College Planning and Management, 2014
When a partnership between San Jose State University and online learning platform Udacity shut down in 2013, critics gleefully proclaimed the death of the MOOC — the Massive Online Open Courses that promised an Ivy-quality education, via the Internet, to millions of people around the world. But this high-profile flop masked a larger shift that shows no sign of letting up.
College Planning and Management, 2015
The results of current research, including ongoing trends and preferences, are included in this annual report.
College Planning and Management, 2015
Faced with today’s economic pressures, university officials and developers of state-funded education projects are challenged with providing high-quality buildings for students that stay within budget while meeting tough safety and performance standards. For this reason, wood is increasingly becoming the material of choice for student housing. This is showcased by several projects across the U.S. where wood framing was chosen for its flexibility, affordability and speed of construction.
College Planning and Management, 2015
Sustainability on campus is more than just turning off lights or instituting a recycling program. Schools have gone “all in” with sustainability: offering degrees in it, integrating it into their operations, updating their facilities and pushing the cutting edge in numerous aspects of campus operations. Often the results are groundbreaking; sometimes they make financial sense, occasionally they are problematic. Here, three schools share their sustainability successes and failures.
College Planning and Management, 2015
With more than 20 years of using technology and process to create facilities that are efficient, safe and productive for their occupants, intelligent buildings are not new. College Planning & Management recently caught up with Kerry Anne Dixon, LEED-AP BD+C, a project manager with a bachelor’s in architecture who serves as coordinator of Sustainable Design and Construction for Iowa State University in Ames, where she has worked since 1995, about the efficiencies gained and how intelligent buildings are living up to expectations on her campus. A member of APPA: Leadership in Educational Facilities, Construction Owners Association of America (COAA), and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), for which she is the university’s representative, here’s what she has to say.
College Planning and Management, 2015
Imagine a parking lot without puddles, a bike trail that requires less salt to keep ice-free in winter, roads that redirect stormwater and filter it back into local aquifers. Porous asphalt pavements can do all this and more.
Porous asphalt pavements with stone reservoirs are a multifunctional low-impact development (LID) technology that integrates ecological and environmental goals for a site with land development goals. They are constructed using the same equipment and techniques as conventional asphalt pavements, and provide a cost-effective means for improving the sustainability of facilities.
College Planning and Management, 2015
With the passing of California’s Clean Energy Jobs Act (Proposition 39), Chris Manis, vice chancellor of Facilities Management for the San Diego Community College District (SDCCD), saw a golden opportunity to finance facility upgrades across his campus system. A state program providing funding for improving energy efficiency, Prop 39 makes available up to $550 million annually to eligible educational agencies to pay for energy projects with a strong return on investment.
College Planning and Management, 2015
The Waukesha Campus of Waukesha County Technical College (WCTC) in Waukesha, WI, includes a service building, which housed a student center in need of new life.
“The cave-like environment of the student gathering area was very oppressive. It was truly incredible to see the transformation of the space once the Solatube units were installed,” says Keith Johnson, owner of Brighter Concepts.
Dubbed “the cave” for its dark and gloomy atmosphere, the student center was unpopular with students. With a budget of $600,000, the school sought to transform the dark and dreary environment into a bright and cheerful place where students would want to congregate.
The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention Funded by the U.S. Department of Education
Institutions of higher education (IHEs) are often regarded as sanctuaries, protected environments where young people explore great ideas in a collegial atmosphere and make lifelong friendships. Consequently, incidents of violence on campus are particularly shocking for the extended campus community, evoking questions about whether there is any safe haven. An abundance of evidence indicates that in fact campuses are not immune from such incidents. There are many types of campus violence—including rape, assault, fighting, hazing, dating violence, sexual harassment, hate and bias-related violence, stalking, rioting, disorderly conduct, property crime, and even self-harm and suicide. While grappling with these complex problems is challenging, lessons learned from community-based prevention research point to a set of best practices to guide the development, implementation, and evaluation of interventions to improve campus health and safety.
Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, 2008
Pervasive media images of mass shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University have raised the specter of serious violence on college campuses. But by any measure, the risk of serious violence on campus is remarkably low, particularly in its most extreme form. Although the chances of serious violence may be remote, the potential consequences can be devastating and long-lasting. Colleges must respond proactively to the risk, as parents rightly expect a special level of care for their sons and daughters while they are away at school. Thus, it is prudent and imperative that colleges take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of students as well as faculty and other employees.
