Two Hennebery Eddy teams presented in April at the 2018 Pacific Regional Conference of the Society of College and University Planning (SCUP), sharing takeaways from two recent academic projects, and offering participants actionable tools for their own campus planning projects.
Master Planning for Aspirational Outcomes: Rogue Community College Master Plan
A good campus master plan goes beyond infrastructure and site selection; it can impact the vision, strategy and growth trajectory of an educational institution. For Rogue Community College, Hennebery Eddy led a series of visioning workshops to plan for the future needs of the Table Rock Campus. On a compressed timeline, the team helped RCC articulate a project charter using integrated planning strategies. The team analyzed enrollment and classroom utilization data to make informed programming decisions, and conducted future vision planning, or “backcasting,” to identify a target future outcome, and work backwards to articulate the steps and processes needed to achieve that outcome.
Rogue Community College President Cathy Kemper-Pelle introduced the session, summarizing RCC’s main strategies for integrating industry partners and creating real-world work scenarios in the classroom. Gregg Sanders, associate principal and a leader in academic master planning and project management, then led SCUP session attendees through establishing a project charter, which can be used as a reference and touch point throughout the project decision-making process. He also conducted a backcasting exercise, which enables varying stakeholders to work beyond their current planning constraints and reconcile disparate goals with other decision-makers by working toward a shared vision. Interior designer Ashley Nored reviewed how the team gathered input from different user groups, accommodated RCC’s program priorities with student needs, and developed a phased plan for implementation.
Creating a Scholastic Home: Transforming the UO Honors College
How do you reconcile the unique needs of a gifted, diverse, self-directed student/staff population with the practical constraints of an historic renovation? Hennebery Eddy’s second SCUP session explored our successful approach to helping the University of Oregon Clark Honors College preserve the historic character of its home in Chapman Hall while completely renovating the building to create a state-of-the-art learning environment.
During the presentation, UO project representative Renée Dorjahn and recent CHC graduate Danae Burke shared the complex needs and aspirations of the CHC community, and principal David Wark and project architect Dawn Carlton addressed how the design team created a scholastic, social and community learning “home” for students. By focusing the design concepts for the renovation around clarity, connection, and community, while emphasizing the historical character of the building and improving its energy performance, all decisions supported the creation of a welcoming, learning-oriented and defined home for the honors college community. Chapman Hall now reflects the unique academic nature of the various curricula within the Honors College by blending formal elements of a scholarly college atmosphere with informal features of the modern learning environment that support a varied and modern pedagogy.