Improving Transportation

The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) recently held a public workshop at FAU to collect feedback on the idea to add express lanes between Oakland Park Blvd (close to FAU's Davie campus) and Glades Road. If implemented, the project will "create the opportunity to accommodate a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that will allow express bus service between counties with connections to the existing Park-and-Ride lots along the corridor." That means something like this:

Thanks Wikipedia.

BRTs are neat concepts but I don't see as much specific advantage for FAU students by putting them on I-95 between Oakland Park and Glades Road. Yes, some students live that far away and commute to the Boca campus but when it comes down to it, a more pressing need for FAU is moving students around Boca Raton.

As you may know, Glades Road is way over capacity by something like 20,000 more cars a day than intended and that's why they keep widening the roads. The main traffic generators, the city argues, are FAU (the fact that PBSC also contributes cars to Glades is always overlooked for some reason), University Commons and the Town Centre Mall. No argument there. But how many more times can you widen Glades Road?

One idea they are considering is adding BRT or LRT (light rain transit, so same thing as the picture above, only with trains) that would run east-west along Glades from 441 to Federal Highway. This would be an interesting - and in the case of LRT, expensive - idea. I can see them going with buses here out of cost, and think that would be a good way for students, faculty and staff to get around.

Some people might argue that south Florida doesn't often lend itself well to that sort of transportation because once you get off on the FAU station, you still have to walk all the way from Glades Road to, say, the Breezeway in the humidity or the rain. In fact, Boca Councilman Anthony Mahjess recently used this very point to fight against the proposed University Village project to be built north of Spanish River, just east of FAU's fish farm. For the uninitiated, the is a "mixed-use" (meaning retail AND residential) project that will bring a lot of rental properties near campus to actually serve as a "planned mobility site" that encourages young professionals to bike/walk over to the Yamato Tri-Rail area to get to work. Mahjess contended that it's too hot and rainy to do that here, as if it wasn't hot or rainy anywhere else that public transportation existed.

We're getting off-track here but as a side note, one resident pointed out that the University Village apartments may "just become another FAU dorm if we're not careful" - which they will, at least in some capacity. Young professionals will live there but when you have rental property that close to a college campus... it's inevitable.

And that's not a bad thing - at least from the FAU perspective. I don't think the university (or the City) appreciates how important it is to bring more people near campus. As the land around campus gets gobbled up by churches and elementary schools and adult living, that just creates a situation where more and more people have to drive from farther away to get to campus. Concordantly, it creates the need to widen Glades and add new I-95 interchanges (like the one off Spanish River Blvd coming in 2015) and think about BRT from Oakland Park to Glades. The university isn't getting any smaller and our enrollment inflates faster than our ability to build parking garages, which is in itself an issue because every parking garage will eventually take away from academic space because the campus isn't as expansive as it will need to be.

Think about it. We're at 30k students now and feeling the pressure. When we get to 40k and 50k students, we're going to need highly efficient ways to get people on and off campus without too much issue. A BRT down Glades Road is part of it. Another part is expanding the Palm Tran OR expanding the current campus shuttle system off campus (more likely, for various reasons).

Let's talk about the shuttle for a minute. As you probably know, FAU has two intracampus "Owl Express" shuttles called the Red Line and the Blue Line (you can see the routes here). The Blue Line mainly exists so fewer students complain about having to get from the north side of the stadium to the Breezeway. The Red Line is the workhorse, the true shuttle path that encircles campus and is particularly helpful if you need to get from, say, the University Village Apartments (the ones on campus, not the new ones proposed... that distinction might be a problem in the future...) to the Oxley.

So while we have a way to get around on campus, we still need a better way to get around off campus, and that's where I think the Owl Express shuttle system will have to be expanded. After all, the Board of Trustees is looking into restricting freshmen from having cars on campus. That could fill up dorms and free up thousands of parking spots for other students, but in order for it to work, you need efficient ways to get them around. We'd need to be able to get them to Publix on Federal Highway, to the mall, to Cinemark, to the bowling alley - all of the hot spots. And as more and more student housing projects open up east of campus, especially along 20th Street, effective shuttle service will get those students to and from campus without making them park here either, thus freeing up even more spaces. That's what we're building toward. That's where we're going.

Last but not least, bike rental is a concept that is popular in Europe and a handful of American cities and it's something that could be highly effective for getting people to/from campus over short distances. For instance, let's say you could rent one right outside of the Student Union and drop it off at University Commons, the mall, or maybe even outside the various student housing apartments.

EDIT: I talk more about public bikes in a future entry here.

You might have noticed that Boca Raton is adding more bike lanes in anticipation of more people biking in the future. I think it's not so much a matter of weather as it is culture; right now people reiterate and defend the need for a car in Boca Raton like it's a mantra. And people argue that Boca Raton needs to stay as a "low density" town, which it could, but even at the current density we're still talking about bike lanes and buses and other ways to get people around the city.

So let's face it: public transportation is in Boca's future and the city will be better for it. You'll see.

GO OWLS!

The Case for a Student Innovation Gallery

An interest in urban and campus development tends to go hand-in-hand with an interest in architecture.  There's just something very exciting about the prospect of creating a "world" in which people will work and play, to see buildings as more than rectangular blocks with doors and windows and to start thinking of them as pieces of art where form dictates experience. In fact, had a couple things been different I might have even majored in Architecture at FAU (and probably been unemployed right now, unfortunately)

But the interest still lingers, so a couple of years ago when I saw a flyer in the Breezeway promoting the "Exhibit of Lower Division – First Year Student Work" at the downtown Fort Lauderdale campus, I jumped at the chance to check it out:

Photo credit: FAU Architecture.

The student work on display was really, really impressive, making it easy to understand why FAU's school of architecture has such a good reputation in the community. As I pored over the various models, I started to wish that this was a permanent exhibit in Boca Raton so everybody could see how good it was. I thought about all the great student work we produce at FAU in the various disciplines and how nobody gets to see it except a handful of professors and fellow students. It's a damn shame.

So I came back to Boca and asked then-director of the Student Union, Brian Keintz (now an Education Professor at Keiser University), if he'd consider some space near the front for student work. Although he seemed to like the idea, he needed to generate revenue by renting that space to various entities; in particular, he wanted to get a GameStop-type store to rent and sell games up there, along with a computer repair shop. As you know, those spaces were eventually filled by the Owl Wear Shoppe (which replaced the Commuter TV lounge), New Era barber shop (which replaced the video game area) and the TechU computer repair store (which replaced the travel agency).

Still, I think it's an important idea because it shows off the university to visitors and it inspires students to create great works themselves. The pitch goes like this: the FAU SIG (Student Innovation Gallery) would be a dedicated space that highlighted a number of student projects from the various colleges across the university system, particularly in the arts (an oft-neglected aspect of FAU because, well, it doesn't generate as much research money as the science departments).

- One room would have the architectural models (and drawings) on display, as shown above.

- One room would have various paintings and installations. Usually these works go on display very briefly as part of FAU's BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) Shows, which I understand are events held once a semester to show off the "final project" for the class (you can see a few pictures here). I wandered into one of these vastly underrated shows one night after seeing a bunch of people dressed up and giving away food by the Ritter Gallery and really enjoyed myself. I guess this year the Graphic Design BFA show was actually held in Delray at the Arts Garage.  

- Space could be considered in the same room above for video of FAU theater performances and/or student films. Usually how this works is that there's a small room within the room that shows video on a projector, so you pass behind the curtain to sit down and watch the video.

- One room would have student photographs. You might have seen that every once in awhile student work will go on display in the hallways by Barry Kaye auditorium as part of a contest.

- One room would have various literary works (e.g. poems), maybe blown up on posters or canvas for people to read. The university apparently does produce an annual literary magazine called Coastlines but I've never seen a real one anywhere. Maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough. It's possible.

- A space (don't think it needs a full room) could have listening kiosks for records either created by FAU singers or produced by FAU commercial music teams for Hoot/Wisdom Recordings.

- The remainder of the space could go to any number of things, from robotics projects to student club work to small inventions to computer animation renderings. Basically anything that FAU students create that would be of interest to other people.

- Depending on where it was, consideration could also be made for a large-scale sculpture garden of student work out behind the building. I've seen the mention of a "sculpture trail" appear and disappear on the FAU Facilties minor project lists, so it's definitely something they're thinking about it anyway. I'm not sure where they're thinking about doing it (maybe around the lake south of the nursing building? Total guess) but there are two good locations for a project like the SIG if you wanted to do it as an independent building:

The bottom one would actually make the best sculpture garden space on campus. FAU could use more "get away from it all" green space anyway.

That said, this project (if it ever came to pass) probably wouldn't need its own building - it could very easily be part of the new Student Union, for instance. It's something worth talking about, even though FAU would want to calculate how much a "gallery" is worth when they have various needs for a new Student Union and gallery space like this might take away from revenue-deriving space like Keintz mentioned in the old/present Union.

The nice thing about this project is that it wouldn't really dictate a certain size - it could be big or small, depending on how big you want the exhibits to be. You could very easily start out small and see what the reaction is, then work your way up to something larger if it's a success. There really isn't a model like this anywhere else, which means it's a real opportunity for FAU to break the mold and take pride in its student body in a way that nobody else is doing.

Can you imagine?

GO OWLS!

So Many Choices

It seems like an easy pitch, right? "Come to FAU. We have great weather, we're near the beach, Boca is a nice town, we have a great football stadium, Owl pride is up and things are getting better all the time!"

And if FAU was the only school you saw in Florida, you might be extremely impressed. After all, several people are comparing our campus to a tropical resort.

But the reality is that there's an arms race going on among the different Florida universities. We're all competing for the same pool of students. Some students just go on to college because that's what everybody else is doing. Some students really want to college and will go wherever they get in.  And then there's a large population of students who know they will be accepted somewhere so they're really looking for the biggest, best thing that can give them the kind of college experience they see in the movies. So what do they do? They go on college tours and shop around.

If you're a high school senior here and you want to attend a public university in Florida - maybe because you have a Bright Futures scholarship to pay for it - then you'll probably apply to the Big Six (in no particular order): UF, FSU, FAU, FIU, UCF, USF. Some will cast a little wider net and apply to UNF, FGCU and maybe even UWF too.

UF and FSU you already know plenty about, and FAU probably won't steal many students away from them (unless they decide to go to FAU Honors in Jupiter). But where do we stand in relation to the others? Putting academics aside, if you were to take a college tour today the following things might stand out to you:

 
The rest of the "Big Six"...


FIU (Miami / Panthers / 47,966 students): Large enrollment, eight story library, you get to live in Miami and their new "Market Station" parking garage has a mix of retail similar to what we could be doing with Parking Garage 3 (Innovation Village).

They also have a cool tradition called the Walk On Water Race where students try to build "water shoes" and race across the lake. Thanks Wikipedia.

UCF (Orlando / Knights / 58,698 students): Largest enrollment in the state, great facilities everywhere, close to Orlando entertainment, nearby area responsive to college students, Spirit Splash tradition and an overall "student-oriented" experience. In summary, they've spent a lot of time and money listening to students.

Thanks Wikipedia.

USF (Tampa / Bulls / 47,122 (!) students): Huge enrollment, 6500 residential students, great sports facilities, lots of nationally-recognized acts come to the Sun Dome, awesome music building and a huge Student Union with this out front:

Their Student Union aka the Marshall Student Center. Thanks Wikipedia.

And the Others...
 

UNF (Jacksonville / Ospreys / 16,372 students): I actually really like this place. Huge library, interesting looking buildings (see below), Greek life is huge (1300 people), and a crazy 1,000-person dorm called Osprey Fountains with a lighted track, putting green, six different themed lounges and, oh yeah, a lazy river.

And this is how you get there. Nice walk through the woods. Thanks Wikipedia.

They've also got some cool buildings coming up in the near future.

FGCU (Fort Myers / Eagles / 12,683 students): A "death investigator" program, a sandwich shop called The Perch, metric system on the roadsigns, and hands-down the biggest draw being genuine apartment-style living on campus with this out back. Rest of the campus looks like this.

Thanks Wikipedia.

UWF (Pensacola / Argonauts / 12,823 students): "old time Florida" feel, ride a trolley around campus, bikes for rent on campus. They've got some interesting ideas for the future (football).

(I wasn't sure whether to include Florida A&M because they're a HBU so I'm not sure if we compete with them for many students (but I'm sure we do) or New College of Florida, which has less than 1,000 students... both of them are kind of different categories than the others mentioned here. It's worth a mention here though)

So where does that put us?

Well, even after breaking 30k students, we're still behind UF, FSU, USF, UCF and even FIU (who knew FIU was so close to breaking 50k?). For students seeking "big schools", we're in the middle. However, most schools top out at about 50-60k so once they hit their fill we still have space to add another 20k (as do the others - UNF, FGCU, UWF). I read something predicting that eventually all the schools in Florida will have 50k students, part of the reason why they pushed for the contentious formation of Florida Polytechnic.


We don't have the "great weather" advantage on many of them, although it certainly stays warmer in South Florida than North Florida during the winter months. FGCU may not have a beach but they have that mini beach right on campus. We may be building the Innovation Village but UCF already has their Knight Plaza and now FIU has their Market Station, with plans to build more retail around the stadium.We're pretty much all on the same page about where to direct our dollars.

We do have a great football stadium, even if it's not 90k seats. We have a movie theater, which is unique, and the Innovation Village apartments are fantastic.

We just need to keep up this pace, listen to students, and every time we go to build a new _________ we have to ask ourselves, "Could we have the best one in Florida?" We do have deficiencies in some pretty major areas (Greek housing, Student Union, basketball arena) but we know about them and they're on the drawing board for legit reasons. We're on a good path here, it just takes time.

So let's hope we make the right choices and never apologize for dreaming big.  Have a great weekend!

GO OWLS!

Building a Better Breezeway

One of the fun things about this blog is imagining what FAU will be like in five, ten or maybe even twenty years from now. The school grows so much, adding two to three buildings a year, changing the landscape, moving offices, boosting the number of people, putting up banners, etc that students who attended even 10 years ago feel like they don't really recognize the campus anymore.

And for the most part, change has been good to FAU. I don't think anyone would really argue against the Breezeway Cafe renovation, the Innovation Village area (dorms and stadium) or the new Engineering building, in all of its LEED-certified glory. We're growing up and some things that served us well in the past need a facelift to deal with the increased demands of a burgeoning Owl Country.

Take the Breezeway. As the main "spine" of campus connecting the major buildings, from the bookstore to GS (formerly GCS) to Business East, it attracts a ton of foot traffic and takes a beating from both blazing sun AND driving rain. Even with a limited budget, FAU still managed to paint the ground and the columns, installed new lighting and added new mounted plastic frames for people to attach flyers to. Oh, and every once in awhile they fight to contain the leaks caused by the rain... which it does, all the time.

But let's be honest here: the Breezeway probably needs a bit more than paint and plugs.

As we mentioned yesterday, FAU is seeking $2.5M for "Breezeway Repairs." They've been seeking this money for a long time. The question is: what would YOU do with $2.5M to repair the Breezeway? Would you seal it up with glass on both sides and provide air conditioning and carpet, like an airport terminal? Because that's what one SGA President unsuccessfully pushed for a couple years back. That might have been interesting. But considering how much lateral connectivity there is with existing campus sidewalks, there would have been a ton of doors; kinda pointless to air condition a space when you have doors constantly opening and closing.

So maybe not that.

Maybe you'd take the money to extend the Breezeway toward Parking Garage 1 or the current Student Union? Because FAU flirted with those ideas too (and hopefully they'll never be realized because that would be ridiculous and ruin Diversity Way). In fact, years ago they did a study and here's what the south end of Breezeway might have looked like:

Photo from Perkins and Will Breezeway Study.

Same deal as the photo above.

Awkward city.

So okay, not all ideas are good ideas... and hopefully we haven't done this yet because someone had the stones at a BOT meeting to say, "Please God no" and not because "we're just waiting on the money to come in."

To be fair, part of the problem with updating the Breezeway is that it's an awkward structure to begin with. For instance, what's with the grating on the end? Was that considered a chic architectural flourish, the way all the stones/shells on buildings were? (I'm told that was a fancy thing back in the 70's)

Someone must really like the whole metal grating/frame look because another Breezeway study wanted to turn the whole thing into a Metal Gratefest.

It's like a giant Transformer. Owlbots, roll out.

It wasn't all bad though... I liked this idea of creating a social space around the middle part of the Breezeway, with a wavy overhead and tables. Why don't we have more crescent-shaped seats? It's a great idea.

You're looking at what would be the east side of the Breezeway, across from what is now the Hillel Center.

So what can be done with the Breezeway? It's a good question. And I have ideas, some of which may work or some of which... may not work.

Basically, I'd like to see the existing infrastructure removed and replaced, segment by segment, rather than trying to patch pieces and add onto them. It would give the Breezeway a new overall aesthetic, provide opportunities for more efficient wiring for electronic additions like LCD/sports ticker-type screens and fix the damn leaks.

I think we need to look at the bottom level as "bringing the Breezeway into the future" and the top level as green/recreational space.

Bottom level:

Here's a neat concept for lighting (fourth picture down) that they use for a walkway to the Strathmore Music Center in North Bethesda, Maryland. The lights can actually change color by section... or just be normal lights. I'm not saying we have to go balls-out "Vegas" here but there is room to explore this in a tasteful and unique way for the ceiling of the Breezeway's bottom floor.

The sections of the Breezeway on the west side that now have rock walls, you know, the ones by the disgusting bathrooms and the Student Affairs bulletin board, could be updated with a regular wall and the bulletin board could be replaced by a large wall screen switching between video of rolling tide at the beach with current weather conditions and student organizations/school announcements. There would be plenty of seating and electrical jacks at every other pillar so people can sit down and plug in their phone/laptops to do work outside.

Top level:

One thing to consider is that, really, FAU doesn't have a lot of land on which it can build. Eventually most of the "gray" space (open pavement) will be gone and most of the open green space (like the quad across from the Hillel Center) may need to host a building. Or maybe they'll always keep that space open out of principle. Regardless, the top of the Breezeway gives us an interesting opportunity to explore green space and recreational space pretty much exactly like this (seriously, check it out)

And this for chairs.

Tell me that's not an awesome idea for the top of the Breezeway. Nothing else even makes sense to me after seeing this. Hopefully you feel the same.

GO OWLS!

FAU's Board of Trustees adopts new 5-Year Capital Improvement Plan

Once a year, FAU creates a ranked list of projects that it would like funded by the State Legislature. Essentially, every time a new building goes up, it's usually because FAU gameplanned for it a couple years earlier and asked the Legislature to give them the $20-50M (million) dollars to construct it.

Now, the list is broken up into PECO (Public Education Capital Outlay) projects and CITF (Capital Improvement Trust Fund) projects. As this page explains:

PECO Funding (Public Education Capital Outlay trust fund) – PECO is funded by the gross receipts tax, which is a 2.5 percent levy on the gross receipts of electric, gas and telecommunications. This tax is devoted entirely to the Public Education Capital Outlay and Debt Service trust fund (PECO) and is the major state source of revenue dedicated to new construction, repair, renovation and expansion of public schools (K-12), community colleges and state universities.

CITF Funding (Capital Improvement Trust Fund) – Used only for the construction, renovation and improvement of student-related facilities. CITF is funded by student fees that are collected as part of the tuition, and bonded proceeds are distribution approximately every three (3) years. Projects are approved by a committee comprised of students, faculty and staff and are submitted to the FAU Board of Trustees for approval. All CITF projects are then submitted to the Florida Legislature for appropriation.

As you might expect, FAU doesn't get everything it asks for because of budget constraints so the universities have lobbyists pushing for certain projects over others. Since politicians ultimately decide who gets what, and Florida politicians also tend to graduate from a Florida university, it's not uncommon for projects at certain universities to get favored over the others.The excuse for this is usually that our most important duty is to "support out flagships," even if it comes at the cost of building things at the "other guy's" schools.

Anyway, the current document outlines some interesting priorities (you won't see Greek Housing on here because the state doesn't fund housing) and it'll be interesting to see what gets funded. As far as Boca Raton campus projects go:

Renovated buildings: $40M for the Wimberly library, $25M for Social Sciences (the Spaceship), ~$25M for Administration building renovation, $10M for Science and Engineering, $9M for the Student Union, $8.6M for Instructional Service and $6.5M for Arts & Letters.

New buildings: $26M for General Classroom Facility (Phase II), $35M for a "Medical Building", $1.5M for Social Work building.

Other: $2.5M for Breezeway Repairs (more on that in the future) and $5.2M for "realignment of Indian River Blvd." Remember this?

More info on the original blog entry.

(I'd like to give you dates as to when these projects will happen but the CIP splits up the appropriations into multimillion dollar chunks over several years and I don't know if they put shovels into the ground when the first check is received or the last... point is, "sometime in the next five years, hopefully")

The Wimberly library is definitely in need of a renovation. Considering that new buildings cost $40M, we're talking about a major renovation and likely expansion here. Where would it expand? Well, you know that parking lot out in front? Yeah.

I'm happy about this for several reasons. One, the size of your library collection matters not only academically but also from a reputation standpoint (not going to go into it, just trust me on this). Two, there are several things I dislike about the library both aesthically and functionally, the most salient of which is the god-awful entrance (what is it, a federal tax building?). There's no way to get into the library from any area that's covered from the elements so I've lost count of how many times I've watched people say "screw it" and run from the ugly entrance to Parking Garage 1 in the unrelenting rain.

What's especially frustrating is that there's really no reason for it. The library is ideally positioned to allow a physical connectivity to Garage 1 on the west side and the Breezeway on the east side. So yes, FAU, please fix the library, make it look appealing, expand it, put in a nice pocket park and add side entrances with overhangs to stay out of the rain.

Also, rebrand it "the W." (for Wimberly) Just put a big W on it. Engraved, banner-style, whatever.
Big "W", smaller text next line "Wimberly", next line "library." Here's your model:

Photo from Wikipedia.

Moving on.

Money for Social Sciences, the Admin and Student Union comes out to be $59M altogether, an amount which certainly comes in handy if you're trying to move Administration into the Spaceship so the old Admin building can become this:

Photo from Leo A. Daly Architects for an FAU study.

...the new FAU Student Union (concept). Very exciting stuff. More about this in an upcoming entry.

The $10M Science & Engineering renovation actually says "COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENG. BLDGS. 36, 43 & 55 RENOVATION"; building 36 is Engineering West, 43 is Science & Engineering proper and building 55 is Physical Science.

First of all, FAU has way too many buildings called "Engineering." Engineering West is rumored to become a general classroom building (like the General Classroom North/South buildings). Science and Engineering should become, what, Mathematics? Mathematics and Chemistry? The rule of thumb is, when you expand and become a "real" university you have big enough departments that you can dedicate entire buildings to them. After that you start splitting off and constructing buildings for, you know, Nanochemistry Institutes and whatnot. Still, $10M is not a lot of money to spread over three buildings so you're talking facelifts here, maybe moving offices and departments around.

I'm not sure where "General Classroom (Phase II)" would go, although the Master Plan shows a new building in what is now the parking lot west of Education. Another Master Plan diagram shows an unlabeled building east of Student Services between the baseball stadium and the community soccer fields on the SE corner of campus. So who knows. What I do know is that there is a dire need for general classroom space and this lack of space has led to reduced course offerings, which in turn leads to longer waits until graduation. Lack of adequate class offerings is actually one of the primary driving forces behind our 6-year graduation rate being as high as it is.

$1.5M for Social Work is peanuts so that must be a small expansion or renovation of an existing space for one of our buildings.$6.5M for Arts and Letters is a little more... I know they wanted to expand the current building a little bit to the east. That building, with the one hallway leading past glass walled offices and classroom space is actually really cool so it would be great to see more of that.

$35M for a "Medical Building." Well, that makes sense because: 1) The current medical school is housed in what's really structured as a Biomedical Research facility; 2) The med students have individual cubicles/office space but it's only enough for 64 students and the class size should expand in the future to double that; 3) there's no dedicated med school library or bookstore, like you see in a lot of schools; and 4) There was always a plan to build at least a second building (arrow) to be positioned east of the current building.

This is more or less how they picture the future area called the "Science Broadway":

Now, you should understand that projects come on and off this list all the time so really the top few are usually the only ones that get built. Sometimes a project starts out high, then gets pushed down, sometimes it gets elevated as situations force FAU's hand, and sometimes projects fall off the list altogether. Maybe they'll make a reappearance, maybe they won't, but to finish up let's quickly list some projects that have fallen off the map:

• "Vivarium" - a place to house animals for research.
• "Student Life Exterior Renovation" - I think this became the Breezeway Renovation. It might have included general grounds renovation, like installing new planters, pavers, flowers, trees. Who knows.
• $25M "Science and Technology Library" - might be integrated into the $40M renovation?
• "Recital Hall"
• "Center for Philanthropy" - don't quote me on this but this might have been tied to Barry Kaye. I think at one point there was a Philanthopic Studies program being considered to train future fundraisers.
• "Convocation Center/Arena" - This will DEFINITELY reemerge in the near future. Believe it.
• "Schmidt Biomedical Center Phase II & III" - aka "Medical Building?"
• "Alzheimer's Care & Research Center Phase II" - this would add onto the Alzheimer's research space we have over by Traffic & Parking. It's an important place.
• "Toppel Family Early Childhood Education Institute" - the Toppel family donated (or was supposed to donate) $3M for this addition to the Education program, which has (had? I need to double-check) a sign up on the vacant land south of the Henderson building.
• "Institute for the Study of Peace and Social Justice" - I guess this would give Criminal Justice, a fairly popular major at FAU, their own building. Have an old sketch for this:

Annnnd now you know a little bit more about the future. It's a blog AND a time machine.

GO OWLS!

Strengthening our Academic Reputation

Quick, answer this question: FAU is the best university in Florida to earn a degree in _____________.

The knee jerk response might be Ocean Engineering, a specialty we founded in 1965. In fact, it's number 13 (of 18) on our Points of Pride website:

13. The field of ocean engineering was pioneered at FAU, which established the country’s first such academic program in 1965. Now augmented by the highly advanced SeaTech research center in Dania Beach, it remains one of the best programs of its kind internationally.

However, we must not do a very good job marketing that information to high school seniors because ocean engineering - or any field of engineering - isn't even included in the Top 10 Most Popular Majors for FTICs (first-time-in-college students, aka freshmen). Maybe we just need to promote ourselves more? You might think that hey, if we founded it, we're probably the best at it. But that honor actually goes to MIT because, well, they're MIT. The good news is that we are on one list of "good ocean engineering programs" along with Florida Tech and (who else?) the University of Florida.

The media constantly likes to compare us to UF, which seems to be a "great school" for, well, everything. But what makes UF a "good school" vs FAU? What makes a biology degree at UF different than a biology degree at FAU?

If you're a high school student or a parent of a high school student, your response would be that it's difficult to get into a school like UF or MIT and therefore it must be a good school. Truth is, admissions is really more a game of popularity than anything: how many students apply for how many spots. You can artificially drive up selectivity for a school by manipulating factors on each side of the bottleneck. Case in point: FAU admitted 52% of FTIC applicants in Fall 2006 vs 36% in Fall 2011 by having more students apply in 2011. Incidentally, UF admitted 43% of applicants for Fall 2011.

Naive knee-jerk reaction: We're better than UF! Let's celebrate with riots in the Breezeway!

Photo courtesy of The Owl's Nest (Thanks Lm77!).

The truth is, it's so much more complicated than that.

See, universities with strong academic reputations tend to have well-known faculty (e.g. Nobel laureates, best-selling authors, government consultants, inventors) who have a ton of resources at their disposal (endowments, scholarships, research funding, class and lab equipment, etc) as well as a veritable army of up-and-coming graduate students helping them to pound out research. These schools host regional and national conferences for respected academic societies and challenge undergrads who graduated at the top of their high school classes, students who then go on to graduate and impress employers, motivating those employers to hire other grads from the same school. Altogether a great university provides academic, economic and cultural benefits to the entire nation.

We're... working on that.

We do have great faculty, although the attrition rate is considerable due to issues with salaries; we're simply not paying enough for the professors we do have, to say nothing about attracting Nobel laureates.

Our resources are limited; for instance, FAU grad students may receive a ~$500 biweekly stipend and no health insurance (with a limited number of TA positions that are earmarked preferentially for Ph.D. students before M.S. students) whereas UF grad students may receive ~$700-800 with health insurance and a guaranteed TA spot. I remember my ENC 1101 "professor" was a grad student who had to work another job on the side just to meet her expenses. The Board of Trustees is already aware that the Graduate College feels like it is losing out on good students because we can't offer benefits commensurate with other great institutions in Florida.

Our graduate student population in general is only ~4,500 students... meaning about 15% of our overall student population. Considering how important good graduate students are, that really needs to change. Yet because graduate students have to work under the watchful eye of professors and those professors are already burdened with teaching multiple classes (and possibly serving in administrative capacities on various committees) there is a limit to how many graduate students they can take on, especially if there is a legitimate research project involved for which they need to provide consistent oversight.

We do host various conferences, particularly in Mathematics, and once we construct a new basketball/convocation center, we can do large scale, multi-day conventions. In the meantime, the new Engineering building may be sufficient for smaller conferences.

How to attract the best undergrads is a hotly-debated issue. We've talked about and will continue to talk about the intangibles (traditional atmosphere, school pride, etc) but, to come full circle here, we need to be able to point to a program or a teaching philosophy and say, "this is our cornerstone. This is the kind of thing that makes us a great university for you, your children and your children's children." We have to ask ourselves, could FAU be the best university in Florida for anything? Could we beat out the Floridas and the Miamis for motivated valedictorians who "need to go to the place where [they] will get the best education?"

There are several ways to provide a "hard" education that "adequately prepares students for the workplace." First of all, we need to expect more from our students. When asked how our school was different than the upper tier schools, one FAU professor replied, "At a school like the University of Southern California, they complain if the tests are too easy. Here, students ask if spelling counts and whether they get credit for attendance." It's a different caliber of expectation and we need to move toward that. We need to feel like students "survived" a class, like I did with Biochemistry and Historical Geology at FAU, rather than skating through multiple choice tests with 4 ridiculously wrong answers and one right one. An easy class gets you a high GPA, sure, which can net you a job just long enough for them to figure out you don't know what the hell you are talking about. Once that happens, the employer gets wary of taking on another graduate from FAU because the last one didn't work out so well.

We have an opportunity here to surge forward. For FAU to "grow" up academically, it needs to invest in its professors, its facilities, its students, and its self-esteem. We have to let students know that even if we're super nice and easy on them, that if they skate through college with straight A's, the real world is going to filter them out because real employers don't have to be nice to you and they don't have to pay good money to people who don't know anything (especially in this economy).

Alright, let's summarize with a list to wrap this up. In no particular order, FAU should:

1) Increase the overall expectation of students to match the difficulty of nationally-recognized universities.

2) Create a mandatory "field experience" / research / journal review class for each discipline. Students need to graduate with at least some working knowledge of their field that is non-academic, for many reasons.

3) Consider a possible board-style exam reviewing basic principles from the student's major. The subjects to be covered will be made available since freshman year so the student can create their own "study guide" before the test. The board exam will be required to graduate but failing will not prevent the student from graduating. Instead, students will receive the exam results on what they missed as "you should read up on this before you try to get a job in this field so people don't think you're an idiot and fire you."

4) Consider creating the nation's largest five year dual BS/MS degree program. We have it in a few majors now, but expand the initiative and offer it in as many majors as possible. For the uninitiated, how this typically works is that your fourth year electives are actually mixed in with graduate school classes to put you on the path toward a Master's degree. This creates a situation whereby valedictorians can choose FAU over UF/FSU/Miami because they'll earn two degrees in five years versus one degree in four years or two degrees in six years. It also increases the total number of graduate students, plunges students directly into their field (#2) and would require, at the very least, some sort of "final exam" (#3) to ensure students have a baseline knowledge of their field.

5) Find the areas that we can brag about (like founding ocean engineering, our accounting test pass rates, pioneering research done here) and promote the hell out of them nationally, not just a bulletpoint on a webpage that you might happen to see if you were poking around online.

Full disclosure: I took some very difficult classes at FAU, I learned more when more was expected of me, I liked graduate school even more than undergrad, I would not be scared of a board exam if I knew ahead of time what was on it and that failing could not prevent me from graduating, and I would have chosen FAU over UF if I knew that I could have gotten both a Master's and a bachelor's in 5 years... and I don't think I'm the only one who would make that choice.

GO OWLS!

Boca Raton, the college town?

The idea gets less and less crazy every year... and fortunately for us, the mayor's on board with it:

"I think that Boca is finally getting younger," Mayor Susan Whelchel told the Palm Beach Post last year. "Ready or not, it's here. We are a college town."

A little premature but she's on the right track. Most definitions of college towns are along the lines of "a community dominated by its university population."

Well, we may not "dominate" Boca Raton but think about this:

• FAU serves ~30,000 students of which ~23,000 utilize Boca Raton as their main campus. 
• Lynn University serves ~3,000 students.
• Palm Beach State College serves 51,248 (!) students of which ~15,000 students attend classes in Boca Raton. 
• Digital Media Arts College serves a few hundred students.

Ergo, on a given weekday, there are up to 41,000 college students in Boca Raton.

That's a number that nobody talks about... but they should.

In the 2010 Census, the population of Boca Raton was found to be 84,392 (growth: 12.9% from 2000-2010). A surprising 33.4% of Boca citizens - or 28,186 people - were under the age of 29 (what we'll call "college", "graduate" or "young professional" age).

What I'm trying to get at here is that the number of college students in the city on a given weekday is almost equal to half of Boca Raton's population.

College students are therefore Boca's largest "untapped" resource, with very few local businesses willing to commit to the college demographic. Incredibly, even the "University Commons" along Glades Road - which FAU owns - is managed by a developer that shoots for an "all-ages" demographic.

Guess business owners have cold feet because they're worried that not enough students live in the area. So leave it to student housing to pave the way.

Here are some renderings of University Park, an "off-campus dorm" that will be built along 20th Street in 2013. Inspired by the unexpected success of Addison Park on 20th Street and NW 5th, University Park may be ushering in an age of "student housing" developments that, until recently, have been alien to the city. In fact, in order to approve this project, the City Council had to work with Planning and Zoning to establish new ground rules for how student housing is going to work in the city. UP will likely be followed by a project called "The Grove," now in Preliminary Application stage. The picture below will allow you to get your bearings on where these projects would be in relation to campus.

Once you have enough students living on the east side of campus, it becomes an unofficial "student area" that Boca is trying to support through the proposed formation of an "overlay district" that would rename 20th Street to "University Boulevard" and encourage "university-centric growth" along its length up to Dixie Highway. Presumably this would lead to a dedicated street of campus businesses including restaurants, entertainment venues and retail to replace the industrial dead zone there.

More on this in the near future... point is, 20th Street makes the most sense to become a "college street" since it leads directly to campus and the projected home of the new Student Union.

The second part of creating a "college town" environment is integrating Glades Road directly in front of campus with more college-centric development. Arguably the most popular (and thus most visible) road in Boca Raton, it already has FAU banners along the south side of campus to promote university pride in the city. However, University Commons doesn't live up to its potential as a student hotspot and there are unmet student needs on campus that could be solved by expanding it into the red area below (the light blue line represents how easily sidewalks could connect the 1,800 students who live in that area to this new development)

This development could either support new student housing OR a mix of low cost, FAU-centric retail and restaurants. During the day, students (and staff) want a place that they can reasonably walk to for lunch without moving their cars and losing their spot. At night, students want a variety of places where they can eat and socialize once the campus has thinned out. So the best thing to do would be create a place with outdoor seating and red and blue umbrellas where students can do hang out and enjoy themselves.

Also like this, at Cornell.

Once you have these two big pieces in play, you've created an off-campus atmosphere in high traffic areas where students are out and about, enjoying themselves, and all the people passing through see this. Once you see it, especially when you see it every day, you start buying into the idea more and more of Boca Raton as a college town.

Because the potential is there. It really is. It's just waiting for the right mix of development to bring it to life. Once that happens, Boca Raton goes from being a town in search of a "brand" or an "identity" (the City's words, not mine) to being "one of the nation's nicest college towns."  You'll see.

GO OWLS!