TOLEDO, OH—Colleges and universities across the US have been remaking their campuses, and although many concentrate on building resort-style student housing, others have also begun to transform their learning environments. Bowling Green State University has with its program manager JLL launched a $200 million master plan to renovate, construct, demolish or significantly upgrade more than a dozen buildings across the campus in Bowling Green, OH, just south of Toledo.
JLL and BGSU finished the first step of this campus-wide transformation in 2011 by delivering more than 1,300 new beds in student resident halls and completing two new standalone dining centers. The pair now aim to incorporate high-tech tools into the school's new teaching spaces, which will also provide a wide variety of environments that help foster collaboration, instead of simple classrooms where students learn almost exclusively by taking notes.
“That's really not the way higher education is being taught these days,” Jon Kolp, Columbus-based vice president of JLL's project and development services group, tells GlobeSt.com. “The students of today are much more socially interactive,” and schools that want to attract and retain students will need to design “an active learning environment.”
“The number of students going to four-year universities is on the decline,” adds Dean Monnin, a senior vice president also in JLL's Columbus office, and that demographic reality will continue to stiffen the competition for new students, an important consideration for BGSU, which “would like to be seen as a school of choice.”
Last fall BGSU opened the Kuhlin Center, a cornerstone of the master plan, and home to the School of Media and Communication. It includes production and broadcast studios, as well as a convergence lab for students to collaborate across media platforms, according to Kolp and Monnin.
And this fall, the school's historic Moseley Hall, will reopen, equipping first- and second-year students with state-of-the-art biology and chemistry labs. As BGSU's master plan program manager, JLL guided the school's team through the challenge of adding modern, flexible labs to a 100-year-old masonry structure.
In addition, this fall BGSU will also reopen University Hall, a neoclassical building long considered the university's traditional heart, and use it as an admissions space to welcome prospective students. The old space was underutilized, but the renovation provides a new focal point for admissions, student support services and learning. Beyond this, the building also features new active-learning classrooms.
Hanna Hall will undergo a major renovation to create a new College of Business Administration. BGSU plans to add cutting-edge innovation labs, active learning classrooms, collaboration spaces and a high-tech trading lab.
The impact of these changes has already been felt by the university community. “There has been an increase in the number of incoming freshmen,” says Kolp. BGSU has also attracted students with higher GPAs and standardized test scores.
However, “it's not just getting them in the door,” he adds. The school wants these higher-scoring freshmen to stick around and graduate. That's why BGSU and JLL have focused a great deal on improving the learning environments for sophomores and juniors.
Both Kolp and Monnin believe it's BGSU's commitment to a comprehensive campus remake that makes this effort special. “Every tuition dollar they get is hard-earned,” says Monnin, and throwing money away was never an option. “They looked at the campus as a whole, and from the start they created very strong priorities and goals.”
“They did not look at it as just one individual project,” adds Kolp. Furthermore, after BGSU and JLL finish this stage of the campus remake, “they envision continuing the process.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
