Shaping the Future: Designing Campus Spaces for a Changing Student Population

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Episode Transcript

[Music Intro]

Brian Trainer, Host: Welcome to Trends + Tensions in Architecture and Design, presented by BHDP, where we discuss Trends in Architectural and Interior design and the competing priorities or Tensions that arise from integrating new ideas into existing organizations, enterprises, and institutions. In this episode, "Shaping the Future: Designing Campus Spaces for a Changing Student Population," we are joined by Sue Hasseler, President of Muskingum University, and Paul Orban, Managing Partner at BHDP. I am your host, Brian Trainer, and senior strategist for BHDP. Let’s get started.

In this episode of Trends in Tension, we're discussing traditional residential campuses and what variables we need to consider to serve the needs of a new continuum of learners. We have two guests to help us with that conversation today. Our first guest is Sue. Sue, would you please tell us who you are and what you do? 

Sue Hasseler: Absolutely. I am Sue Hasseler, the president at Muskingum University. Muskingum is a university located in the southeast quadrant of Ohio in the beautiful Appalachian foothills. We have about 1200 undergrads and about 800 to 1000 adult learners in our program. So, I'm excited to be here today. 

Brian: We're excited to have you. Thank you, Sue. Our other guest is Paul Orban. Paul, tell us who you are and what you do.  

Paul Orban: Hi, Brian. I'm Paul Orban. I lead the higher education practice for BHDP. We work all over the country, helping our higher education clients envision future campus environments and implement their strategies. To start, what brought us to this conversation was when I met Sue at a conference a couple of years ago, and I really immediately found that we both have a shared interest in shaping campus space. Obviously, as an architect, we're doing a lot of this work, but as I talked with Sue and realized that she has a lot of great experience in the design and construction of spaces on her campus, and we've continued to talk a lot about what the future holds and the challenges we have, and so we thought it'd be a really exciting topic to talk about today.

Brian: Fantastic. Sue, I have the same question for you. What drew you into this conversation? 

Sue: I think Paul captured it well. He and I certainly found a shared interest in campus space. And I will say that over time, I have developed a deeper understanding of how important space is around learning. So, setting up strategies for those plans and being able to constantly look at the use of space in the future is a real passion for me. So, if we look at the change in students over time, our traditional 18 through 22-year-olds are changing in their interests and needs. But we also have this broader continuum of learners who are really changing in what they need, whether that is instructional or whether that is in the school spaces that they use, the educational spaces. So, one of the things that I find delightful in my role is to think constantly about how we shape campuses that were designed for a different world many years ago into the campuses that serve the learners of today and the learners of tomorrow. 

Brian: I heard about the concept of Selective and Open Enrollers. Can you tell me what those mean? Why do you think about those differently?

Sue: I'm going to jump into that in some ways to talk about the current state of higher education. So, we are constantly hearing, I think, in the news, if you follow education sources, that enrollment is changing. There are fewer traditional 18 through 22-year-olds who are looking for residential programs. I think there's a constant thread in the news of which colleges are going to remain open, which are going to close, and how we can be more flexible to meet the needs of learners. And there really are, in many ways, two kinds of educational settings broadly defined. You have the highly selective colleges and universities. They have waiting lists. They still have very robust enrollment outlooks for the future. And then you have, in many ways, the rest of the colleges who, if they're in urban settings, maybe still have some advantages for attracting learners, but you also have this powerful and, in some ways, unique in the U.S., set of rural institutions that are absolutely essential for the well-being of their regions, of their communities. But we really are facing some pretty significant challenges in terms of the number of students who are going to select this kind of environment and the opportunities that are offered.

So, I frame it up as those institutions that are just in the ranks of the well-known, the selective, the waiting lists, and then those institutions that are looking at how to carry out this essential mission for our region in a sustainable way. 

Paul: The other thing that I would say about the current state is that for years, we've seen our higher education clients and institutions invest in land and space. Right? 

Brian: Yeah. 

Paul: It's one of the things they own, that it's a resource to them. It has value, and not only does enrollment change in terms of the quantity of students, but the type of students has varied. It's time to look at those assets and understand what you have and how they can be leveraged, maybe in different ways, to achieve the strategic mission and goals of the institution. It's a challenge for sure, but there's also a great opportunity to unlock some of that and to think creatively about how you may leverage it. 

Sue: But I think what this really means for a place like Muskingum is serving the learners who need to be served in our region and beyond. So, historically, we have served 35 percent of our students as first generation, and that's a consistent figure over decades. We also have close to half of our students who are highly Pell-eligible, which means they have significant financial needs. One hundred percent of our students receive some kind of university aid. And so we are offering this small college education, which has been shown to be especially powerful with first-generation students and with high-need students. We're offering that kind of small college setting at an affordable cost. To a group of learners for whom excellence and affordability are absolutely essential, an essential combination. 

Brian: You have something that is a little bit consistent. You've got those first-generation learners; you know they're going to need aid. What else are you seeing in terms of the evolving student profile on campus? 

Sue: There used to be a distinction in some ways between traditional 18 through 22-year-olds and adult learners. What we see is that many of our 18- to 22-year-olds are living with the life responsibilities of adults. Many of them work 30 hours a week. When you look at the economic profile, you're going to find that they are working hard to make this kind of undergraduate education possible. But what they're also looking for is flexibility. And they are looking for absolute relevance. In other words, this is an investment. And they are saying, okay, show us how this is going to prepare me to be in a very worthwhile and good serving profession. How is this going to prepare me for the next steps in my life? That isn't only in the classroom; there are a lot of things that you do in education that prepare you for the next step.

I always talk with our athletes about workforce development and career preparation. I think we have with our undergrads this holistic view that we are now taking into working with this group of adults or young adults who are working lots of hours. However, we still see the value in this holistic vision of education, which can really prepare them well for the future.

Paul: I think a question I would have for Sue on that is when you say relevance, I'd imagine that's touching everything from first impressions. And what's that first touch point of a prospective student all the way through their education? 

Sue: And I would say, when you come in on first impressions, I really appreciate that, right? When students come to the campus, they look for such a diverse array of things. It used to be that you could identify the five to eight things that students need to see when they visit. Now, they come with such a different set of needs and expectations. That there is just this sort of sense of how we get to them that they are going to be connected because they're still looking for community. That they are going to be challenged and prepared to do the right things for their future. Then, we are going to have a great path for them to take to the next step. And so, I think even what they look for in terms of visuals and that first impression has changed over time. You think about the traditional campus tour, and it's a real experience.

If you want to have an entertaining experience, follow a student tour guide, right? And see how they answer family questions. What we take students to see now is our impact center, where we have our career development and connections with employers. It is our classrooms in which we demonstrate really hands-on learning. It is the spaces that might be more welcoming to them as commuters. It's the flexibility in the programming—as much as it used to be, here are all the fun things you're going to do. And I think there's still an element of that community building, but it feels to me like it's a much more purposeful and function-driven, even tour and experiential component.

Paul: The campus tour has always fascinated me. That journey that you're giving someone through the potential future campus experience and trying to cater to what they want to see, experience, and feel, knowing that there are so many different profiles of learners now, you're trying to craft that in a way that hits the right things for all the right people. To understand that and be able to design almost that experience is trying to be everything to everybody, potentially more than it used to be. So, like when it was more about the hit on student life and activity and fun and here's your rec center and where you're going to eat and sleep and academics, maybe where the kind of the secondary piece of it it's really flipped now or is flipping to be more focused on, that relevance, career preparedness, and success as well as some of those other pieces of student life. 

Sue: And I think the other thing that we are really looking at is, as we recruit this larger continuum or broader continuum of learners, what do you even feature in your media pieces? Because so many media pieces are great drone shots of a beautiful campus. And we have a gorgeous campus! It's 200 acres. We're in the foothills. We've got a little lake. It has ducks. There are just some lovely campus features. And now we're saying, okay, if their experience is going to be heavily either coming on and off the campus or even more involved virtually, what are the visuals that you really focus on?

There's still this ambiance that brings people to campus. There's just something about the way the space welcomes you and the way that people welcome you. We find that with our adult learners as well as our traditional. But it is really an interesting question about face-to-face and marketing materials and what they feature from a space standpoint. 

Brian: We talk about this continuum of student profiles and what they need from space to support them in being educated holistically in a workforce-focused environment. It sounds like your impact center leads to that question of a workforce-focused environment. Can you tell me more about that, Sue? 

Sue: We have had career development, of course, for many years, right? Every institution has, but we have put it in a much more expanded and intensive way in something we call an impact center. And that impact center, really, has a mandate to connect every student with workforce development out in the field. We have a dynamic director, Molly Dunn, on the staff of that center. She works on curriculum development to ensure the programs are well-connected and then builds partnerships out in the field to provide great opportunities for our students. The center itself is interesting in the sense that it has a virtual meeting space.

So, we have found that our students need to do virtual interviews, they need to do virtual conversations, and they need it in a background in which I say, your athletic gear is not hanging from the doorknob or other things. We've really tried to set up the center to provide our students with virtual connectivity to provide space for employers to come on campus. It is very important to have its mission and mandate to connect all of our programs, whether they're traditional undergrad or adult learning, with a great and powerful set of partners.

Brian: It sounds like a pretty positive environment. I know there are things that we struggle with in architecture and design, and it is sometimes the software that we use to do our day-to-day work. An institution will be like we're not going to use that software for whatever reason because we want students to think about design in a certain way. So, they get there, and then we have to teach them to do something just to be able to function in their day-to-day jobs. And if there was a little more collaboration between the universities that would make that transition more seamless, I should say, how will what we have gathered so far affect campus planning and the design of space? When it comes down to it, that's what we do here at BHDP.

Paul: I think, as we see it, the challenge is that these learners will sometimes be occupying the same kind of campus environments, but I think I may also be engaged virtually at times. Maybe we have different needs on campus now that we're starting to rethink traditional environments. One of the ideas out there is that we should start to think about the campus as a series or a collection of activity zones. As Sue and I have talked about this, we started to think about students who are living on campus but are virtually engaging. Maybe there are some students who are your traditional full-time residential students; maybe there are commuters who are coming. So, you start to see every level of engagement look a little different. And that's just academically. If you start to think that through, what they need in terms of student life looks different. Even maybe dining needs to start to look different, right, Sue? 

It really starts to make you think about how you could create these different zones on campuses. If you think about it, the campus is more of a living community. One of the Interesting things there, too, is knowing that partnerships in higher education are becoming increasingly prevalent. People are looking to corporate partnerships, for example, as a way to help the workforce and help students develop potential funding sources, right? So, you start to imagine that as a whole new activity zone on campus. And if you had outside external corporate partners residing on campus, maybe students would commute there to engage with those. They may not even be residential students, but they could be. You have all these different groups now. How do they come together? And, of course, then it becomes how they connect, right? Because we're all people, we're all humans, and everyone has certain needs and ways to connect. For some, it may be the outdoor spaces where they connect. It may be food service, right? And that's a whole other animal of how that starts to evolve in the future. It could be where they study, they research, or it could be wellness or wellness spaces. So, there are lots of opportunities to bring these groups together. When it's right, they benefit from that.

Sue: And I just really want to reiterate that notion that all of our learners, whether they are adults who are getting another certificate or credential or whether they are traditional, residential, or anything in between, are still looking for community. That’s one of the pieces of feedback we get, first of all, from young people who went through some of their either middle or high school. And how do we begin to use our spaces, green spaces, gathering spaces, and eating spaces, as Paul was saying, in a way that serves people and builds community? 

Brian: It sounds like you're defining community in that sense of belonging. How do I see myself in the story? How am I connected to this place?

Paul: I would just say that's a great point because many of the campuses we're talking about, like Sue's, are rural areas where the campus is a major part of the town, the community, and the community is a very major part of the campus. So, it even extends beyond that traditional boundary of the road that circles campus or the boundaries set up by the quad, right?

Brian: So, you talk about that sense of community where people feel like they belong, but also there's a community that surrounds the campus. And Sue spoke about being community-facing. You're building corporate partnerships. Do you have any community partnerships that you're building as well? 

Sue: We have really close partnerships on the public service side, which I think is really important. So that would be a local regional government. And I will throw in that John Glenn, the astronaut, and Senator John Glenn, is an alum. And that really shaped some of the emphasis of our particular program around public service. And that was his absolute passion. So, I think there is that outward facing into public service. There's the outward facing of course, into education and healthcare. And then there is the connection, of course, to the broad range of businesses and industries that we serve. I think it's like many institutions like Muskingum; we serve a lot of students from Columbus, Cleveland, and major metropolitan areas that are maybe 70 to 100 miles away. Then, we have a strong regional base, which is much more of a small-town base. So, I think that we have to have a very diversified set of partnerships in order to have the impact that we're really called to have. 

Brian: You say you have your master plan for what was it, 1913? It's not always easy to physically alter those buildings. With your new types of zones and connectors, does the quad still serve a purpose? Does it function well the way it is, or what changes, design-wise, do you need to make it function better for the emerging pedagogical style? 

Sue: My next big thing is to take on the quad! We've done some really nice things on the periphery. Beautiful new libraries, some arts facilities, and a health and wellness complex that we just completed in 2022 is an integration of athletics, recreation, and health sciences programs. And that's extremely community-facing. We had 12,000 people there in January and February of last year, using the indoor field house for track and field events. So, we've created that kind of space in some ways around the quad. I am now fascinated with this notion of what one does with venerable quads. Many of which were built in the 20s and 30s without full accessibility. All kinds of things like that. I would say it's the next big thing, and I'm having a lot of fun thinking about it.

Paul: Brian, I think one of the interesting things about that and using the quad at Sue's campus as an example is you have these rock-solid buildings that are really beautifully designed. To recreate those today would be a significant expense just because of the architectural character and significance. They need to be modernized, but one of the benefits they have is they're located in a place that is really the center of campus activity, typically bound to this beautiful asset of a formal outdoor space where people connect and gather. And it comes this question of how you reimagine those to serve a different purpose than the stately academic building and the stately library and the stately administrative building, for example, that every campus has to serve this new continuum of learners to find really what's their next chapter.

Brian: Every education leader is going to be thinking, how do you fund it? How do you pay for it? How do you modernize a campus like this? 

Sue: I think what's interesting about it is the idea of creating space that prepares students for the workforce, which has a certain cachet with a broader range of funders. And so, when I look at those who historically don't want to see the quad disappear, they have some notion that we've got to stay connected to the future. What I'm finding is that foundations, state and federal dollars, and corporate partnerships really resonate with the notion of saying, how do we take these spaces and help them achieve the goals of making our students not only wonderful citizens but workforce ready, which is, by the way, a quality of being a wonderful citizen.

I've gotten a couple of major state and federal grants related to how to make your current campus functional for this new kind of mission and how to make this affordable. When you look at this continuum of learners, they have an even different mindset around flexibility, relevance, and affordability. How do you build in some of these demands around facilities with affordability? And so we have been pursuing lots of sources for scholarship dollars so that on the academic side, the experience becomes affordable for the learner. Then, we're pursuing support for the spaces. For the second year in a row, Muskingum has been listed as the number one best-value institution in Ohio in this regional Midwest U.S. News and World Report survey. The best value is affordability and excellence. And so, we've had a commitment to affordability for many years. It's one of our inherent values, but to be able to do that in today's world, in which we have the demands around both the fiscal space and innovation and technology and that kind of thing. We are very creative and eager to pursue every partnership and source of revenue that will support affordability and excellence. 

Paul: One of the interesting things coming back to some of the discussions Sue and I have had at a broad level around campus planning is this idea that as we try to leverage resources that the institution already has, knowing that funding is always going to be a challenge, at some point, do you reduce the amount of square footage on campuses? Therefore, removing the need for maintenance and operations eventually puts money back into an operating budget that may enable some other things to happen. I think the idea is that maybe less space is better space at some point. 

Sue: And I think many of us are looking at, can we repurpose some facilities? So, whether that's residential in a region that has a high need for rentals, whether that is space for offices or healthcare or that kind of thing. Can we, in fact, repurpose space, which in some environments is workable? You really want to leverage those assets. But in some areas, there's already a heavy preponderance of office space or residential space or that kind of thing. So, part of it is being really specific and savvy about knowing what your assets are and working with a lot of creative people like Paul and BHDP and others on how we could leverage these assets to look at them differently. What is our regional need, and how could we contribute to that with some of the physical assets that we have on campus? 

Brian: What should higher education leaders be thinking about and doing next? 

Sue: First of all, we need to do our strategic planning. By the way, I call mine a rolling action plan, and it's constantly in revision. There's no longer a world where you do a five-year plan and put it on a shelf. However, I would encourage everyone to look at the continuum of learners and make sure it is adequately represented in the plan. No matter where I've been, and we've served adult learners, I've introduced adult learning programs in almost every institution I've been in. All of our planning is still around this traditional residential campus. So, we really have to push ourselves very consciously in our action planning to look at this broad range of learners. The other thing I would say is to really have some creative and enjoyable planning and always include the spaces. So, all the planning needs to be about what are going to be the technology connections and the space connections. How do those two work together? 

Paul: I completely agree, and it's what Sue's describing is really the concept of integrated planning, meaning the strategic plan and the campus master plan are connected. They happen in sequence, and they're very closely aligned with goals that are actionable. Ultimately, it's how you look at the existing campus as assets that they can use strategically to implement the strategic plan. The worst campus master plans are the ones that just drop new buildings and things on campus. Wouldn't it be great if there was a building here and here? With no concept of how you can afford it and if it really is needed. It's more strategic, or I'll call it, a surgical approach of interventions in a campus to ultimately impact the success of their strategy. 

Sue: And I would argue that you should never build a building without a 25-year vision of how it's going to be used.

Brian: Wow. 

Sue: And how is it going to be robustly used? So when we built our health and wellness complex, we said, Okay, here's how we intend to use it in the next five years. But here's how we hope it's going to grow into the future. So, how do you create flexible spaces? How do you create multi-use spaces? How do you always look at every kind of facility, either remodeled or new, as something that's going to be used differently, potentially 25 years from now? What are the basics? The basics of mobility and accessibility, right? The basics of flexibility around technology, the basics of light, form, and function. But then, always look 25 or more years down the road for how it might be used. 

Brian: That is a profound and daunting task to imagine how a building will perform in 2050. I remember asking somebody in the corporate world. It used to be standard to create a 10-year plan or a five-year plan like you talked about, and then it's just a thing that collects dust. From the beginning of the year to the end of the year, things can change profoundly. How do you adapt? How do you plan that far ahead? The answer that I got back was that you design for basic human needs because those never change. Then everything else will work. So just make sure you have enough flexibility to support whatever technology or whatever comes in. As long as the basic needs of shelter, security, nourishment, connection, and belonging are met, everything else will work.

Paul: I would just say I think it's a very exciting time in higher education because while there's a lot of pressure and challenges out there, there's also a lot of opportunity to be creative with being strategic. And I think as we start to reimagine the campus and the evolving student population, there could be some great stories and scenarios that come out of this that really craft the future of higher education.

Brian: Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Sue!

[Music Outro]

Brian Trainer, Host: Thank you for joining Trends + Tensions in Architecture and Design, presented by BHDP for this episode, “Shaping the Future: Designing Campus Spaces for a Changing Student Population,” with Sue Hasseler of Muskingum University and Paul Orban of BHDP. If you appreciate what you have heard, please rate, subscribe, and give us a review. I am Brian Trainer, your host, and I hope you’ll join us for another episode of Trends + Tensions to see what topics drive design.