"Academics Will Fight Over Money and Kill Over Space"

Scott Carlson has provided SCUP with a non-protected link to his recent article on space management. He leads in by writing about SCUPer Deborah L. Blythe, of Pennsylvania State University:

She manages, assesses, and helps to distribute some 23 million square feet of classroom space, offices, meeting rooms, and laboratories on Penn State's 19 campuses. Now and then she grabs her digital camera, her keys to any room here on the flagship campus, and goes on a 'walkabout' to look at a space that might be underutilized or outdated. Department heads, protective of every closet and cranny, sometimes tremble to see her coming. Once, she says, a department took a room that had been stacked with chairs and garbage and arranged it to look lived-in, complete with nameplates of nonexistent people. The ruse didn't work.