Student Housing Business is the voice of the student housing industry.
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ON-CAMPUS HOUSING January/February 2017 StudentHousingBusiness.com 48 Building Meaningful Places Campuses look to create residence halls that have a relationship with the university beyond function. By Lynn Peisner W When Rishi Sriram finished his freshman year at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, he couldn't wait to move off campus. Most stu- dents who have to grit their teeth through a first-year, on-campus requirement in a sterile, aging residence hall at any university are likely to feel the same way. Decades later, Sriram is living on campus at Baylor once again — this time in the roles of associate professor of higher education and student affairs, graduate program director for the Department of Educational Leadership, and residential college faculty steward of Brooks Residential College, a living-learning community of approximately 400 students. "When I moved off campus to get away from the dorms and explore apartment life, I did not know how important community was to my own journey and well-being," Sriram says. "And never did I imagine I would one day move my wife and three kids into Bay- lor's first residential college. If you survey all the research done on college student success over the past five decades, two things rise to the top in terms of their positive impact on students: living on campus and student- faculty interaction." While every college and university has its own personality, the common goal that influ- ences most new on-campus housing proj- ects today can be summed up in one word: relationships. How do you design spaces that innately nurture relationships? How do you increase the opportunities for students to interact with their professors outside the classroom? How do you create a variety of meeting spots that ensure students develop positive bonds with one another? How can housing be part of a university's relationship with its surrounding community? Across the country, universities, increas- ingly through public-private partnerships, are answering these questions and completely rei- magining how their students live on campus. There may have been a time when universities could assign their students into old residence halls or expect them to scrounge for run-down apartments off campus. But housing today is symbiotically linked to everything that makes a university a success: enrollment increases, higher retention and graduation rates, better GPAs, increased alumni support, safer cam- puses, stronger town-and-gown relationships and much more. Identifying Identity New housing can elevate a university's standing in several ways. Jane Wright, presi- dent and CEO of Norfolk, Virginia-based architecture firm Hanbury, which until August 2016 was called Hanbury Evans Wright Vlat- tas + Company, says the firm's goal is to listen to university clients and translate their culture into intentional spaces. "From our perspective, we find that univer- sities are leaning deeper into their culture," Wright says. "Some have progressive curricu- lum, some may be more classic, but by and large we are seeing universities break down their scale to a more intimate level so students can get to know one another." Like a commuter who lives in the suburbs and works in the city, the antiquated blue- print of a typical college campus had resi- dential students living away from the center of campus and having to go long distances to pay a tuition bill or see a nurse in a clinic. Today, most new projects are being designed to include several access points for various services, with the aesthetic goal of looking less like a big, institutional campus and more like a mixed-use neighborhood. "A lot of universities are using housing as a way to break down the scale and use their whole program on student affairs for engage- ment centers," Wright says. "That is some- thing that we have actually seen physically change. A great example of that is at Michigan State University." Hanbury created a strategic plan for Michi- gan State to develop these neighborhood guidelines. The five neighborhood engage- ment centers dispersed throughout campus offer tutoring, health clinics, fitness classes and caucuses for LGBTQ students and Afri- can-American students, interfaith and wom- en's groups as well as hosting meetings that support and connect Native American stu- dents, Islamic students, Jewish students and students with disabilities. "Colleges and universities across the coun- try are dealing with issues of wellness," Wright says. "They have specific programs for physical and mental health. They're building buildings now around wellness." Welcoming Villages Design Collective is a Baltimore-based architecture firm with a pedigree in deliver- Hanbury says young students want transparency. So at a renovation of the University of Michigan's East Quad, the architecture firm built transparency into its design by encasing a café in glass. Image courtesy of Robert Benson Photography