Outcomes from COVID-19 Study: Conversations with Higher Education Planners

Last spring, the COVID-19 pandemic required colleges and universities to adapt to operating with reduced budgets, remote staff, and dispersed student populations. The pandemic has fostered innovations such as hybrid education models and pop-up classrooms while precipitating trends of remote learning and adaptive reuse of campus buildings. As designers of academic and residential facilities, we asked our clients: what has worked and what has not?

Here are some of their answers.

Results

Biggest Issues

• Student compliance with social distancing guidelines
• Communication inefficiency between remote workers
• Reduced budgets due to construction delays, lower enrollment, and limited residence hall capacity
• Determining meaningful indicators for decision making when facing data overload and variable public policy

What Has Worked

• A Covid Task Force that met multiple times per week to address issues as they arose
• Critical management team activities (CMIT) and a horizontally integrated organizational structure that buoyed staff during the transition to remote work
• A facilities-led response that provided a framework for university reopening
• App implementation to monitor flow of people on campus and track community spread
• Reduced student population on campus
• Converted multi-student bedrooms into singles and created quarantine dorms
• Outdoor learning
• Hybrid educational models with greater emphasis on remote learning
• Condensed spring semester with more time for quarantine after holiday travel and elimination of mid-semester breaks
• Increased cleaning of all shared spaces
• Consistent testing and support of university medical institutions

Questions Raised due to COVID-19

• How has Covid changed the physical culture of the university? How has Covid changed construction schedules?
• How did you maintain student life with an increase in remote learning and off-campus housing?
• How did you foster community among in-residence students while still maintaining physical distance in communal environments such as dining halls and dorms?

Design and Financial Strategies for the Future

• Leveraging hybrid learning to reach more students
• Utilizing university buildings for conferences and alumni events during academic off-season
• Assigning some departments to a permanent work-from-home model
• Hoteling to provide greater flexibility for existing university spaces
• Apartment-style housing, both on and off-campus, to address students' changing living preferences and enable physical distancing when necessary
• Renovating university buildings rather than building new in accordance with broader public health and sustainability objectives
• Budgeting to a surplus to better weather future pandemics

Process

Colleges and Universities

• University of Virginia
• Yale University
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• Fairfield University
• University of Connecticut
• Connecticut College

Position of Participants

• Associate Provost for Academic Support and Classroom Management
• Capital Program Director, Office of Facilities
• Senior Associate Vice President of Administrative Services
• Vice President for Facilities Management
• Associate Vice President, Master Planner and Chief Architect
• Vice President Finance and Administration

Methodology

• Qualitative Analysis
  • Interviewed and surveyed clients and contacts
  • Analyzed responses and identified trends
  • Distributed results to participants and the public