Page 18 - spaces4learning, Spring 2021

spaces4learning HIGHER EDUCATION
shift in pedagogy, away from the traditional “teacher lectures, students take notes” method toward a more participatory expe- rience. Dean Braun said that in many courses, students tend to do homework ahead of time, watch lectures on video, and then come to class for problem-solving exercises.
“That not only teaches them the content,” he said, “but they get experience doing skills that are important in business— like communicating with each other, critical thinking through a problem, learning how to present to others, working in the team. Those are very important business skills that you don’t pick up in a lecture environment. So we think that it’s helping us offer that high-impact student experience.”
A Collaborative Effort
The design process for the new business school started in 2014, a collaborative effort among BGSU and two design firms. On the university’s side, the team was a combination of people from capital planning, campus operations, and academic represen- tatives (including the dean). The university teamed up with Chicago-based architecture firm Perkins&Will and the locally knowledgeable architecture and design firm The Collaborative to go through several iterations of plans.
Dean Braun explained that they wanted input from as many stakeholders as possible, including representatives from the faculty, staff, and students. “It was a very deliberate, method- ical process to make sure we were vetting things with our key stakeholders as we worked through the design,” he said, “so the design took quite a while.”
Jessica Figenholtz, Associate Principal with Perkins&Will, recalls getting faculty input during one round of feedback. Her background is in higher education with a focus on learning en- vironments, and she said she enjoys the process of going back and forth and encouraging clients to think differently about ed- ucational spaces and how they’re used. “We didn’t have anyone come down and say ‘You need to do this,’” she said. “It was like, ‘All right, let’s take you on a journey.’ And it’s through conver- sation with not just the dean, but with the faculty who use that equipment and have the curriculum, you know, having the con- versation, ‘How can we think differently?’ How can your cur- riculum pivot or change, and what is the value or the benefit of it—and not saying we’ll get rid of it, but let’s think differently.”
Perkins&Will came up with nine different spaces—six offic- es and three collaboration spaces—to use as mock-ups or proto- types for faculty comment. They did surveys with students and faculties, took them on tours, did spot polling, collected input, and modified the designs accordingly on everything from the glass front to furniture arrangement to the proportions. The hands-on engagement with the community at large took some time, Connell said, but he said he attributes that input to why such a drastic change has proven so successful.
Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Design began in 2014, and construction started in 2018. The wheels of progress were spinning at full speed by the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. in 2020. The project was al- ready so far along, said Dean Braun, that the coronavirus had a
18 SPRING 2021 | spaces4learning.com