new plan, Washington will reward community and technical colleges for every student who achieves particular research-based benchmarks leading up to and including graduation.

You can learn more about the Student Achievement Initiative here.

Wanted: Someone Who Knows Nothing About the Job

He's baack: Stanley Fish has spent much of the last year stirring things up in a number of topical areas. This time he takes on searches for senior administrators in higher education:

The truth is that there are no perfectly straightforward senior administrative searches. They are all a bit cooked, and often they serve more as window dressing than as genuinely deliberative processes. Indeed, given that search committees are always advisory, those asked to serve on them should be aware that the work they do will quite possibly be to no effect, either because a decision had been made before the process ever began or because the ball is taken away and given to someone else just as the goal is approached. (The phrase “university service” takes on new meaning for those who agree to participate in this piece of theater.) That’s just the way it is, and it’s not a matter of blame, but a consequence of a process that straddles two worlds, the world of teaching and scholarship and the world of high-stakes finance and politics.

Commercial Education Companies Scrambling to Cope With Credit Squeeze

The subprime trouble leaks into everything: "Not everyone believes that retrenchment in commercial education would be bad. 'High-risk borrowers with low academic achievement who are pursuing post-secondary training should not go to expensive, low-quality proprietary schools,' said Michael Dannenberg, director for education policy at the New America Foundation in Washington. 'They would be better off going to community colleges, which are lower cost and open enrollment, for the most part.'"

Downtown: A Community-Campus Collaborative Course to Prepare Students for Community-Based Research

A case study of the development of a service learning program in Trenton, New Jersey: "The Trenton Youth Community-Based Research Corps (TYCRC) at the College of New Jersey engages undergraduate students in research that helps make a difference in the lives of children - particularly those living in poverty. The students and I partner with nonprofit social service agencies that lack the resources to hire external researchers to conduct community needs and assets assessments or to study the effectiveness of their programs. Such research is increasingly necessary for the economic survival of nonprofit community-based organizations, not to mention for developing effective programs and services."

How to Reengineer an Engineering Major at a Women's College

Curriculum change with attention paid to gender: "The first women's college to offer an engineering degree, Smith is forging new paths in a field that's eager to swell its ranks in the United States. Women receive only 20 percent of bachelor's degrees in engineering, according to a new report by the National Science Board (NSB). Like a handful of other liberal arts colleges, Smith is producing graduates who've had a different type of engineering education‚ one that goes beyond technical training to focus on a broader context for finding solutions to humanity's problems; one that emphasizes ethics and communication; one so flexible that about half the students study abroad, which is rare, despite the multinational nature of many engineering jobs."

The Lab of the Future

Facilities Manager's January-February 2008 issue is focused on labs. Pertinent articles include: "The Lab of the Future: Building Facilities that Attract Premier Faculty and Students"; "Busting the Limits of Science Laboratory Economics"; "Focusing On the Invisible" (Nanotech); and "Reducing the Risk of Dangerous Chemicals Getting into the Wrong Hands."

The Importance of International Education to Development in the Middle East

Why are American institutions so focused on the Middle East?

In the tradition of the universities of the Middle Ages, today’s universities bring together a diversity of peoples from many countries as scholars and students. Approximately twenty thousand students, representing more than seventy nationalities and most of the world’s confessional groups, are attending classes at the four American universities in the Middle East this year. Among the matriculated are the future leaders of their societies and the world. They are studying medicine, pharmacology, architecture, modern communications, law, information technology, business administration, modern languages, economics, and government - all key to advancing development in their societies and integrating them into a world of wider opportunity. They are learning to build bridges, literally and figuratively.

When the Medium Illustrates the Content: Exploiting the Unique Features of Online Communication

This article "present[s] the results of an evaluation of an online undergraduate course in psychology that adheres to the seven widely accepted principles of effective online teaching and suggests an eighth principle: using the unique benefits and constraints of online communication to prompt critical thinking about various facets of human communication, psychology, sociology, or human-computer interface design. Formative evaluation of this new course, carried out by Foertsch over three semesters, showed that it benefited from an illuminating association between its content—the cognitive and social experiences of people with autism—and its online delivery method, in which students communicated with each other and the professor in asynchronous and synchronous forums that removed the nonverbal social cues present in face-to-face communication. By applying the seven principles to the design of this course, Gernsbacher created a learning environment that 87% of 105 upper-division students rated as "extremely" or "very" useful in developing their critical thinking skills and a course that a number of students described as one of the best they had ever taken."

Facebook Applications: The Game Changer?

Subtitled, "New ways higher ed institutions can use social networking," this article takes a look at how some institutions have begun using new capabilities Facebook provides:

In November 2007, Facebook launched a series of new features including 'Pages,' which allow colleges, universities, and other schools to create a presence and recruit 'fans' among the users of the popular social networking website. Until then, institutions as well as organizations, big companies, or even small businesses were not really welcome on the popular college student online hangout. All were barred from setting up a user profile by Facebook's terms of use. Some institutional offenders even had their accounts taken down, losing all the connections established over time with their Facebook 'friends.' Before Facebook Pages, institutions could only set up groups, the same groups used by the aficionados of the wildest beer parties or the proponents of the weirdest campus causes. Within a month after the launch of the new feature, more than 700 Facebook Pages were created by institutions, alumni associations, university offices, and college departments.

Private Colleges' Crime Records Going Public?

This brief article is published along with a 2-minute audio stream of the reporter discussing "whether college campus police should be held to the same public access requirements as other police forces. . . . For their part, private universities say they are not public agencies and must act to protect the privacy of students and staff. But critics argue that public relations play at least as big a role. 'For PR purposes, colleges want to perpetuate the impression that their campuses are crime-free enclaves . . . . Honestly, no one believes that. Everyone believes that a campus with 20,000 or 30,000 young people on it is going to have some crime. It's not even an effective charade.'"

A Liberal Education Scorecard

The experience of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in developing a liberal education scorecard as part of its re-accreditation self study: "To guide our own evolution and development from disciplinary experts focused on improving our teaching in computer science to liberal educators focused on improving student learning on a broader level, we have developed a visual tool that supports both intentionality and accountability in the design of a student-centered program of study (see fig. 1). The tool - which we call the “liberal education scorecard,” or just “scorecard” for short - can be used to help an individual instructor, a department or program, or even an entire institution maintain focus on the learning outcomes of a liberal education. The scorecard is not specific to any particular discipline or to any particular curricular model. It does not attempt to describe how an instructor (or department or institution) delivers a liberal education, but rather it provides a format to guide, assess, and document the development of student learning.

Creating and Sustaining a Campus Emergency Management Plan That Works

Very specific lessons learned by Monroe Community College (NY):

If your campus has not adopted the Incident Command System, you need to do so. If you have not become compliant with the new National Incident Management System, you need to do so. MCC’s plan is only as good as the training and resources that are committed to support it. If you have not provided the training or resources necessary to implement your campus emergency management plan, you need to do so. Our ability to appropriately respond to and recover from a major incident or disaster will be based in large part upon our leadership and commitment to creating and sustaining an emergency management plan that works.

Union College: After the Tornados

This was the third time in a decade that Union College has had tornado damage: "Nearly a week has passed since last Tuesday's storm system ripped through the mid-South, leaving a deadly trail of destruction across five states, including Tennessee, where the Baptist-based liberal arts school took a direct hit from an EF-4 tornado with winds topping 200 m.p.h. In awed voices, students run through the numbers and count God's blessings: 3,200 students, 1,200 on campus when it struck, 13 trapped, 51 injured – no fatalities. The buildings can be replaced, and many will have to be – 40 percent of the dorms were destroyed and 32 of the 33 buildings dotting the 290-acre campus sustained an estimated $47 million in damage."

League for Innovation Sustainability Symposium Proceedings

"In October, 2007, Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, hosted the first League for Innovation Sustainability Symposium. Eighteen League Member colleges participated in the symposium, which explored ways community colleges are working to make their campuses and communities not only more environmentally responsible, but also as self-sustaining as possible. In this section of the League website, you will find session titles and descriptions and, for many sessions, links to PDF versions of presenters' PowerPoint presentations. Some sessions also have links to documents providing additional information about the session or topic."

Leadership Transitions: Keys for Success

A useful look at leadership transition, not at the presidential level, but at the top of an academic administrative unit:

In a sense, all eyes are on the new person, with some followers wishing for success and, in many cases, others pointing out the weaknesses that might portend failure. The new leader feels tremendous pressure to secure early wins. . . . A leadership transition poses dangers and challenges for both leaders and followers. While each party naturally focuses on the organization's success, time needs to be spent on how the new relationships will develop and mature into effective working relationships. Focusing on effective decision making and implementation protocols is essential. Hallmarks of successful transitions also include supporting leaders and followers and assisting new leaders by challenging their views. By focusing on the four elements of interaction suggested in this article, leaders and followers alike can avoid some of the difficulties of transition times and make the period productive and smooth for the entire organization.

Design for a New Generation: Trends for Student Organization Suites

In this article forecasting trends, Lawrence J. Payne reports on interviews with "14 U.S. institutions about the use and design of student organization spaces. The total number of registered student organizations represented by the institutions interviewed was approximately 3,600; the average of those registered student organizations that had assigned office space within student life facilities was approximately 11 percent."

Workforce Development and Higher Education Productivity - Reports From NCHEMS

The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) regularly publishes useful reports in this area. Several from 2007 are available on its website. They include: Emerging Policy Triangle: Economic Development, Workforce Development and Education; Good Policy, Good Practice. Improving Outcomes and Productivity in Higher Education: A Guide for Policymakers; Increasing Productivity: The Imperative Facing Higher Education (As Seen from Outside) (Presentation); and Mounting Pressures Facing the U.S. Workforce and the Increasing Need for Adult Education and Literacy (Presentation.)

Workforce Development and Higher Education Productivity - Reports From NCHEMS

The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) regularly publishes useful reports in this area. Several from 2007 are available on its website. They include: Emerging Policy Triangle: Economic Development, Workforce Development and Education; Good Policy, Good Practice. Improving Outcomes and Productivity in Higher Education: A Guide for Policymakers; Increasing Productivity: The Imperative Facing Higher Education (As Seen from Outside) (Presentation); and Mounting Pressures Facing the U.S. Workforce and the Increasing Need for Adult Education and Literacy (Presentation.)

Arts Space of the Future Exhibition

RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects, has a current exhibition titled Arts Space of the Future, and is sharing eleven visions of such space on its Architecture.com website. Enjoy this visually stimulating online exhibit.

'International Education' Resources from the American Council on Education

The American Council on Education's (ACE) set of resources on International Education is short, but good to know about. It includes an issue brief titled Students on the Move: The Future of International Students in the United States; three reports, titled Apples and Oranges in the Flat World: A Layperson's Guide to International Comparisons of Postsecondary Education (2007), Public Experience, Attitudes, and Knowledge: A Report on Two National Surveys About International Education (2001), and Internationalization of U.S. Higher Education: Preliminary Status Report 2000; and International Student Enrollment in U.S. Colleges and Universities Declines, an article from The Presidency (2005).

Building an Economic-Development Strategy

If there is a single topic we most hear from reporters and other representatives of the news media this year, it is that of colleges and universities as local and regional economic engines. Recently, The Chronicle of Higher Education hosted, Leslie Boney, the top economic development official at the University of North Carolina system, in an online "brown bag" about:

how colleges can combine their educational missions with the expectation of becoming economic saviors as well. . . . [H]ow can colleges and universities work in their local economies in ways that are responsive and meaningful? How do institutions develop a strategic plan for dealing with long-term economic challenges while managing short-term expectations of the university as economic savior? And how do they encourage faculty members to marry their research goals with real-world needs?" Read that transcript here!

Related: As more evidence that this is a hot topic for planners, you can read the abstracts from these related concurrent sessions at SCUP-42 (July, Montreal) this summer:

• Collaborative Facilities Strategies
• Planning and Design in the Realm Between Campus and City;
• Re-aligning the Business of Higher Education with Local/State Economies;
• Steps to Successful Partnerships for Performing Arts Centers; and
• Stimulating and Sustaining Regional Economies Through Workforce Development.

Book: The Age of American Unreason

Read this New York Times article about the book, The Age of American Unreason, but purchase it at Amazon.com through this link. (No extra charge to you, SCUP gets a 5 percent fee.)

But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that "too much learning can be a dangerous thing'" and anti-rationalism ("the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion") have fused in a particularly insidious way. Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don't think it matters.

Learning Spaces: An EDUCAUSE e-Book

"Space, whether physical or virtual, can have a significant impact on learning. Learning Spaces focuses on how learner expectations influence such spaces, the principles and activities that facilitate learning, and the role of technology from the perspective of those who create learning environments: faculty, learning technologists, librarians, and administrators. Information technology has brought unique capabilities to learning spaces, whether stimulating greater interaction through the use of collaborative tools, videoconferencing with international experts, or opening virtual worlds for exploration. This e-book represents an ongoing exploration as we bring together space, technology, and pedagogy to ensure learner success.

Please note: In addition to the e-book's core chapters on learning space design principles (chapters 1–13) , this site also offers case studies illustrating those principles (chapters 15–43), including links to examples of innovative learning spaces. The entire collection is complete and available for printing as individual chapters or the entire book. The printed book is available through Amazon.com."

Rethinking Academic Technology Leadership in an Era of Change

Writing in EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Michael J. Albright and John Nworie, share this excellent article, which also includes good background and terminology definitions: "The senior academic technology officer provides leadership across instructional technology initiatives, yet few campuses have a SATO position in place":

At the campus level, the infrastructure for supporting learning technologies has undergone a significant transformation over the past couple of decades, particularly since the introduction of Internet-based instructional technologies. . . . We propose that each campus should have a senior academic technology officer (SATO) to provide strategic leadership and direction for academic technology applications, initiatives, and support services across the broad spectrum of instructional technology functions; provide leadership in planning and policy related to curriculum development, e-learning, and other instructional technology initiatives that facilitate achievement of the institution's strategic goals; and build partnerships among campus academic support units to work collaboratively toward achievement of institutional goals that can be addressed through instructional technology.

How Do You Make Bologna?

Enjoy this audio stream of David Crosier, project Director at the European University Association and lead researcher on the Trends project, which tracks Bologna Process developments. He explains what some of the current activities and changes have been as the European countries work to align their higher education systems.

Flagship State Colleges: The Big Picture

Writing in University Business, James Martin and James E. Samels, provide a 30,000-foot view of these flagship institutions:

Today a new breed of state colleges has emerged alongside these more traditional teachers colleges - a more nimble, market-driven generation of contemporary state colleges. These forward-looking, public four-year colleges and universities are uniquely positioned to partner with their public and private two-year college colleagues to provide a progressive, stair-stepped pathway to baccalaureate and graduate school completion. . . . Leaders at these entrepreneurial institutions have chosen a variety of paths for achieving state college 'best of breed' status - each with its own special academic twist. . . . Conceived and chartered as small normal schools over a century ago, these and other aspiring state colleges have achieved flagship status through academic program diversification, degree elevation, niche marketing, and by partnering with mission complementary institutions, businesses, government, and the nonprofit sector.

A New Distance Ed Posse Comes Calling on Washington

Bernard Luskin writes, in this Executive Briefing from The Greentree Gazette, of a recent meeting in Washington called the "President's Forum:

Laura Palmer Noone is the former president of the University of Phoenix [and once a SCUP plenary speaker]. She helped set the stage for a confab in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in January. The meeting place was strategically chosen by representatives of online learning organizations . . . . Noone set the meeting’s tone by speaking intelligently about the growing interest and participation of adults in new definitions of time, place and money in higher education. Online learning is visible and growing throughout all of higher education. It’s a topic on the agenda of every education and investment conference. Three clearly visible trends have emerged: (1) The growing involvement of for-profit colleges and universities; (2) Rapidly growing adult online enrollments; and (3) Newly spawned complexities and potential intra-industry feuds.

Learning to Raise Money — as an Academic Administrator

In this article from Inside Higher Ed, Michael Bugeja shares 10 best fund-raising practices useful for administrators who never thought they'd need to raise money:

Unhappy with budget cuts and reversions, I had reached that stage of academic life when I had to decide my fate: Make do with my sliver of the legislative pie chart and fade into retirement, or chart a bolder plan of my own. . . . That plan was to work with the ISU Foundation to enhance programming, boost professional development and maintain first-rate facilities. Taking in part what I had learned at [Oklahoma State], we have codified 10 best fund-raising practices . . . for chairs, directors and deans.

Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad

According to this article, "Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad," in The New York Times by Tamar Lewin, universities are "following the money."

The American system of higher education, long the envy of the world, is becoming an important export as more universities take their programs overseas.

In a kind of educational gold rush, American universities are competing to set up outposts in countries with limited higher education opportunities. American universities — not to mention Australian and British ones, which also offer instruction in English, the lingua franca of academia - are starting, or expanding, hundreds of programs and partnerships in booming markets like China, India and Singapore.

January/February Issue of AGB's "Trusteeship"

This great magazine is ordinarily behind password protection, but the current issue is not (PDF), so we recommend that you take advantage of it and see what your trustees are reading. Some articles in this issue include: "Creating a Desired Future," about a "results-oriented strategic planning process" at Wheelock College and "Should States Invest in Higher Education as an Economic Development Strategy?" - among many others.

New Book: Managing Facilities for Results. Optimizing Space for Services

We found this new book at the National Center for Educational Facilities:

Hands-on workbook discusses how to prioritize new services that need space, make plans and identify an appropriate location, present the case to funding authorities, conduct a 'gap analysis,' find resources to reallocate and see what new items are needed, and identify building professionals to assist with alterations. It's supplemented with 23 workforms to support the information and collection process. Three toolkits provide technical assistance on calculating square footage, assessing the message, and complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. With examples ranging from small to large small public libraries, the process is equally valuable for school, special, and academic librarians who are faced with similar space repurposing challenges.

The Visionary, the Architects and Ryerson

Quite an interesting story, a bit more in depth than usually found in a student newspaper, about the master planning process and redevelopment of the campus at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario:

'The Master Planners were like sponges, they were taking in ideas from the community, they had their own ideas - they're professionals, they have lots of experience to bring and they started to shape [the plan],' Grayson says. 'They would take it back to their firm and thrash it out and bring it back.'

Into the Streets at Rhodes College & Its Community

Into the streets at Rhodes College is not quite such a threatening thing as it sounds:

Rhodes College's campus in midtown Memphis, Tennessee, has a fence around it - a literal dividing line between the college and the city. But that doesn't mean the 1,700 students at Rhodes live on an island, cut off from the community outside. In fact, just the opposite is true. Rhodes has had remarkable success in cultivating a culture of service and making community-based scholarship a staple of students' lives. 'Service is just what you do - it's the norm. Students pick up on that when they first come to visit,' explains Tiffany Merritt, Rhodes' community service coordinator. Expectations of and opportunities for service are woven into departments, offices, and even into the curriculum itself, which was recently revamped to include skills - such as historical analysis - that can be satisfied in part through service learning.

Are Americans Afraid of the Outdoors?

Yikes, we've been reading a little about this, and we're glad people are paying attention:

The solution may be as simple as getting kids into the woods or other natural areas in the company of parents, grandparents or other relatives. 'This isn't a bitter pill,' Louv says. "In order to give kids some semblance of unorganized activity in nature, we're probably going to have to organize a lot of it. It's a paradox we'll have to deal with with a sense of humor.' *** Putting more nature back into humanity's urban environments might not hurt either. 'Green urbanism is about efficiency, saving energy. That's important but ultimately it's kind of boring,' Louv says. 'Biophilic design is the idea that when we design nature into our cities really interesting things begin to happen.'

Familiarity Breeds Accuracy: Working With the Numbers Frequently

Familiarity Breeds Accuracy: Working With the Numbers Frequently: "[At Duke, t]hat may change. 'We're beginning to think about producing a quarterly facilities report,' says Green, 'which would include the status of capital projects - their financing, their funding, and where they are relative to their budgets.' MIT has a process in place for improving interim reporting. Each quarter, a small group of people in a particular area, such as general receivables, will take an in-depth look at how to improve reporting. Last year, improvements focused on land, buildings, and equipment; this year, Emmons plans to target net asset accounting. 'We view interim reporting as a work in progress,' she says. 'We're always trying to have the reporting take less time, have the numbers be of higher quality, and have a high comfort level with the numbers we're producing.'"

Pandemic Preparation: Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst

This article, from Facilities Manager, begins with some term definitions, like "virus," and then moves into practical checklists and planning for campuses to be ready for a potential pandemic. Its authors bring their expertise from West Virginia University and the University of Missouri.

It is better to be ready - even for a circumstance that doesn’t exist yet—than to have that circumstance become reality and find your organization totally overwhelmed by it. To quote the director of physical plant at Ole Miss, “we are not the University of Mississippi’s main mission . . . our role is to support the school’s mission by thinking ahead to three, four, or five years down the road and asking ourselves whether or not we have sustainability.” The very nature of our work demands that we be flexible, viable and sustainable in thinking, doing and planning for the future. Bottom line, start looking toward the future of your organization and be prepared.

Green Building Reaches the Tipping Point in Higher Education

A nice report summary from APPA (PDF):

In August of 2007, Building Design & Construction magazine surveyed a scientifically drawn sample of members from three major higher education professional organizations: APPA; the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP); and the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). Together, the three groups represent a diverse workforce within the U.S. higher education sector. Recipients of the online survey were asked to gauge their level of knowledge, interest, and action with regard to green buildings and sustainable practices at their institution.

Principal findings of the survey

Nearly nine in ten (85%) respondents said they have incorporated sustainable design and green building principles in recent building projects, and just 5% said they have no plans to incorporate green in future building projects.

Both SCUP and APPA members have seen a sharp increase in green building projects, compared to 2004. About half (47%) of SCUP respondents said they have incorporated
sustainable strategies “quite extensively” in recent building projects, up from 26% in 2004. While 42% of APPA members have implemented green extensively, up from 14% in 2004. The green adoption rate among AASHE members is at a healthy level as well, with 86% having incorporated sustainable design in recent projects, 40% having done so extensively.

About half (47%) of respondents said they are willing to pay up to 5% more for green, and about one-fifth said they would fork out an additional 6 to 10%. Just 9% of respondents across the three groups said a cost premium for green is not acceptable.

Relatively low-cost approaches for reducing energy consumption—including energy management, automated lighting controls, and daylighting - topped the list of sustainable action items that have been implemented or are planned for upcoming projects. Strategies for improving indoor air quality are also popular.

[more (PDF)]

Baby Boomers, Back to Campus . . . To Live

Lots of case studies in this article by Jean Marie Angelo, including some stories of things that didn't work out:

Real estate developers and higher ed administrators now are banking on the hope that this age group, now ages 43 to 61, wants to come back to campus - only this time they won't be rushing fraternities or leading protest marches. They will have plenty of comfortable living space, great rooms for entertaining, special studios onsite for art and writing projects, conference rooms for taking classes, and field trips to nearby museums. Special on-campus communities designed just for them will make this easy.

Holistic Building Assessment, Tracking Tools, and Techniques

This article includes case studies from Florida State University and the University of Rochester, as well as a checklist of important issues to present to campus leaders:

New campus buildings get celebrated - except in one particular office. 'The maintenance department just cringes. They know they just went in the hole,' says Matt Munter, senior vice president of facility assessment firm EMG, which conducts facility condition audits. After all, rarely does an older building go away (or maintenance staff increase) when a new one opens.

Polytechnic U and NYU: A Merger on Whose Terms?

Scott Jaschik dives into this likely merger, its opposition, and some of its consequences:

The board of Polytechnic University is expected on Thursday to vote to approve a plan for the institution to merge into New York University — a move that supporters say will give Poly access to the considerable resources of NYU and could give NYU a much desired base in engineering.

Beyond that surface logic for a deal, however, is an intense controversy that has led to unusually strong charges being leveled by some Polytechnic trustees against the university administration and board leaders. The dissident trustees have circulated a memo to the full board, along with many supporting documents, asking that the vote be delayed because of significant flaws in both the proposed agreement and the process by which it was reviewed.

Endowments Widen a Higher Education Gap

In light of the wider sustainability discussion in higher education, this 30,000-foot-view of the haves and have nots, with regard to endowments, and some of the potential consequences, is worth a read:

The result is that America’s already stratified system of higher education is becoming ever more so, and the chasm is creating all sorts of tensions as the less wealthy colleges try to compete. Even state universities are going into fund-raising overdrive and trying to increase endowments to catch up.

The wealthiest colleges can tap their endowments to give substantial financial aid to families earning $180,000 or more. They can lure star professors with high salaries and hard-to-get apartments. They are starting sophisticated new research laboratories, expanding their campuses and putting up architecturally notable buildings.

Other campuses are fighting to retain faculty, and some, with less cachet, are charging tuition that rival Harvard’s and scrambling to explain why their financial aid cannot match the most prosperous of the Ivy League.

Lots of 'Green" Stuff Happening

Our friends at the Association of College Unions, International (ACUI) have an all-day symposium, Enacting Sustainable Initiatives on Campus, coming up in New Orleans on March 15, as part of their 88th annual conference.

Inside Higher Ed has begun a Getting to Green Blog. The first post talks about the aftermath of the recent Focus the Nation event and the potentially imminent demise of the cafeteria tray.

More than 100 people have joined the Campus Sustainability Planning Network, a "facebook-like" virtual space created by SCUP as a pilot to see if higher education is ready for such a thing. Are you? Maybe if you've been putting off trying Facebook, you would be more comfortable trying this out?