"The most important guideline -- before determining what you want to accomplish-is ensuring that the mission of the institution is clearly articulated, thought about, argued, fought over, discussed in an inclusive way with all the constituencies who are important. We have found that this process very much includes student representation."
-- Herbert Newman, FAIA, Guidelines for Planning and Design

"It is important to stress that, even though we are talking about residential spaces and architecture really, when it comes down to specific cases, we are also talking about administrative change. We are talking about political change. We are talking about trying to sell a community on an idea-never mind implementing it. So there are a whole host of factors that play into moving from vision to implementation, many of which seem to have nothing to with architecture and yet in the end have everything to do with the architecture…"
-- Timothy Spears, The Commons System at Middlebury College

"When you have this large of a group of stakeholders, you are going to have conflicts in terms of what the ultimate goals for a particular project are. You need to have one party to which you can turn to have somebody break the tie. We established a number of relatively small teams when we began the process."
-- Michael McKay, Princeton University Dormitory Renewal Program

"The vision President McArdle has shared with the Trustees came as a top-down initiative. His vision came at the end of a student/faculty/staff review of our Commons system, from which the consensus was "We are working really hard, but we are not creating the kind of community that we are looking for. We are not creating the kind of meaningful residential situation that we have hoped for with our Commons system. And unless we take it farther, we aren't going to do it." The vision was very well received by the Trustees. It was not well received by the students and the alumni."
-- Katherine Ebner A Closer Look at People and Place

"Campus dining is now looking like campus restaurants. It is not just board halls anymore. We have got partnerships with culinary schools who are coming in, working with our culinary teams to really pull up our food offerings and to create restaurant quality food. Interestingly enough, as part of that, we are starting to see a reduction in some cases of variety with an increased emphasis on quality."
-- Chape Whitman, Food Service

"The purpose of this discussion is to introduce you to a specific scheduling format that we have for staggering these projects over time. Generally, it is a 4-year cycle and that might seem like a lot of time to do a renovation. But, as you will see, if it is approached incrementally -- this time is very necessary. There is a lot of preparation required in order to use the time efficiently."
-- David Howell, Princeton's 4-Year Cycle of Dormitory Renewal

"Residential life and community -- those are the really important issues that we all wrestle with…Even the common experience of a classroom life is very different for different students. How do their differences enhance their lives and the lives of their classmates? How do we support them and help them to channel their vast reserves of energy? How do we bring them together to form community?"
-- Betty Trachtenberg, The Yale University Experience

"It has been estimated that there is a back-log of deferred maintenance on American campuses estimated to be approaching $100 billion. Up to 50% of all facilities on an average American campus are devoted to student residential uses. Many campuses face daunting renovation need in their residential facilities. If you are one of them, take heart, you are not alone…"
-- Robert Godshall, The Yale Planning Study

"Where does residential housing, residential living, fit into the institutional goal? How do residences compete for finances and funding? How do issues important to student life rise high enough on the institutional hierarchy to be noticed and funded? Clearly, this relates to planning. It also relates to timing…"
-- Kemel Dawkins, The Yale Facilities Perspective

"Over the last ten years we decided that the residential component of our academic load was losing ground, and to that end, we started to evolve into a more structured residential life program."
-- Alexandria Roe, The Connecticut State University System Experience

"You are in an active, ongoing environment with what seems at times like a love/hate relationship between the students and facilities. You have to have a strategy for dealing with that and the realities of constructing on campus, with phasing and the other issues. In terms of controlling outcome, 80% of project outcome is really determined in probably the first 20% of your effort…Depending on the standards your organizations have developed, and how your facilities departments are organized, a lot of the information is almost the methodology you have in house to apply. But you have got to do it to achieve your end."
-- C.C. Smith, Approaches to Implementation

"Whether it was a billion-dollar-building campus or two billion dollars, a lot of numbers have been tossed around about deferred maintenance and conditions that have not been addressed over the last number of decades. Nobody could really believe it. Any method you had of trying to bring home the truth to a Board of Trustees when you have got competition for available funds just did not seem to ring true…The challenge was manyfold, but part of it was to really look at their problem and create a believable program that addresses all the constituencies on campus, with a realistic cost based on cost per square foot."
-- C.C. Smith, Scope, Cost and Delivery Options

"One of the most challenging parts of the renovation process is the daunting task of designing the renovation and overall dependable installation in a manner that is economical, is working and aesthetically integrated with the overall building design. Proper execution of a well thought out solution generally requires above average construction documents. Design professionals often delineate designs as completed objects with an emphasis on design or a finished appearance. Contractors, on the other hand, expect or desire construction documents to be a set of instructions that get below the surface and define scope with prescriptive content. Designers, if you will, draw a picture of the cake and the decorations, and contractors generally like to have the entire recipe, then mix and place and decorate the cake."
-- Joseph Huether, Elements of Successful Project Execution