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Designing an Academic Building for 21st-Century Learning: ADean's GuideDeborah J. Leather a & Rita Duarte Marinho aa Department of Psychology, Towson UniversityPublished online: 07 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Deborah J. Leather & Rita Duarte Marinho (2009) Designing an Academic Building for 21st-Century Learning: ADean's Guide, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 41:3, 42-49, DOI: 10.3200/CHNG.41.3.42-49

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Your institution has just received long-awaited news that funding for a new 200,000-square-foot facility has been allocated. The

new building will replace a traditional structure built in the 1970s, an era when in-house state architects designed pub-lic university buildings using a template also developed for public hospitals and prisons, while architects hired for private institutions were frequently trapped in the historic collegiate model. Both models presumed the lecture as the primary mode of instruction.

The ChallengeMany colleges and universities

have by now embraced the learning paradigm, at least in theory. But if we believe that student learning is the ap-propriate focus for the academy, what does this mean in terms of space? Fundamentally, academic space should enable and encourage active learning and collaborative learning strategies.

Buildings should contain teaching and learning spaces that enable highly inter-active work, both formal and informal areas for students and faculty groups to gather and for students and faculty to meet with each other, and spaces for impromptu face-to-face and/or techno-logically mediated interaction. Addi-tionally, the building should reflect the kinds of environments our students will face as members of the professional workforce, as active citizens, and as leaders in community settings.

* * *During the 1960s, the inside ar-

chitecture of both public and private colleges and universities was charac-terized by long corridors with academ-ic departments secluded at the ends. The design ensured that faculty could

Deborah J. Leather and Rita Duarte Marinho are both at Towson University, the former in the Department of Psychology and the lat-ter in the Department of Women’s Studies. Deborah Leather has held senior-level posi-tions in both public and private institutions of higher education, where she served as the lead of or was on the design team for new and renovated academic learning and sup-port spaces. Rita Duarte Marinho has held senior-level positions at four public institu-tions of higher education,where she was in-volved in the construction and renovation of academic learning spaces. In total, the two authors have worked on nine major academic building programs.

42 Change ● May/June 2009

By Deborah J. Leather and Rita Duarte Marinho

A DEAN’S GUIDE

Designing an Academic

Building for 21st-Century Learning

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conduct their “real” work, i.e. re-search, and engage in collegial discus-sions buffered from the din of student voices and classroom movement.

Cinderblocks and linoleum floors were considered durable enough to accommodate the GIs and baby boomers swarming onto campuses. The classrooms were designed with traditional lecture pedagogy in mind: student tablet chairs were packed together facing the lecture podium/table from which intellectual homi-lies flowed. Lighting was basic, and a single electric outlet powered an overhead projector. Blackboards, pull-down screens, and maps served as the visual learning reinforcements.

For the last few decades, improv-ing learning space has generally meant renovations to existing space, because

raising new buildings has simply not been within most public or private institutions’ budgetary capacity. At-tempts have been made to revamp some learning/teaching spaces using seminar tables and rolling chairs. Some graduat-ed classroom floors have been replaced with flat floors or vice versa, depending on the recommendations of outside AV consultants, while whiteboards have succeeded blackboards. Computer labs and other classroom technology en-hancements have been retrofitted into the existing pedagogically outdated layout. Through all these changes, the podium has remained the classroom fo-cal point, while the overhead projector has moved to the corner closest to the podium as if it were a CPR crash cart standing ready to resuscitate a dying class session.

But sometimes, the opportunity to oversee the development of a new build-ing occurs. The dean who is given such an important project has the primary responsibility to make certain that student learning is optimized in the college and so should be prepared to serve as the pri-mary advocate for the core users, the fac-ulty and students, in both the design and construction phases of the new building.

This decanal stake may or may not be acknowledged as the design process unfolds. Sometimes the dean is an integral part of the process from the beginning; sometimes she or he is asked only for cursory contributions before the actual building begins. In either case, the office must sustain a significant amount of ad-ditional, often complex, work, which in most instances is entirely new to the dean and her or his staff.

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A DEAN’S GUIDE

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44 Change ● May/June 2009

This article will present a compre-hensive overview of how effective academic leadership, particularly that of the dean, functions in planning and advocating for the appropriate design for an academic building based on 21st-century learning needs.

Consideration One: Values Above All Else

While planning and designing a building is ultimately about physi-cal space, the first important step is to articulate the overall academic values of the building’s users. The design of the building and its component spaces convey strong messages about the principles, as well as the activities and social organization, of its users. The articulation of those principles is essen-tial if the physical spaces are to reflect what the faculty believe about student learning and what students need to sup-port that learning.

The first step then is for faculty members, through their chairs, to artic-ulate a strong values statement as a way of introducing the building program. The expressed values should relate to academic branches of knowledge, to student development and social interac-tion, and to the overall mission and vision of the institution.

Two value components are fre-quently included in mission and vi-sion statements, as well as strategic plans, of universities and colleges. One relates to 21st-century learning, as described for instance in Greater Ex-pectations: A New Vision for Learning as a Nation Goes to College (AAC&U 2001); the second has to do with the development of students’ civic engage-ment and faculty and institutional out-reach beyond the campus.

Greater Expectations describes the attributes of empowered learners. They are expected to develop “intellectual and practical skills that ... are extensive, sophisticated and expanding with the explosion of new technologies” (p. xi). In particular, these learners must be able to communicate “orally, visually, in writing, and in a second language.”

So if the curriculum and learning goals are indeed based on the values articulated in Greater Expectations, recommendations regarding, for ex-ample, a new liberal arts building might include the following: that it have 1) a

state-of-the-art language laboratory that is used for both synchronous and asyn-chronous learning and reinforcement and allows users to connect with other institutions worldwide, visually as well as audibly; 2) satellite transmissions broadcasting national and international programming to TV monitors in the building’s café (or some other venue, or throughout the building); and 3) active learning spaces throughout that will en-courage both planned and spontaneous scholarly events.

What does a commitment to civic engagement mean in terms of space? Does the institution invite campus experts and constituency groups to re-flect upon and solve community prob-lems? If so, an appropriate meeting place with adjacent break-out rooms may be necessary. Do students work in teams on cooperative service-learn-ing projects? Then they need small rooms for meeting spaces. What type of technology interface is needed in these spaces? What type of security?

Are the rooms available 24/7? The answers to these questions and others vary dramatically, but the significance of civic engagement must be included in the value discussion at the start of the planning phase.

Earlier we referred to the expressed values of the academic disciplines. The dean must be prepared to discuss building design with faculty and chair-persons from the point of view of the individual disciplines, as well from an interdisciplinary one. Each discipline needs to determine what kinds of gen-eral and specialized physical spaces it needs, based on its requirements for both learning and research. The dean and the chairs must also consider what kinds of spaces are needed to develop the “complete scholar” or the “complete student,” which entails a discussion of interdisciplinarity, multiculturalism, and globalism as they relate to shared and special-needs learning spaces.

Finally, there are the building spaces that support learning administratively. In a multidisciplinary learning environ-ment, should academic disciplines be the definition of administrative support space, or should another configuration be considered that may better express how disciplines interface? Depart-mental spaces that are adjacent to one another or even integrated may reflect the values of a liberal education as they address student and faculty needs.

If the value component is missing in the planning stage, the project will revert to an architectural exercise in drawing boxes that may or may not be interrelated. The result, in all likeli-hood, will be a 20th-century building with some 21st-century glitz, a product that no one on the user side will find appealing or functional.

Consideration Two: "If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t know when you get there." Yogi Berra

There is little doubt that a plan is necessary to execute any project ef-ficiently and rationally. Ideally, the institution will have an operational strategic plan based on broad overarch-ing goals, and each organizational unit will have corresponding plans that are integrated with it. Specifically, the academic affairs plan should articulate various programmatic, learning, and teaching goals for students and faculty.

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Such a plan might include objectives in line with Greater Expectations, various professional accrediting organizations’ expectations, regional accreditation self-study documents, and the board of trustees’ vision for the institution.

The academic affairs document should be the product of multiple con-versations with all important academic constituencies. And because these conversations should have taken place over a period of time, the plan should be enshrined in a variety of documents, thus legitimizing its sense of where the institution is heading and also serving as a prelude to the building program.

The other plan that is paramount to supporting the academic building program is the campus master plan, the formal guide to developing the future physical environment of the campus. It is very important that it respond to fu-ture faculty and student needs. Like the other strategic plans of the institution, the campus master plan should be the product of a variety of conversations which produce a vision of what the campus will look like physically and aesthetically while it accommodates the overall academic vision and direction of the institution.

These planning documents should help mitigate much of the conflict inherent in each stage of the building process. The plans supply the headlines of the story; the building process then provides the paragraphs and conclu-sion. The academic affairs plan governs the building’s interior and to some degree the exterior, while the master plan governs in large part the building’s exterior design.

Two examples make the point. The institution may not have an archeology program now, but if one is included in the academic affairs plan, it should be included in the new building program. How to get vehicles into the building and wheelbarrows into the archeology lab without having to traipse through busy corridors must be considered from both an interior and exterior point of view.

Another compelling example is the degree to which the academic affairs plan has taken into consideration the learning habits of millennial students. If the discussion was extensive enough, the building program should include various types of learning support spaces

and an interactive technology design. In the absence of such planning, the danger of replicating outdated learning spaces is high.

Consideration Three: “This Isn’t Your Father’s Chevy”

This leads to the third point: Things have changed since many of the par-ticipants in the building project were in college. Millennial students’ needs are different than theirs were, and pedagog-ical strategies to enhance learning have improved. These two changes should be the primary drivers in providing space that will serve the students’ learning needs, and the dean’s role must be to ensure that the entire design team un-derstands and responds to how current

and future faculty and students will use physical spaces to teach and learn.

The discussion of pedagogy as it re-lates to building design does not come easily in the academy. Some faculty will want to keep things as they have always been, while others may think that anything goes. But in spite of these obstacles, higher education has been trying to adapt to the needs of the mil-lennial generation since they arrived on the scene. Millennial students are technologically savvy, want to multi-task, enjoy collaboration, like learning mobility, easily express their opinions, and readily volunteer if there is some personal reward.

Like young entry-level faculty, they seem isolated by their technologies

Figure 1. Designed by Undergraduates, 2005

Source: Towson University Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology

BRIDGE

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ClassroomClassroom

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and yet appear to be deeply connected at the same time. Both groups want spaces where they can plug in and do personal tasks, yet they are also inclined to work in groups. So the building must have spaces in which in-dividualism and group dynamics both can flourish.

During the past decade, the aca-demic community has seen a strong emphasis on learning rather than teach-ing, and the building must allow for interactive, formal and informal, and peer-to-peer learning experiences. The traditional lecture has not been sum-marily dismissed, but it is only one of the numerous ways that students will engage in learning.

The new learning paradigm neces-sitates that the entire building be a learning environment rather than a set of rectangular enclaves with a certain number of seats for focused and ap-proved activities. Formal and informal social spaces where food can be found and the Internet, faculty, and infor-mation can be easily accessed—for instance, a small-group presentation space in an expanded corridor or a cafeteria/study/seminar space—are important to the empowering learning environment. (See Figures 1-4 for some models of a 21st-century academic building developed by student focus groups on one campus.)

Faculty also conduct their scholar-ship and research from varied loca-tions. Faculty who do not require specialized research space increasingly spend less time in the office and more time on their computers elsewhere. The computer has also engendered more collaboration with colleagues both at the home campus and at other sites. The faculty office still retains some traditional functions, such as working space for co-authors when they must meet in real time, student meetings, and book storage. But many new faculty prefer to communicate via e-mail rather than in person, as do their students. Whether and how to move from the traditional 10’ x 12’ faculty office allocation will be one of the major challenges of the future, especially for state institutions where approved net assignable square foot-age for the building is still determined by codes originally approved in the middle of the 20th century.

Consideration Four: Teams Build Buildings

Rather than working through a rep-resentative of the facilities staff, the dean and a member of the provost’s staff should represent academic af-fairs through the building-program (the planning documentation for the design team), design-development, and building phases of the project. This ap-proach makes academic affairs an equal player on the internal team, along with the institution’s units of finance and administration, facilities, and technol-ogy services. Equally important are the external members of the design team: architects, experts in classroom tech-nology, interior designers, and other technical experts (e.g., landscape archi-tects, lighting designers), all of whom will have a lasting impact on the project even though they will not be users of the building.

Because building projects bring to the table participants who have dif-ferent missions and expectations, academic preparation and experiences, and responsibilities, there is no other

Figure 2. Designed by Undergraduates, 2006

Source: Towson University Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology

Lecture Hall Lecture Hall

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ClassroomClassroom

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project in higher education where a clash of cultures is more likely to occur. As a general premise, the dean should be responsible for the academic aspects of the building program. But the dean’s authority over academic decisions may be resisted by facilities staff or per-sons who represent other institutional interests. Because of this potential resistance and because of the dean’s intermediary position within the admin-istrative structure, he or she needs to seek out allies.

Here are some who are particularly important:

The president. Before the design phase even begins, the institution’s president and chief academic officer must clearly signal the pivotal role to be played by the dean on the design team. This support should ensure that the aca-demic agenda is not lost in the clash of egos at the design table.

Buildings are often a capital cam-paign’s centerpiece and almost always a hallmark of a president’s administra-tion, so the dean should understand the president’s expectations regarding the building. If it is associated with a for-mal campus master plan, the president will inevitably tie the building’s success to that plan. But with or without such a plan, some presidents may regard new buildings as monuments to self. In these cases, the provost or vice president for academic affairs is a crucial ally, since the personal direction taken by a man-aging president can imperil the success of the building design.

The provost or vice president for academic affairs. As the chief aca-demic officer, the provost should be vested in the building as an educational facility and serve as a strong advocate for prioritizing academic considerations in designing the building. The provost should either attend or name a member of his or her staff to attend all design team meetings as additional support to the dean. Additionally, the dean should schedule biweekly or monthly meetings to keep the provost fully informed.

When the design team deviates from the academic imperative, the dean should be able to rely on the provost to work with the president to reiterate the building’s priorities, and either the president or the provost should ensure that the team refocuses its discussions. When the dean does

not get such support, the building is usually doomed to failure as a compel-ling academic facility.

Facilities management. Depending on the size of the institution, the facili-ties unit may have a number of special-ists involved in the building project: a campus architect, a design developer, a project manager, and/or the head of the facilities unit. They should support the academic agenda.

But this does not happen automati-cally, so these are important allies to cultivate assiduously:

• If the institution employs a cam-pus architect, the dean should make the case to him or her for the academic design as early as possible. A campus architect who respects the academic imperatives of the building can com-municate to the outside architectural firm that there is institutional consen-sus about the direction of the project and translate those imperatives into specialized design language.

Be aware, however, that a campus architect who wants instead to curry favor with the architectural firm may

Figure 3. Designed by Undergraduates, 2007

Source: Towson University Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology

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engage in sidebar discussions with its representative(s), making unnecessary or inappropriate changes and circum-venting the dean.

• A design developer is someone, usually hired by facilities management, to oversee routine academic facilities projects on the campus and the internal layout of new buildings. If this person has worked on campus projects with academic affairs personnel before, she or he should already be sensitive to academic purposes. The dean and chair-persons should meet with the design developer throughout the design and building phases of the project and count on this person to convey their concerns in facilities-only meetings to which the dean may not be invited.

• The project manager is the person who keeps the project cycles on track, generally staying out of the project’s politics. The dean should understand the importance of the role and help that person maintain the established time-line for completion of the design phase.

• The head of facilities is often the biggest challenge on the institution’s team. This individual may have aca-demic building construction experi-ence but be unclear about changes in learning/teaching models in general and within the various disciplines in particular. While this person’s experi-ence is very important in terms of the building’s footprint, budget restric-tions, external building design, and the mechanics of the building, having oversight of the institution’s master plan should not mean being the mas-ter of how the building is designed inside as well. Additionally, the head of facilities usually works for a differ-ent vice president and may be given a charge that conflicts with the one given to the dean. In this case, the dean will need the support of the provost or the provost’s liaison.

• Most external architects come to the table with a personal or organiza-tional mandate to design a building that will receive a national (or at least a regional) architectural award. These awards emphasize what profession-als in the field believe are the latest important general internal and external design innovations.

This means that academic func-tionality may be put aside in favor of impressive public spaces and exterior

appearances. The dean may believe that form should follow function, but the architectural firm’s representative may not be in accord—in which case the prospect for agreement and an alliance will be unlikely. In this case the dean’s job is to cultivate the firm’s leadership and, if that is not effective, rely on the president and provost for additional discussion with the entire design team regarding the project and its direction.

Besides developing internal alli-ances, we recommend that the dean form an external network of peers to provide feedback on aspects of the building design and serve as a sounding board for particular issues or concerns. If the institution is small, hiring a space planner or an architectural advisor to work directly for the dean is also rec-ommended. Additionally, we suggest that deans stay current on aspects of building design and learning spaces by reviewing publications such as the ones

listed under Recommended Reading at the end of this article.

A female dean may face special challenges. It is still the norm that the majority of lead facilities participants—architects, contractors, and design-ers—are male. This means that gender may play a role in the design and devel-opment process. A nursing room (not an enlarged women’s room) or a neutral restroom are not, in the 21st century, “add-ons”; they are essential in the con-text of an academy whose gender bal-ance (faculty and student) is changing. The skills of negotiation and persuasion are necessary in this environment. The female dean will need to become espe-cially seasoned in those arts.

Consideration Five: “What’s Old Is New Again”

While technology should not be the primary driver of building design, it will provide an important venue for learning and teaching. It therefore needs to be considered throughout the building design process. The design team must think about how technology will be used to encourage academic col-laboration between faculty and student, a classroom on campus and a classroom in another location, student and student, and faculty on and off campus. Other questions to consider: What are the technological requirements for different disciplines? What kinds of simulations and other creative approaches are nec-essary to achieve the desired learning outcomes?

To anticipate what will happen in a building with a lifespan of many de-cades in this changing academic and technological environment is almost impossible. But to discuss how to incor-porate as much technological flexibility as possible in its design is a must. If learning is not confined to a scheduled classroom space at a specific time, a big challenge is to create spaces that can be used as anytime, multifaceted educa-tional environments. The architect and other consultants must design a build-ing that can be changed as pedagogies and technologies advance. Architects and AV consultants will need to think not only about how much wire, how many conduits, and how much lighting are required but how flexible the entire internal design of each learning space can be made.

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Tools and methods that already en-rich learning include wireless Internet, podcasting, cell phones, Web-based teaching software, and visual and au-dio synchronous meeting software. All transmit classroom presentations, field notes, demonstrations, study reinforce-ments, and course designs to students in diverse ways that accommodate different learning styles. Still, none of these technologies can be consid-ered revolutionary. In many academic building designs, they reinforce old paradigms of teaching rather than cre-ating genuine alternatives. A faculty podium facing student desks in a large rectangular room, however techno-logically spruced up, is not in keeping with 21st-century learning. The build-ing technology should instead be a physical representation of a multi-level learning system that encourages creative thinking, reinforces intellec-tual and practical skill development, and supports multi-level communal discourse.

ConclusionWhether the building project is ap-

proved for a state or private institution or for a small liberal arts college or a large research university, the design of an academic building is a public trust. It is there that we provide our young adults with the tools to be productive workers, good citizens, and cultured individuals. For the faculty, we pro-vide a venue in which, individually or with others, they may discover an-swers to complex problems or develop strategies that can change the course of human society.

Frank H. T. Rhodes, in The Cre-ation of the Future: The Role of the American University (2001, p. 238), puts it clearly and succinctly: “The ‘best’ universities and colleges of the future will be those that demonstrate the most effective gains in learning and learning skills among students.” While the dean must serve as the pri-mary advocate for academic values in the creation of a new academic build-ing, no one responsible for the design and construction of that building, espe-cially those sitting at the design table, can afford to forget that fact. C

Figure 4. Designed by Graduates, 2007

Source: Towson University Center for Instructional Advancement and Technology. Note: This focus group intentionally choose not to include faculty offices.

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Recommended Reading

CAE Net Quarterly Newsletter (AIA Committee on Architecture for Education).

International Journal for Aca-demic Development (Published by Taylor and Francis Group) ISSN: 1360-144X [print]; 1470-1324 [electronic].

Planning for Higher Education (Society for College and University Planning quarterly).

Current monographs such as:

Scott-Webber, L. (2004). In sync: Environmental behavior re-search and the design of learning spaces, Ann Arbor, MI: Society for College and University Plan-ning. Digitized by the University of Michigan, 2007.

Strange, C. C., & Banning, J. H. (2001). Educating by design: Creat-ing campus learning environments that work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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