What Matters to You?

  • By Shannon O'Connor
  • 06/01/17

As the date for the June issue of College Planning & Management to go to print approaches, I’ve been thinking — with increased anxiety — about writing this, my first Editor’s Note. Despite being editor of CP&M for 15 years, I’ve remained behind the scenes for the most part, managing the acquisition and development of the content for each issue, guiding each issue through production, and sighing in relief each month when copies arrive in my office and I flip through one and don’t see any glaring errors. And of course, by then the next issue is well underway.

What I remind myself often as I’ve worked in relative obscurity is that the work I’m doing isn’t done in a vacuum. There are a lot of people who read CP&M. You share articles and issues with your peers, post comments or “Like” us on Twitter and Facebook, point people to and cite our website, reach out to our columnists and other contributors directly, contact our advertisers for products and services because you saw them in our pages, offer compliments and complaints, ask questions, provide ideas for articles and in other ways engage with us.

Please, don’t stop.

I invite you to contact me with your ideas on and for the magazine. What matters to you? What initiatives are underway on your campus that you would like to share with your peers at other institutions? What are you doing well? Also, what do you want to do better? Are there topics we’re not covering in CP&M that you think we should, that would help you in your day-to-day work? Let me know. What are your frustrations? What issues are on the horizon that you’d like to have information about? We’ll look into it for you and get some data to share.

What we do is important. What you do — creating the environments in which education is provided to students in order to help in preparing them to be capable, productive, successful citizens — is vitally important. Within the current atmosphere that hears some voices denigrating higher education as wasteful and unnecessary and sees local, state and federal budgets that make their first and deepest cuts to education, you continue to do your best work for your students. In return, I promise to continue to put together what I hope is a valuable resource for you in this magazine.

Let me know what matters to you, and how CP&M can help.

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

Featured

  • American University Launches Sustainability Research Project

    American University in Washington, D.C., recently began a research project exploring the relationship between purchase decisions for university campuses and sustainability, according to a news release. The study seeks to explore how “greening” the purchases involved in student housing renovations, breaking ground on new facilities, buying new equipment and supplies, and more, can foster larger sustainability goals.

  • Massachusetts High School to Build New Athletics Facility

    Middlesex School, which serves boarding and day students in grades 9–12, recently moved forward with plans to build a new athletics facility for its campus in Concord, Mass., according to a news release. MassDevelopment recently issued a $43.7-million tax-exempt bond to fund the project.

  • Norfolk State University Partners with Voltus for Energy Efficiency Program

    Norfolk State University recently announced that it has selected Voltus, Inc., to implement the university’s new energy efficiency program on its campus in Norfolk, Va. According to a news release, the partnership’s goal is to reduce campus energy use by 27% by the year 2030 and support grid reliability across the state of Virginia.

  • Call for Opinions: Spaces4Learning 2025 Predictions for Educational Facilities

    The K–12 and higher education facilities landscapes are always evolving. Schools are constantly adapting to technology advances, pedagogy changes, sustainability initiatives, and more.