LINFIELD COLLEGE
MASTER PLAN ADDENDUM PROPOSAL
SUPPORTING ANALYSIS
You have asked that we provide an overview of strategic facilities planning issues related to the Mac Campus 1750 financial FTE (FFTE) enrollment goal. That goal is scheduled to be achieved in the 2009-10 academic year. The current year’s FFTE is 1697. The 53 additional FFTE required to reach the goal represents approximately 80 additional headcount students.
Several facilities areas have experienced increasing stress as enrollment grew over the past few years. In some cases, the stress may be so great that additional enrollment can not be accommodated without a noticeable diminution in facility service quality. We have identified the following four facilities areas as being either near or possibly beyond their capacities to support additional enrollment.
Science Labs
Classrooms
Faculty and Staff Office Space
Student Housing
There are undoubtedly other facilities stress points on campus (as examples consider the need for meeting spaces, intramural fields, general purpose student services spaces, etc.). A focused, participatory discussion would reveal exactly where these points lie and would represent the first step in preparing to meet the challenges of continued enrollment growth. The result of this discussion could be a facilities master plan. At the end of this memo, we signal the need to develop such a plan.
Classrooms and Science Labs
In fall 1998 Paulien and Associates completed a classroom and laboratory utilization and science space needs analysis for the Mac Campus. The analysis was carried out in terms of FTE (not FFTE). FTE enrollment in fall 1998 was 1548 students and Paulien reached the following two important conclusions.
1) “Application of guideline factors to weekly student contact hours of classroom use at Linfield College indicated the classroom space needs on campus to be approximately at balance for the current enrollment level….Guideline application at the current enrollment level indicated a need for 23,604 asf or a 982 asf surplus.” (Paulien and Associates, p. 2)
2) “For the base year, the Science Departments had existing space in all categories of 28,047 asf compared to a guideline space of 37,038 asf, or a deficit of 8,631 asf. The deficit space was found in open laboratories and service, undergraduate research laboratories and service, and faculty research laboratories and service space.” (Paulien and Associates, p. 30-31)
Between fall 1998, when the Paulien report was completed, and fall 2005, FTE enrollment increased from 1,548 to 1,694. Extrapolation based on Paulien’s guidelines suggests that to accommodate this growth the college should have added an additional 2,127 asf in classroom space and 3,493 in science lab spaces.
Classrooms:
Paulien’s classroom analysis was based on an inventory of 38 rooms. Since the analysis was completed, only one net classroom (in the old Comm Annex) has been removed from the campus inventory. A quick review of the inventory suggests that at least two large classrooms in Renshaw were gained when AVC moved to MFAC. On balance then, the college probably has added about half or a little more of the additional 2,217 asf needed to keep pace with enrollment growth. This is consistent with casual empiricism which suggests that while scheduling classes is more challenging now than it was in 1998, the net square foot additions in Renshaw in combination with a more rational class scheduling system has allowed us to inelastically adjust to the demands created by the additional 146 FTE. We may currently have a rough balance between supply of and demand for classroom space. If so, this implies that additional classroom space must be added as enrollment continues to grow. Fortunately, we will have at least one and perhaps as many as two classrooms with 30 student seat-capacities coming on line when the Renshaw remodel is completed in summer 2007. If the 1750 FFTE goal is to be reached by 2009-10, the college likely needs to add more classroom space as part of the Northup remodel and other future, academic facilities projects.
Science Labs:
The college has added no science lab space since the Paulien report was completed. The additional 146 FTE added since 1998 have been accommodated by expanding the size of science lectures and adding lab sections. As an example, BIO 110 enrollments averaged 70 to 90 students in the early part of this decade with one lecture and multiple labs being offered four days a week primarily in the afternoons. This semester, enrollment in BIO 101 hit 140 students. The course now has two lectures and the labs being offered Monday through Thursday in both the mornings and afternoons. Since 1998, we have also added a new science related major – Environmental Studies – which utilizes the ecology lab. The college is likely to be very close, if not beyond, its absolute capacity utilization point for science education. There is a shortage of both lab space (general use and for collaborative research) as well as lecture hall space. Splitting the BIO 110 lecture into two sections was both a pedagogical necessity and a reaction to space constraints. The largest lecture space on campus – Graf 107 – has a capacity of fewer than 100 students and is used for multiple classes.
Faculty Office Space
Faculty office space on campus is scarce. This will be relieved somewhat with the remodel of Renshaw Hall allowing the MCOM faculty and one CSC professor to move into the building. That will free up Cook Hall for HHP faculty and staff currently in marginal office spaces (one of the athletics trainers is in an “office” at the swimming pool) and free up one office in Graf Hall for the new MAT professor that may join the faculty next year.
Adjunct office space is also increasingly scarce. The adjunct suite in Malthus Hall is very near capacity and the remaining space in that building that was targeted for adjunct use has been ceded to College Relations for use as a phone room. It should be noted that in addition to the space in Malthus Hall, one additional adjunct office in Melrose was reallocated to College Relations this year.
Thoughtful reflection reveals that there is no academic department on campus where office space for an additional faculty member or adjunct could be found in an area near the existing faculty – or at all – without significant knock-on effects. A couple examples may demonstrate this point. When Professor Henberg returns from sabbatical next fall, the best location for his office is likely to be MEL 205B. This is a fine office, but it is located inside of the Writing Center and currently houses two and sometimes three ELC adjuncts. These adjuncts will need to be relocated to Malthus and that will not be politically popular. However serviceable it is, Professor Henberg’s office will not be adjacent to his PHI colleagues - one of whom has an office in Melrose behind the elevator shaft that is accessed by walking through the PHI conference classroom.
A second example can be found in Pioneer Hall. In the past few years we have successfully created office spaces in that building for two new History professors by building on to a hallway that extended into the old theater space. That option is now played out. However, the faculty staffing committee’s second-place recommendation for an additional faculty position this year was in Political Science, which is also located in Pioneer Hall. Without splitting an existing, very large office inhabited by Professor Nowacki into two sections, it is difficult to see how the college could provide office space for a Poli Sci professor in Pioneer.
Summarizing, it is difficult to see where we would find office space for new faculty who should be hired over the next few years as enrollment grows toward the FFTE target. This factor should be considered during the planning process for Northup and beyond.
Student Housing
The College has added 130 residence hall beds and 276 apartment beds to the housing inventory in the past 6 years. While some beds have been removed from the housing inventory, there has been net growth in the number of beds.
A challenge in determining housing needs for the future lies in accurately predicting enrollment. A wrong prediction – such as in fall 2005 when enrollment exceeded expectations and the retention rate was above trend – can create housing ripple effects for three to four years. Last year we had to move 16 sophomores to the apartments to make room for the entering class. This year we had to move 21 sophomores to the suburbs to make room for the large sophomore class and the freshman class. We have also converted double rooms to triples and triple rooms to quads to make room for the larger cohorts.
If each entering class had a known size, and if each entering class had a known retention rate, we could easily predict the number of beds needed to house all of our students in any given year. Clearly there are more unknowns than there are knowns in this process, and therein lies the planning challenge. What we can say for sure is that if we need to add an additional 80 headcount students to reach 1750 FFTE then we will need more beds to accommodate those students. How many beds we need in what type of housing and the location for that housing should be identified as part of a facilities planning process.
The Facilities Master Plan Addendum
Our discussion of facilities planning challenges created by enrollment growth signals the need to develop a facilities master plan. This plan can best be viewed as a tool by which the College’s vision and values are identified through physical change to the campus environment.
Linfield’s current master plan was adopted in May of 2000 and helped guide many of the College’s short term facilities objectives to fruition. These objectives included development of the Keck Campus and its linkage to the North Campus, identification of future building sites, recommendations for improved vehicular and pedestrian circulation, and a variety of other goals to be accomplished within a ten year time frame. The college has achieved most of those goals and is beginning to identify new facilities challenges for the next decade and beyond.
These challenges can be classified broadly in two ways.
(1) Issues created by the desire to grow to a 1750 FFTE such as the need for new classrooms and labs, new faculty and staff office space, and additional housing.
(2) Issues centered on the maintenance of pedagogical excellence and administrative efficiency. These include the sequencing of the components of the science facilities project, modernization of aging classrooms, college record storage, and other types of storage needs on campus.
These issues clearly point to the need to, at the very least, update the current master plan and to revisit past goals and assumptions. This planning exercise could help answer many questions including: What changes should occur to Pioneer Hall? How do Newby and Dana fit into future housing needs? How should Mac Hall be used in the short term?
If Memorial Stadium is expanded, what happens to the residence hall? How do we manage our growing storage needs? Considering that the college is financially leveraged, how do we financially address future housing needs?
These questions cannot be answered without bringing together a master planning team to discuss them and draft an addendum to our existing planning documents that could conceivably guide facilities decisions for the next decade.
The proposed planning process would include the following broad steps.
1. Development of a planning charge and identification of stakeholders.
2. Identification of campus goals and objectives.
3. Survey of existing data and conditions.
4. Synthesis and evaluation of survey findings.
5. Iterative process of drafting, receiving community feedback, and redrafting to completion of a facilities master plan addendum.
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