"The Johnson Center is a powerful force for transforming education throughout our institution. It was created in recognition that the key to enhancing learning and personal development is not simply for faculty to teach better but to create conditions that encourage students to integrate academic studies with educationally purposeful activities outside the classroom.

 

 

The fundamental challenge, of course, was to generate educational programming that would reflect the mission of the new center. The first step was to create a strategy group that included the provost, the dean of arts and science, the assistant provost for academic programs and special initiatives, and the associate vice president for operational services. The group's basic strategy was to create a proposal process through which interested parties would have access to the center's spaces and facilities.

This huge new facility raises major questions concerning the use of preexisting spaces. GMU already has two student union buildings filled with student services offices, meeting rooms, auxiliary enterprises, food services, lounges, and the like. How should these best be used? What organizations or programming activities might migrate to the center and what remain put?

Also, a variety of computer labs are sprinkled around the various schools and colleges. With all the workstations in the library, with the media production center, and with the rooms dedicated to computer workstations, the center would almost double the resources available. What would be the implications for those other spaces? How should we distribute hardware and software across the varied alternatives?

We knew we could not afford high-end, state-of-the-art hardware throughout the center. We knew the rate of change in all these new technologies. And we recognized that computer sophistication is distributed very unevenly among faculty and students, and that it will grow and change with time. A small percentage have great expertise, keep on the cutting edge, and have the competence to use state-of-the-art technologies as they currently exist and as the emerge. A larger percentage have good facility and exploit recently much of the capacity of new hardware. But most faculty and students have limited or modest competence, and primarily use basic word processing, spreadsheets, and statistical programming.

Our answer to this problem was to have a three-tier pyramid, with the base being the large number of computers in the labs across campus, the middle tier being the ninety workstations in the center computer rooms, and the peak being the media production center. The media production center would be kept as current and sophisticated in hardware and software as possible. Our small number of experts can use those resources which will be available whenever the center is open. The ninety workstations in the center computer rooms will be equipped with hardware that might be two or three years old and software appropriate for our mid-level users. The computer labs across campus, which comprise several hundred workstations, will be filled with hardware three to five years old.

Updating and replacement will occur on a rolling basis so we will always be using the lowest-cost resources where the greatest volume is required and the most costly, new, high-end resources where the fewest stations are necessary. And we can make decisions concerning the high-volume investments across campus based on experience with usage in our top two center tiers. We are only now beginning to act on this conceptual framework. Already the computer rooms have waiting lines during much of the day and the media production center has had to respond to more video needs. Undoubtedly, we'll learn a lot about it as time goes on.

(1) Resolving scheduling conflicts among deserving
proposals,

(2) Maintaining the integrity of the programming
process as the basis for access to the center's
space and resources,

(3) And sustaining faculty, student service, and
student initiatives for collaborative programming.

It is worth noting that this Center approach is eminently adaptable to other institutional contexts. Certainly it has helped to have a beautiful, highly functional, well-designed new facility as a stimulus. But most student unions, campus centers, and the like have space and resources for educational programming. Those space could be used to drive the interactions and collaboration we aim for here. It will take leadership from top administrators, recognized and respected faculty members, and key student affairs professionals to do so. It will mean changing current budget allocations for student activities and programming. Furthermore, when financial incentives are limited, space allocations can become a significant force for innovation and change throughout the university. So he implications of our Center strategy reach beyond any particular location or facility to be a more general force for institutional transformation."

The above paragraphs are excerpts from "The University Learning Center - A Driving Force for Collaboration" by Arthur W. Chickering and John O'Connor, as it appeared in the About Campus magazine, September/October 1996.