The American Campus and University

The campus as narrative - its mission, history, traditions, aspirations

The campus as intentional community  - the mission – individually and collectively – is to be a community of learning

-          The campus has been shaped by the desire to create an ideal community

-          Place that fosters discourse, debate, collaboration, social interaction

Public flagship and land grant universities-

-          Large undergraduate population with a core of graduate, professional, and research functions

-          Enrollment 10000 to 50000

-          Land holdings range from 1000 to 2000 acres, more if agricultural

-          Sprawling campus with large-scale dormitories, athletic buildings, parking lots, research facilities

o   These universities work much like a suburban town, large scale programs and zoning that separate functions

-          As premier and large scale insititutions, they maintain vigorous civic and economic engagement with their localities by helping cultivate human resources, enterprises, community services that service the locality and state

-          Ex – Texas-Austin, Florida, Michigan, Ohio State, UNC-Chapel Hill

David Mayernik – America has “meager aspirations” of urban places

-          “We never really expect our cities to say something important about who we are and what we collectively value.”

-          A higher institution, more than the city, is intrinsically about collective values and the importance of those values in fulfilling the aspirations of its individual inhabitants

-          It is vital that a campus clearly expresses the identity of the institution to the community around it

-          “Place matters because the quality and character of a campus can raise the expectations of people who will enter a world in which the quality of the built environment is under siege.”

The civic relationship universities have with their communities

-          Universities will gain greater influence as a societal and civic force

o   They are not simply ivory towers of education and academia, the accessibility of higher education means that the majority of the US population attends these institutions

o   Not only do they instill progressive ideas of education, politics, and economics; they also influence and affect new ideas of community, civic culture, and society

§    Key pieces in colonial area towns

§    Helped spur economies and societal structures of cities during US expansion

§    Integrated into the civic fabric during the Industrial Revolution(Vanderbilt)

§    Increased civic role after WW2 to educate a larger more diverse workforce, have a hand in urban development, be a cultural resource for host communities

It is this last role that is still in effect today, even though there are new issues and influences that affect these institutions, US universities are still very much involved in the growth and development of their host cities, as many cities transition from rural/suburban roots to urban centers.

“The college campus, in all its myriad forms, is a distinctive human place that can and should offer society powerful lessons on how the character of the built environment can be made better in the twenty-first century”