Since July, CU-Boulder has been working with Huron Education, a global consulting group with specialized expertise in higher education. The purpose of this partnership: to help the university deepen its understanding of its space and to more effectively coordinate the planning and use of that space across colleges, departments and units.
Information gathering
Vice Chancellor for Administration and project chair Steve Thweatt, explains that Huron is engaging multiple channels for gathering input from campus.
“It’s very important that we use many different ways to engage our campus constituents,” explains Thweatt. “We know we can’t hear from every single person, but we want to capture a full range of unique perspectives and ideas, so we are using techniques that reach multiple and diverse audiences.”
Huron has completed roughly 30 of their 45 planned interviews with campus deans, associate deans and other academic and administrative leaders. To gather student input, they are meeting with various student government organizations at both the undergraduate and graduate level. To allow for broad-based input, the university has created an , giving campus community members a quick way to share their space-related ideas. In addition, a survey has been sent to all faculty with teaching responsibility.
“The purpose of the survey is to really help us understand faculty goals, interests and priorities as they relate to where, how and when classes are scheduled, “ says Adam Fennel, Huron’s Project Director.
Fennel explains that the information gathering phase is not intended to be comprehensive, but that the process is designed to provide direction that is representative of the university’s diverse, complex and sometimes conflicting needs.
“We’re attempting to balance inclusivity and brevity. We have designed a series of approaches that will collect broad data and input but which will also support the university’s work in an expeditious fashion,” said Fennel.
“There is no single data set that explains the university’s space. This means that we must gather data from multiple sources, often which don’t agree with each other, and then form conclusions that inform decisions for all of campus. It’s a very complicated exercise.”
Analysis
Now that much of the information gathering is either complete or underway, Huron analysts are working through the data they’ve gathered to form preliminary conclusions that guide future decisions. Fennel explained that the approach is to look at the data, identify hypotheses based on those data, test out the hypotheses and then formulate conclusions.
“Our method is very data driven,” says Fennel. “The real challenge, though, is to maintain this data-driven approach but to identify findings that are appropriate for CU-Boulder given the history and future goals of the institution.”
Next Steps
Huron will bring forward recommendations to a campus steering committee by February 2015. This committee, which represents the academic, research, administrative and auxiliary perspectives of the university, will make recommendations to the campus setting the direction for implementation.
“We’re working to ensure that all decisions that are made reflect the viewpoints and needs of students, faculty and staff,” said Thweatt.
Thweatt said that a detailed plan for implementation will be shared with the campus by late spring 2015. The plan will center on strategies for engaging current and emerging technology, the development of campus-wide policies and processes for the use of space, and improving systems for the collection and management of space occupancy and utilization data.
Emerging hypotheses
While Huron analysts are still deep in the analysis phase of this initiative, they are already identifying trends and hypotheses based on the data they’ve uncovered. Huron Project Director Adam Fennel says one such trend is that there is no comprehensive data source or process to support campuswide decisions with respect to space.
“There are many locations on campus where responsibility of access is local,” said Fennel. “There isn’t a mechanism for managing or looking at space across all those different locations. Providing that ability to comprehensively manage and schedule all those different spaces will likely be an outcome of this initiative.”
Impact on student success
Thweatt explains that this initiative aims much higher than simply creating efficiencies and making better use of resources. He explained that space has an impact on student success, and that the steering committee hopes analysis will reveal correlations between space and student success that can be leveraged to support student success.
“We hope that Huron’s analysis provides insights about the role that space plays in the student experience,” said Thweatt. “If we find any, it may be possible to make changes that impact the student experience and improve such important measures as time to graduation.”
In the meantime, though, the team is continuing to explore.
“Everything is still on the table,” says Thweatt. “I’m confident that our data-driven approach is going to reveal positive changes for the university.”
Ěý