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Campus Plan 2022-2032

Our guiding vision is to create and uphold a beautiful and vibrant campus that promotes an educational community that is welcoming, inclusive, and respectful of all, while promoting and nurturing the student experience, world class research, and sustainable solutions.

¶¶Òõ̽̽ and State Agricultural College (¶¶Òõ̽̽, the University) has engaged in planning since the 1960's. The most recent Campus Plan was approved by ¶¶Òõ̽̽ Trustees in December, 2022. It was built on the 2006 Campus Master Plan (CMP) and guided by a vision of academic excellence, student experience, and environmental stewardship—emphasizing the campus landscape, with a focus on several key sites and projects. It raises aspirations and the quality of campus to attract and retain the best while providing flexibility to accommodate changing attitudes and the evolving nature of campus environments. 

Principles

Sustainability
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Support the university’s role as a sustainability leader in education, research, student life, and physical facilities. Prioritize the wellbeing and health of our community in decision-making. Plan, design, and implement fiscally responsible capital improvements that incorporate responsible environmental practices and contribute to a vibrant and resilient campus.

Interdisciplinarity and Innovation
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Create space to foster the ability for students to make connections with faculty and engage in research.

Healthy Lives
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Design indoor and outdoor physical and social environments that promote and facilitate physical activity, mental health, and total wellbeing. Create spaces that demonstrate the university’s commitment to building healthy environments and healthy societies.

Efficient Use of Limited Resources
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Improve and maximize space efficiency in a manner to reduce operations and maintenance costs. Demonstrate efficient use of financial resources in the implementation of this plan.

Academic Excellence and Student Success
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Establish state-of-the-art teaching and research facilities that place the university at the international forefront of learning and research.

Diversity and Inclusion
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Enhance the campus such that it helps to promote diversity, foster intellectual dialogue, bring together a vibrant mix of people, and be truly inclusive for all.

Open Space and Compatibility
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Foster campus community through the creation of vibrant and accessible public spaces that enhance our natural resources and educational opportunities. Preserve and enhance the continuity of open space and buildings and ensure the integration of additional facilities into the existing campus.

Accessibility and Flexibility
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Ensure accessibility and adaptability within the university’s academic and support services, information (electronic technology), people, and programs by providing settings for a diverse community that facilitate communication and promote interaction and integration among all segments of the university and larger community. Apply the Seven Principles of Universal Design to guide decision making: Equitable Use, Flexibility in Use, Simple and Intuitive Use, Perceptible Information, Tolerance for Error, Low Physical Effort, Consider Size and Space for Approach and Use.

Connectivity
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Create a fully accessible campus that is logically, efficiently, and technologically connected and create a campus that promotes community and institutional cohesiveness. Enhance and develop welcoming and safe circulation systems that emphasize the needs of pedestrians and multi-modal connectivity to reduce reliance on single-occupancy vehicles. Invest in accessible and equitable infrastructure that supports this principle.

Sense of Place
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Create a campus environment that has a strong sense of place and fosters wellbeing in the community. Establish an environment that is safe, welcoming, and organized, where the arrangement of physical elements is unifying; provide a sense of entry and identity to the university (gateways); provide identifiable, visually satisfying places that encourage human connection; preserve, enhance, and restore the built and natural environment; and provide a safe and pleasant climate in which to learn, work, and live.

Key Ideas

Cultivate connections to sustainability and healthy living
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Promote a sustainable future financially, socially, and environmentally. Design indoor and outdoor built, natural, and social environments that promote and facilitate physical activity, mental health, and total wellbeing. Prioritize the use of sustainable materials when possible.

Objectives

  • Use campus as a living laboratory to generate and test sustainability solutions.
  • Provide an environment that is welcoming and promotes physical and mental health.
  • Enhance environmental quality in indoor and outdoor spaces.
  • Continue efforts to reduce energy usage and maximize renewable energy capacity.
Determine future plans for former single-family residences
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Objectives

  • Confirm the university-owned structures to be assessed including any associated outbuildings such as garages and carriage barns.
  • Identify assessment criteria for each structure.
  • Apply criteria identified to assess structures to a sample list of structures to test the recommendations for the future plans for buildings including renovation, adaptive reuse, divestment, or removal. When feasible, sell or lease the former single-family residences while maintaining control of the property.
Enhance and improve space on campus
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Enhance and improve space on campus through optimization, innovation, flexibility, renewal, and adaptation. Reduce overall campus footprint where feasible and increase footprint for identified high-priority needs, including research and housing.

Objectives

  • Reduce overall space footprint for campus through space optimization, renewal, and adaptation for existing buildings. Reorganize/redesign space for other priority purposes (research, interdisciplinary, study, collaboration, housing).
  • Enhance and increase library/study/collaboration space to meet educational needs.
  • Encourage the design of classroom spaces that promote active and peer-to peer/small-group learning.
  • Increase and upgrade research facilities to support expected growth.
  • Create housing for students to facilitate affordability, safety, and community.
Create vibrant outdoor spaces and connective mobility corridors
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Objectives

  • Create a pedestrian-centric campus through human-scale design strategies that provide connectivity, safety, and accessibility.
  • Increase bike ridership by improving bicycle infrastructure to increase safety and access to and across campus.
  • Reduce single occupancy in vehicles and increase use of alternatives and shared modes.
  • Create flexible, multi-use outdoor gathering and learning spaces that are welcoming, adaptable, equitable, and accessible.
  • Foster ecological landscape design strategies.
Prioritize safety, diversity, and accessibility on campus
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Prioritize safety, diversity, and accessibility on campus: Plan and design buildings, circulation, and open spaces that are safe, resilient, and accessible for a dynamic academic environment; encourage and celebrate the campus community’s cultural diversity.

Objectives

  • Continue efforts to make transportation on and around campus safe and accessible.
  • Use public landscapes and features to celebrate cultural diversity.
  • Create accessible and inclusive indoor environments that people can utilize easily, safely, and with dignity.

Campus Planning Committee

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A nine-member Campus Planning Committee (CPC) is appointed by senior leadership:

  • Director of Facilities Management, Chair
  • Director of Planning, Design and Construction
  • University Architect
  • Associate Director of Planning, Vice Chair
  • Director of Sustainability
  • Assistant Provost
  • Vice Provost for Student Affairs
  • University Engineer
  • Grounds Manager

Advisory Groups

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Advisory Groups will also review projects around these themes:

  • Historic Preservation
  • Landscape, Mobility, and Sustainability
  • Diversity, Safety, and Accessibility