What Will We Remember, What Will We Treasure? Together, Let Us Continue the Stewardship of Our Campuses

do you remember about your college campus? For me, it's the duck pond, a graceful pool outside the dining hall where we fed the ducks each evening after dinner--the duck pond surrounded by green slopes with classic Georgian buildings atop each slope. Red brick, white columns, intimate scale--a walking campus. Rolling hills and stately old buildings with their creaky floors and their history. Made for gatherings, quiet talks, or bombastic arguments. It was a place that I recall with fondness. When the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) began discussions about a campus heritage project with the Getty Foundation, those images sprang to mind. do we treasure about our campus experience? As planners, how do we keep that sense of place--the heritage--alive for future generations and still respond intelligently to new learning styles, new curricular and student-life demands, new technologies, and new construction techniques? does mean? should we keep--restore, renovate, or adapt? should we reduce to rubble? do past generations of students and faculty treasure, and what will future generations remember as a result of our efforts? do we keep that sense of place alive? SCUP approached the task of researching campus heritage by first conducting interviews with member campus and corporate planners. We asked questions: What do you need to know to undertake campus heritage planning, to preserve, adapt, and maintain those special places? and How do you want to receive that information? Respondents expressed their concerns in a number of areas: * Documentation. There is an absence of documentation and a lack of definitions, criteria, methodologies, and/or templates for organizing information and evaluating facilities. * Care and maintenance. Respondents wondered how to engage and educate facilities management staff to maintain, operate, repair, and renovate heritage properties; they also suggested the development of a transferable ranking system to guide maintenance, restoration, adaptation, or removal. * Processes. Models are needed for dealing with the complexities and constraints of decision-making processes affecting campus facilities (including campus-community and state politics) and for getting heritage properties on the funding priority list. Respondents stressed the importance of the intelligent management of change (not freezing things in one time and one place) and wondered how to weigh whether to seek historic designation (myths vs. truths). * Mid-20th century properties and a framework for the future. Campus policies and practices originally developed for pre-20th century properties define heritage properties too narrowly. These policies are not framed to capture the heritage properties of the future, particularly those buildings from the 1950s-60s that are significant but not old enough to be categorized as historic. Additionally, few guidelines exist for caring for the newer materials in these buildings, and state historic preservation officers are not well informed about these properties' significance. * Integration of heritage preservation planning with master planning/campus philosophy and mission/ identity. Sometimes expansionist goals drive corporate planners, who may lack the knowledge and/or sensitivity to integrate heritage preservation planning into the overall master plan. Respondent suggestions included an investigation of how to designate a new building as a heritage property and the creation of stronger links with the Association of University Architects' task force on integrating heritage preservation planning with master planning. …