The U. of Rochester will construct a new research building for its Medical Center. (Francis Cauffman Architects image)

Groundbreaking: The University of Rochester Medical Center has broken ground for a new 200,000-square-foot, $76.4-million research building. It was designed by Francis Cauffman Architects, of Philadelphia, along with the Rochester engineering firm Bergmann Associates and the Boston firm BR&A Engineers.

Fitness facility: A new, 130,000-square-foot fitness center has opened at Bradley...

The U. of Notre Dame opened the Theodore M. Hesburgh Library in 1963. (Margaret Grubiak photo)

For fans of the University of Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish, the figure of “Touchdown Jesus” looms large — quite literally. The 134-foot granite mural of Jesus with outstretched arms rises just beyond the university stadium’s northern goalposts. This Roman Catholic university seems to call upon the highest of powers to bless its football enterprise.

Behind the cheeky notion of “Touchdown Jesus” is the story of how Modernism, and Modernist architecture,...

Princeton, N.J. — Planning for growth and changes at a university that has been around since the 1750s is surely daunting. But Ron McCoy, Princeton University’s new university architect, thinks starting from scratch would be even scarier. “I would be frightened at the tabula rasa opportunity,” he said here today at a conference called “Future Campus,” which is examining the planning and building of campuses all over the world.

Mr. McCoy and Mark Burstein, Princeton’s executive vice president, offered details on Princeton’s new campus plan, which will guide the renovation and construction of some 3 million square feet of space — growth that rivals the university’s expansion in the 1960s. The university worked on the plan with a number of consultants, led by...

The Madison Connector at Camden County College links new and existing buildings on three levels. (Chronicle photographs by Lawrence Biemiller)

Mention community colleges to campus-architecture fans, and many think of drab Modernist buildings surrounded by indifferent landscaping. But in recent years some community colleges have completed projects that any institution would be proud of.

Some of these buildings — like the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College, in Overland Park, Kan. — are architectural gems that have attracted the attention of critics. The Kansas City Star called the...

This week’s Chronicle contains a couple of articles that might be of interest to folks who are trying to track and mitigate their greenhouse-gas impact:

REC-ing Ball: Some colleges are re-examining the ways in which they buy renewable-energy credits. At St. Mary’s College of Maryland, for example, students have spent about $50,000 to purchase credits for green energy in the past, but they may have to pay a lot more to cover the college’s rising energy consumption. At the same time, emissions experts and college administrators cast doubt on the efficacy of renewable-energy credits. “It’s a really cloudy issue,” says David F. Hales, president of the College of the Atlantic. “Our feeling is that [REC’s] are wonderful things to do, but they don’t...

White Plaza, near the center of the Stanford U. campus, links the Tressider Union, the bookstore, and other areas.

Stanford University students have reacted coolly to a $4-million overhaul of White Plaza, a campus crossroads where bike traffic had become a major safety issue. The redesign added bike lanes, bike-traffic circles, separate sidewalks for pedestrians, and clearly defined spaces for outdoor events, according to the student newspaper, The Stanford Daily.

But now some students complain that the project has left the plaza cluttered and that...

The Roanoke Times reports on the new amenities prospective students will find at Liberty University, the “Bible Boot Camp” founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell. The list includes some surprises.

The university has built a track for off-road motorcycles, a paintball battlefield, and an equestrian center, for instance. Its latest addition is a snowless ski mountain — a 500-foot slope covered in foam and “a polymer skin kept slick with small misting devices,” as described by the Times. Other amenities include organized shopping trips to the local malls.

In the amenities arms race (think of the oft-cited climbing wall), this is taking things to the next level, in what many people might think is a rather...

Frederick Fisher and Partners designed Sherrerd Hall for Princeton U. (Photo by Brian Wilson, Princeton U.)

The glass box, revisited: The newest building at Princeton University is a little more subtle than the Frank Gehry building that the university opened early last month. The new building, Sherrerd Hall, is a 45,000-square-foot box sheathed in fritted glass that creates Cubist patterns on the exterior. Constructed for the operations-research and financial-engineering department and the Center for Information Technology Policy, the building...

A thriving Roman Catholic parish in Norcross, Ga., wants to buy an elegant, unused 1911 church building in Buffalo, N.Y., so that it can be dismantled, shipped south, rebuilt, and returned to use, The Buffalo News reports. Could a college do something similar? Buy and preserve an unused building from another higher-education institution, perhaps, or a non-college building that would make a great addition to a campus?

It’s an interesting question. According to the News, the Diocese of Buffalo is all for the church-moving plan, which some people are describing as “preservation by relocation.” The church, named for St. Gerard, closed in January. It was modeled on a Roman basilica, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, and has columns, coffered ceilings, and a dome whose interior is...

The Saint John’s University woodworking shop was established more than 150 years ago. (Chronicle photographs by Scott Carlson)

Collegeville, Minn. — Ora et Labora — or “Prayer and Work” — has always been a mainstay of the Benedictine ethic. At Saint John’s University and Abbey, in north-central Minnesota, the woodworking shop brings together monks, craftsmen, and students to labor (and probably pray) over very beautiful and complex works in wood. The woodworking shop was established more than 150 years ago to help make the abbey self-sufficient, and it still provides furniture and other essentials for both the abbey and university.