Tag Archives: Campus Planning

The Band Plays On

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Band PlayingTwo distinctly different views of reality were on display at the 2014 Society of College and University Planning conference: traditional and nontraditional – bundled and unbundled. The cognitive dissonance was there for all to see and hear.

The traditional view bundles residential experience with marching bands and the book-lined study. The nontraditional view unbundles all of this, offering credit hours and progress toward a degree without dorms, touchdowns or libraries. This all makes sense as long as they are serving different audiences – different customers interested in different value propositions. When they need to appeal to the same customer this cognitive dissonance will take the form of economic competition to squeeze what Rich DeMillo calls the middle. Continue reading →

Classrooms: Bigger, Flatter, Faster and Fewer

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Even in the digitally driven future of higher education, three-dimensional classroom spaces will be needed.  They won’t be used in the traditional manner and they won’t be the traditional kind.  They will be bigger, flatter, faster and there will be fewer classrooms for the same number of students.

Lectures will continue, but already they occupy less class time.  Pedagogy is changing in and outside of the classroom.  In the classroom, change is not disabling the lecture; it is enabling discussion, teamwork and practical applications. Whether fast or slow, the rate of change is limited by each institution’s culture.  Differences in institutional culture will become evident in the structure of classrooms and what happens there. Continue reading →

Guest Commentary by Duke Oakley

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The long term survivability of traditional higher education is in doubt.  MOOC’s, SPOC’s and digital disruption are ideas prominently in play.  Yet the value of physical campus, however difficult to define, endures.  Duke Oakley, former UCLA Campus Architect and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Design and Construction, has written an extensive Guest Commentary on the continued relevance of the college campus. [link]

Charles Warner Oakley is a graduate of Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania.  From 1986 to 2000, he was Campus Architect and Assistant Vice Chancellor for Design and Construction at the University of California – Los Angeles.  During his tenure, he guided the planning of the campus and the design of more than 4.5 million square feet of new building area and renovation of more than 3 million square feet.

“Duke” as his friends and colleagues know him, is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and an emeritus member of the Association of University Architects.