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Academic Centers for Athletes Draw Donors
More than a dozen university athletics programs have added lavish new facilities in recent years, and academic-services budgets are soaring, a Chronicle survey finds. (Photograph courtesy of Texas A&M U.)
College Employees Value Campus Environment, Survey Finds
When a Chronicle survey asked college employees what they value about their jobs, they put the physical environment in which they work at the top of the list.
Rise in Tornadoes, Floods Poses Risk to Colleges
What if the sort of extreme weather that has left the University of Iowa inundated in floodwaters is not a freak event? What if it is a sign of things to come? (Photograph by AP Images)
Other News
After Hurricane Gustav, Campuses Clean Up
Cleanup crews scoured Gulf Coast campuses, removing downed limbs and repairing broken windows, while students and staff members forced out by Hurricane Gustav waited for word that they could return.
Lessons From Katrina Improve Colleges' Evacuations for Hurricane Gustav
College officials across the Gulf Coast were cautiously relieved when initial reports suggested the damage wasn't severe.
College of Southern Idaho Cafeteria Goes 'Tray-Less'
Students are also wasting less food because they no longer have the option of overloading their cafeteria trays, says the college's food-services director.
New campus buildings
Multimedia
A Green Building as a Billboard for Science
(A 2006 Chronicle video)
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About Buildings & Grounds
Buildings & Grounds is written by Scott Carlson (left) and Lawrence Biemiller (right). Scott Carlson writes about architecture, facilties, energy, and sustainability, among other topics. Lawrence Biemiller writes about architecture and facilities and contributes to Notes from Academe. What's happening on your campus? Let us know.
Guest Blogger: How to Build Less
At least a few times a week, I speak with a college administrator disappointed that his institution’s net greenhouse-gas emissions have not decreased over time, despite the number of reduction measures undertaken on the campus. What isn’t immediately evident from looking at the emission data is how many square feet of new campus space the institution has added even as it has been taking steps to shrink its carbon footprint. Efficiency measures, renewable-energy installations, and fuel-switching all reduce a college’s carbon emissions—but most colleges are simultaneously growing. Even the greenest construction project increases a college’s carbon footprint.
 Anne Stephenson |
One of the greatest challenges in meeting carbon-neutral goals is allowing for campus growth and change. Colleges are expected to grow, and many campus administrators and educators feel strongly that new buildings are central to institutional advancement. Multidisciplinary laboratory spaces, for example, have been built at a number of colleges to facilitate interdepartmental scientific research.
Far be it from me to suggest that these new buildings aren’t necessary—I was trained in an art-history department where all you needed was a slide projector and a windowless room. But some colleges are fostering just as much interdisciplinary cooperation by not building new facilities, and by sharing buildings and laboratories with high schools, municipalities, and other colleges. This creative approach to space will become more important as colleges realize that growth impedes their progress toward their greenhouse-gas-reduction targets.
One great example is the space-sharing arrangement between Cape Cod Community College and the Cape Cod community. The community college offers four renewable-energy certificates as part of its environmental-technology program. Courses in small-wind-turbine repair and in photovoltaic installation—along with the lab and equipment they require—are housed at a local technical high school.
By building the lab there, rather than on its own campus, the community college ensured that it got the most bang for its buck—development and operating costs were shared with the technical school, and instructor salaries are shared, too. Students studying renewable energy at the high school level can go on to take higher-level courses from the college, and the college-level courses are scheduled after 2 p.m., when the high-school day is over.
The school-college team found that interest in the lab was so great that they have begun to rent it to local builders, contractors, and trade unions for evening workshops and classes. Space sharing has led more vocational students to enroll at the community college—and to a better-educated green workforce on the Cape, as well as to better support, job-placement, and internship possibilities for the community college’s graduates because the lab has fostered close relationships with local employers.
The college’s experience has proven that synergies can develop when an institution steps back from housing new projects on its campus, and the resulting community relationships can be significant. Community colleges, by nature of their missions, have been able to move away from campus-centric concepts of space, renting classroom space in malls and office buildings to accommodate the commutes of evening and weekend students.
Decentralized classroom space and distance learning meet the needs of adult student populations—and they also meet carbon-reduction targets. These types of projects must no longer be the exclusive purview of community colleges. Traditional notions of what a campus is still loom large, and for every space-sharing project there are twenty new campus buildings built. But global warming looms large, too, and we need to learn how to build less. —Anne Stephenson
Anne Stephenson, the Buildings & Grounds guest blogger for June, is campus-outreach coordinator at Clean Air—Cool Planet, a science-based, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to finding and promoting solutions to global warming. You can read her previous posts here, here, and here.
Lawrence Biemiller | Friday June 27, 2008 | Permalink | Contact usComments
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Since 1995 Washington University in St. Louis has built 29 new buildings and has done majors renovations on four others. Is this the norm for Research 1 universities these days?
— Bromleysteele Jul 1, 04:58 PM #
Looks like the spammers have found the Chronicle or at least this Blog connection :)
— Woodsie Jul 8, 08:31 AM #