Volume IV: What works, what matters, what lasts

Attention to undergraduate STEM facilities

March 5, 2004

A PKAL essay: Leadership in building a facility for STEM education
For campus leaders, providing appropriate facilities for science* education represents both a major challenge and a major opportunity. Typically, a new building should last for 30 years; it must therefore provide facilities for the science of the future, which cannot fully be anticipated.
Arriving at spaces that make a difference
One of the most powerful stimuli for leaders to take a kaleidoscopic perspective on curricular and pedagogical change is planning and then completing the construction of new spaces and structures for undergraduate STEM communities.
Characteristics of Ideal Spaces for Science
A PKAL Tool
Arriving at spaces for science that serve your community well for years to come requires both knowing what questions to ask and having a vision of what might be. We present a series of questions raised by institutional teams entering into the planning process, as well as a statement of the collective vision of PKAL leaders about the ideal 21st century science building, accompanied by a survey which can be used by individual campuses to determine their collective vision about facilities that serve their community.
Advice on How to Survive in Less-than-Adequate Facilities
The Keck/PKAL Consultation Program
A university in the northeast recognized that new spaces for science were many years away and looked for advice on how to survive in the short-term in less-than-adequate facilities.
Constructing New Facilities- One Step at a Time
The Keck/PKAL Consultation Program
The president of this small, private, mid-Atlantic college requested the consulting team come to campus to help a standing committee determine whether the current science building could be renovated or if a new facility is needed. The team determined a phased project-one in which additions to the existing structure are completed as funding is made available-suited the needs of the college. They also made design recommendations for the future facility.
Counsel at an Early Stage of Facilities Planning
The Keck/PKAL Consultation Program
On this campus, the Keck/PKAL consultants recognized that the community had moved too quickly to consider new facilities. They recommended a significant ‘step-back’ from thinking about spaces and suggested that a first step in the process of successful facilities planning was to have a broad consensus on goals.
Curricular Planning Must Come First
The Keck/PKAL Consultation Program
A thoughtful and well-articulated vision for teaching science is the most important element of a successful building project.
New Facilities for Community Colleges
The Keck/PKAL Consultation program
The consulting team was invited by the chair of natural sciences to review the need for new science facilities at this community college in the southwest. The college has a history of providing training in technical areas. However, the transfer of students to baccalaureate campuses will become a prominent part of their mission as more students attend community colleges for their first two years of study.
Planning an Addition to Your Facility
The Keck/PKAL Consultation Program
This private university in the south is ready to begin the planning process for renovating and constructing an addition to the existing bioscience facility. Several planning stages must be passed through before construction can begin, but the consultant team agreed the university is ready to begin the process.
Sustaining Commitment to Facilities Planning
The Keck/PKAL Consultation Program
One southern campus had been engaged in a ‘fits and starts’ approach to thinking about new spaces, and needed help in thinking about ways to maintain the current momentum.
Twenty-first century science and the facilities of the future
Facilities matter, from the perspective of serving new interdisciplinary fields of research as well as of making the learning experience for all undergraduates one that is truly integrative. Some ideas and best practices from the PKAL facilities archive.
The 2012 sustainable science building
On a practical level, a sustainable science building is a high performance building that through siting, orientation, design, construction, and operation is highly energy efficient, has measurably lower operating costs, minimizes environment impact, and promotes whole health for the users.
The facility of the future: Technology
On the one hand technology has incredible promise and indeed one can argue that technology is absolutely essential to modern science. On the other hand we have limited resources and we have real world constraints.
PKAL Facilities Presentations
A collection of presentations delivered at PKAL facilities planning workshops