From the Field
Campus Matters: Classrooms and ORs
From Michael Haggans, in his always provocative series of essays posted in Campus Matters comes this elegantly argued case for paying attention to classrooms, challenging the community to identify and address 21st century questions when thinking about 21st century classrooms. He challenges us all to see the campus and OR as an ecosysterm for learning, an approach which invalidates 20th century questions about what a classroom is and should be.
—Jeanne Narum
Operating rooms are to hospitals as classrooms are to colleges and universities – mission critical.
They are tiny parts of an institution’s footprint yet essential to the mission. Hospital administrators pay attention to ORs. Provosts rarely give classrooms a second thought. In the digital transformation of higher education effective learning environments are becoming more critical, not less. Inattention to classrooms and learning spaces can be an Achilles heel.
From the Archives
Asking the Right Questions: Toward Building Communities
In the workshops on facilities PKAL has hosted since 1992 we challenged participants to be conscious of the relationship between the success of the collaborating community and the success of the spaces that emerge from their work. Participants comment:
“we now recognize that a characteristic of community is informed discussion, and that there has to be institutional commitment if the project is to succeed.”
“we also recognize that designing a building is a community-builder; we have been impatient, planning too much department by department…”
Thus, we suggest a community that works is one that:
- has a clear understanding of the students of today, and of the future in which they will live and work
- energizes gifted and respected leaders in the faculty and administrative ranks, and gives them the requisite flexibility, responsibility, and resources to effect change
- understands the critical questions to be asked at each stage in the process of reform, and asks them in a context of mutual respect and shared commitments
- takes risks, seeks new collaborators and supporters, develops partnerships that dissolve boundaries within the academy and within the larger community of stakeholders
- broadens the discussion, redefines the problem, and understands the kaleidoscope nature of efforts to build natural science communities that serve the national interest.
— PKAL Occasional Paper #2. 1994.
