The Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) held its annual International Conference and Idea Marketplace in Minneapolis July 10-14. More than 1000 attendees from more than a dozen countries attended the conference entitled Integrated Leadership for a New Reality. Nearly all of the sessions within the conference sought to identify “the new normal” following the devastating financial disaster of the last year. Institutions, design professionals, and vendors alike came together to learn, network, commiserate, and seek to make sense of world events that are impacting campuses small and large. I was fortunate to be one of the attendees.
Beginning with the Opening Plenary Speaker, Jerome Ringo, the first African-American to lead a major conservation group (The National Wildlife Federation) and continuing with Plenary Speaker Mark Milliron, the deputy director for post-secondary improvement for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a study in how various parties can collaborate to improve educational opportunities for students was a recurring theme. Understanding how dramatically facilities can impact student performance, balancing expenditures with revenue is a growing challenge. Concurrent sessions all shared a “green” theme, but also challenged attendees to find new and creative ways to collaborate with stakeholder – both on and off campus to find innovative new ways to stretch budget dollars and increase opportunities for students and staff.
Ever-expanding technology provides both challenges and solutions for colleges and universities. Many faculty members reportedly are hesitant to embrace new methods of connecting with students, yet incoming students want to learn rather than to be taught. Technology allows them seemingly endless opportunities for learning, regardless of location or time of day. Faculty are being challenged to find new ways to embrace technology, but them facilities staff must find ways (with a limited budget) to support these technology needs through infrastructure. The conclusion reached in many sessions was that institutions who figure out this challenge will thrive while those who continue to resist will fade away or become irrelevant.