Who's Got Next?
Where are
U.S colleges and universities going in 2008 and beyond? Surely some trends will
become firmly entrenched into our zeitgeist and while others will fall by the
wayside. College Planning &
Management asked the experts to look forward and divine where institutions
are moving. Do you know which way the wind is blowing?
Hit
the Bookstore
All
schools want to attract the best and the brightest students and turn them into
successful, loyal alumni, but did you know your bookstore is a great tool to
make that happen? “The campus bookstore is the resource of the future,”
insisted Charles Schmidt, director of public relations, National Association of
College Stores (NACS). The reason why may surprise.
“More and
more booksellers are offering alternative delivery like digital learning,”
explained Schmidt. “Book revenues, a traditionally small margin to start with,
are down and continue to drop. So that leaves bookstores to branch into other
merchandise if they want to stay solvent.”
Sure,
items festooned with the school logo remain popular, but bookstores now want to
be a variety store — just like the kind found in any city center. Clothing,
giftware, and food items are just a few new offerings. “Smart bookstores, like
the one at the University of California, San
Diego, are actually expanding square footage and
offering unique services like laptop repairs and farmer’s markets,” continued
Schmidt. “Some provide meeting space to campus clubs, ticket sales, and
shipping and banking services.”
Furthermore,
Schmidt advises bookstores not to forget their purchasing power. “Some hire
themselves out as freelance purchasers to various school departments,” he said.
“The stores are already buying a volume of school supplies, so why not supply
pens and such to different groups?”
Smoke
Screen
As of
October 1, 2007, 97 college campuses around the country proclaimed themselves
100-percent smoke-free environments. “Some schools still offer some outdoor
smoking areas on the periphery of parking lots, but for the most part it is
universal non-smoking coverage,” according to Frieda Glantz, Americans for
Nonsmoker’s Rights in California. Even more schools have gone smoke-free in the
residence halls.
This is no
small feat considering that young people ages 18 to 24 still make up the bulk
of the smoking population. Forty percent of this age group light up compared to
a national average of half that. Yet what Glantz finds heartening is the fact
that these smoke-free campus initiatives are, for the most part, peer-to-peer
driven. “It’s the students who are approaching administrators and faculty with
this issue,” she reported. “Administrators usually go along because they see
smoking as an important student safety issue that needs to be addressed.”
Activist
students are not content to stop at non-smoking campuses, however. They also
demand that their school sign a resolution stating that they will not accept
gifts, monies, research dollars, or event sponsorship from tobacco companies.
“This is how big tobacco hooks young smokers,” explained Glantz. “Free trips,
bar nights, and gifts are all designed to appeal to young people. It’s a
commanding display of power to see students rejecting all the swag and instead
become engaged in the political process.”
Where
There’s Smoke…
…there is
hopefully no fire. According to Mike Halligan, associate director of
Environmental Health and Safety at the University of Utah,
“fire prevention staff will be involved with NIMS (National Incident Management
System) training on campus. The local fire departments that respond to campuses
are already operating under these guidelines and campus agencies are finally
starting to embrace this approach. “
Emergency
Preparedness will also be an issue. “In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy,
safe egress will have to find a balance with highly secure facilities,” he
continued. “Campus fire prevention staff will need to carefully participate in
these discussions on their campuses. Using fire alarm systems for mass
notification of non-fire emergencies has been discussed at many meetings around
the country, and this next year should see a response from fire alarm
manufacturers to determine what is permitted by standards that govern fire
alarm system performance and what new technologies will start to emerge if
those systems are not capable of providing levels of notification that users
want.”
Finding creative ways to deliver fire safety
messages to staff, faculty and students will also be a challenge, according to
Halligan. “Clearly, more training and education dollars should be spent on fire
safety and awareness training,” he insisted. “However, budgets don't appear to
be increasing this year.”
Analyzing the Laboratory
Michael
Haggans, AIA, principal/director, academic group, for architects Flad &
Associates, offers these observations about the labs of the future.
Creating
research laboratories that promote collaboration and accelerate research is the
most important trend in academic science architecture. It has long been known
that investigators who have daily contact with colleagues are more productive,
but the physical features have not been quantified. Flad & Associates is
studying how scientists interact to find specific ways that the physical
environment supports collaboration, discovery, and research productivity.
After
three years, this multi-year study of 60 buildings and more than 5M sq. ft. of
laboratories has identified the features that lead to interaction:
transparency, proximity, and public space. Public space must comprise more than
15 percent of floor area to provide sufficient space for building community.
Public spaces include routine and formal areas, such as hallways and
conference/seminar rooms, and informal areas intended for food and drink —
elements that almost always accompany conversations, leading to breakthroughs.
Centrally
locating non-laboratory spaces is essential. When colleagues are located more
than 150 ft. apart, or occupy different floors, they are less likely to bump
into one another, which is crucial — particularly for graduate students who
highly value interactions with mentors and project leaders.
Buildings
that properly balance these characteristics not only allow collaboration, but
also strengthen retention and recruitment. Financial savings through retention
alone offset any incremental costs of providing “non-laboratory” space. The
next phases of the study focus on characteristics that accelerate research
productivity as measured in increases in funding and publication.
Clean and Green
Michael G. Steger,
director, physical plant services, National Management Resources Corporation, Palm Beach Atlantic University,
proposes the following ideas about the greening of the physical plant.
Green and sustainable issues
continue to be the hot button for much of what we are doing in physical plant.
Each of our departments —
maintenance, grounds, housekeeping, and
construction project management —
is looking for ways to lessen their impact on the
environment.
The use of green or less harsh
chemicals is one of the things we continue to stress to all of our departments.
In addition, we are
contacting our suppliers, such as Grainger, Home Depot Supply, and even smaller
vendors, and telling them we will no longer accept small parts shipments packed in giant boxes
with several cubic feet of Styrofoam peanuts around it. They have all responded
well, and we continue to look for opportunities to reduce our impact in various
ways.
We are asking our contractors to
recycle their construction debris to the best of their ability. Many local
waste haulers are picking up this torch and making it easy for the contractor
to meet this demand.
Technology Rules
Dr.
Scott D. Miller has served as President of Wesley College, Dover, DE,
from 1997 through 2007. On January 1, 2008 he becomes President of Bethany
College, Bethany, WV. He offers some insight about the
technological expectations of today’s student.
The divide
between “digital immigrants” — those of us born roughly before Star Wars — and our students, born
thereafter, will continue to widen unless we accommodate their learning and
communications preferences.
Our
“millennials” insist upon 24/7 interaction, valuing authenticity above all
else. As a group, they spend three to four hours a day on social networking
sites, blogging, while simultaneously text-messaging and talking with friends
on their cell phones during virtually every waking hour. As a result, they are
a highly literate generation skilled at multi-tasking but impatient with
routine and traditional teaching styles. They are heavily “into” pop culture,
steeped in celebrity blogs and online gaming. They use new technologies
selectively, however, visiting virtual sites for entertainment while keeping a
firm grasp on the line between virtual life and real life.
To
attract them, we must incorporate the interactive digital features that they
have been weaned on into both our teaching and our recruiting. Our Websites
need to offer them real-time virtual interaction with current students,
faculty, and admissions officers and a way to “chat” with each other. Our
classrooms need to offer them sophisticated, state-of-the-art, wired facilities
to incorporate the interactive multimedia features they’ve come to expect.
Colleges
and faculty who accommodate these styles and preferences will thrive. Those who
don’t will wither and, eventually, perish.
Looking
for Mr. or Ms. GoodWorker
Many different departments are concerned with the size and quality of
the labor pool and recruiting and retaining new workers. Steger voices his
concerns. “Personnel shortages will have a more profound effect
on our departments in 2008. In our area specifically, the economy is driving
many away, leaving us with a gap in the medium to lower wage labor pool,” he
said.
But Steger is
not without solutions. “We have developed a bonus system for existing employees
who bring us new employees. In addition, we are trying to develop relationships
with local trade schools that may be able to bring us skilled and semi-skilled
trades employees,” he explained. “However, there are fewer and fewer young
people going into the trades and we believe at some point (if not already) the
market is feeling the cost of this labor pinch.”
Pete
van der Have, College Planning &
Management’s Facilities columnist, continues the discussion. “Succession
planning (and what it means) will become more critical as expectations increase
and the number of interested potential candidates decreases,” he predicted.
“The labor pool from which we will be attracting our future employees is
changing radically, and the way we lead them has to change as well.”
“Secession planning will affect every
organization,” insisted Dr. Bob Hassmiller, CAE, CEO of NACAS, an international
auxiliary services association. “Boomers are moving through the system and
don’t want to work much past age 60. This could cause a huge brain drain. Where
are we going to get the next large group of workers?”
Dr.
Hassmiller proposes another interesting dilemma. “Some top people don’t want to
fully retire but maybe want to scale back,” he said. “What are the implications
of moving from a high-level position like director to a lower position? What’s
the protocol?”
Upgrade
You
“’Dorm’ is a dirty word,” insisted Frank Hayes, vice
president, Shawmut Design and Construction. “It carries a stigma of an
institutional setting, and that is no longer the case.” A quick survey of
today’s schools shows that residence halls have been upgraded in look, feel,
and purpose.
“Concrete
block has been replaced with groundface concrete block,” explained BK Boley,
principal of architecture firm ADD Inc. “You don’t paint it and it has the look
and feel of limestone. Corridors and public spaces appear as nice as a high-end
multi-family dwelling or a luxury hotel lobby.”
While
admitting that students and parents expect more from the design of their
spaces, Boley remains a firm realist. “These materials are all relatively
inexpensive and very robust,” he insisted. “Students could wrestle and crash
into the walls and not hurt them.”
Boley admits that upgraded materials can be a
tough sell to the facilities department at first, but once they see how well
the interiors hold up and how low-maintenance they are, these workers jump on
board. “They actually end up being very proud of the interiors,” he said. And
that pride extends to the students as well. “If you put VCT on the floors
students will bounce a basketball on it. If you use a nice carpet, they don’t
think about it,” he continued. “In fact, when you upgrade furniture in the dorm
rooms, the lounge furniture doesn’t get stolen.”
Crowding
the Backburner
Budget cuts are once again a reality. Many
different departments are recognizing this and preparing to do more with less.
Halligan, our fire safety expert, sees additional challenges when competing for
the few dollars available to improve life safety issues on campus. “The growing
list of deferred maintenance means that life safety upgrades will take longer
and those requesting funds will have to better justify, from a cost benefit
analysis, why they should be awarded the scarce dollars needed to reduce risk,”
he said.
“Constricting budgets will be a major issue
for both public and private institutions in 2008 and likely beyond,” continued
Steger. “With the economy in the condition it is in, and with some localized
areas seeing their economy harder hit than others, we will face having to do
more with less.” However, Steger realizes this does not constitute a slowdown.
“The rising levels of expectation will not stop within our administrations
even though they will all recognize we are tightening our budgetary belts. Over
the past few years we have been in a growth mode. It is difficult to recognize
that as the budgets plateau or recede; administrators will continue to want
everything they had before.”
Steger, once again has a
solution. “We are trying to counter this by seeking equipment, chemicals, and
more that will allow us to increase our productivity output without adding
personnel,” he observed. “We are also reviewing our maintenance and cleaning
schedules to ensure we have eliminated overlap and that we are providing
exactly the proper amount of maintenance time in any given area.”