Vanderbilt University

Campus planningVanderbilt University is undertaking a massive building program to house more of its students on campus. Keith Regan learns from university architect Edward Belbusti how this is being achieved. Located on the edge of the downtown business district in Nashville, Tennessee, Vanderbilt University is an institution rich in tradition, but one that has embraced emerging trends in education.  Founded in 1873, the university has in recent years been among the most successful in growing its academic research funding, now bringing in $450 million annually. The college also saw growth in interest among prospective students, with undergraduate applications rising from 8,000 in 2000 to more than 13,000 in 2007. Today, Vanderbilt has a permanent endowment of more than $3 billion and enrolls just under 12,000 students, including 6,500 undergraduates. Approximately 84 percent of those students live on campus during at least part of their time at the college and as its residence halls aged and required updating, the institution recognized an opportunity to improve education while also addressing the housing needs of those students. The result of years of planning is a long-range blueprint to build a ÔÇ£residential collegeÔÇØ system at the university, where undergraduate students are housed along with graduate students, faculty and staff and where the educational life of the university is brought closer to the residential life, with old-style dormitories replaced by multi-use complexes where students do more than just sleep and eat. The idea is hardly a novel one. As University Architect and Director of Architecture & Construction Edward Belbusti notes, the residential college system actually dates to the Middle Ages. Some of the oldest institutions in the US, such as Harvard and Yale, have long used the residential college approach, too. ÔÇ£It brings the faculty and staff closer to students,ÔÇØ Belbusti says. ÔÇ£The idea is to take educational opportunities outside of the regular classroom time and into the daily lives of students.ÔÇØ Activities may be organized around meal times, for instance, or seminars or lectures planned near studentsÔÇÖ rooms in the evenings. VanderbiltÔÇÖs residential college system will be built out over several years and will go live in the fall of 2008, when all incoming freshmen will be housed in a complex known as Peabody Commons, which in addition to ten residential halls clustered together will include a central dining hall, workout space, Post Office and activity areas. The buildings have been designed to reflect the Jeffersonian, neoclassical and Beaux Arts ideals adopted to lay out the campus, which is based around a central mall area off which buildings are located. However, the buildings are also built to offer state-of-the-art amenities and to keep the universityÔÇÖs long-term costs under control. All buildings in the project will be certified by the Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) standards of the US Green Building Council. However, Belbusti says the campus takes a ÔÇ£very practicalÔÇØ approach to pursuing LEED certification, not necessarily going for the highest rating in each case, but instead looking at what makes the most sense on each new building project. For instance, of recent construction projects, two have been confirmed for LEED Silver status, four more will likely obtain that status and at least one will be certified to the Gold standard. ÔÇ£Our standard approaches to construction and design take sustainability goals into account. ItÔÇÖs always been the way weÔÇÖve done things. We donÔÇÖt feel like we spent an exorbitant amount of money to achieve those designations; in the areas where we did have incremental cost increases we were able to justify them through operational savings over the long-term.ÔÇØTiming has been a challenge on the project, especially in keeping costs under control. The planning for the Peabody Commons phase began in earnest in 2001 and shortly after the company went into the construction market for bids, several factors began to impact costs, from raw material demand from China to one-time events such as Hurricane Katrina not far away on the Gulf Coast. ÔÇ£We did have some issues we had to deal with but we had budgeted some contingencies and we were able to cover some of that increase. Where we had to we made some cuts that we felt didnÔÇÖt detract from the overall value of the project,ÔÇØ Belbusti adds. Once the Peabody Commons project is up and running in August, Belbusti and his team will take some time to evaluate it before pressing ahead into the next phases. Construction on the upper class residential college is expected to begin construction in 2010 and be completed in 2012. In all, the university has some 16.8 million square feet of building space on a 330 acre campus about five miles from downtown Nashville. Belbusti says the college has been fortunate in that the neighborhoods around the campus have not been critical of its building projects in recent years, likely because Vanderbilt is not pushing its campus envelope into the surrounding community or building heavily at the edges of its campus. Before joining Vanderbilt in 1994, Belbusti worked for the state of Tennessee, overseeing higher educational building projects at public colleges and universities. The difference in the private versus public world is stark at times, with the private university able to choose contractors and vendors based on more than just the bottom-line of their bid. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs nice because we have more control over who we choose to work with,ÔÇØ he says.┬á Vanderbilt tries to work with local construction companies whenever possible and considers experience with a type of project and track record with the university in deciding who to work with on a new project. ÔÇ£Having that flexibility makes for a lot more incentives for doing a good job in the long run. The contractors and engineers know they may get repeat business if they help us reach our goals.ÔÇØ┬á Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} *┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á *┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á┬á *   ┬áFirst published March 2008