Special thanks to Ay-ziggy-zoomba.com member Chris Malanga for reporting on his experience at the Alumni and Friends weekend! Chris can be contacted at chrismalanga@gmail.com

I was glad to attend the Alumni and Friends Weekend this past weekend. We had a great time with all the events – 5K, Falcon Flames Vow Renewal, Birthday Bash, etc. I also enjoyed a couple of the classes – History of BG with Larry Weiss, and the Future of BG.

The Future of BG session was led by Steven Krakoff, Associate Vice President for Capital Planning and Design at BGSU.

He had a great presentation on Saturday that had just been presented to the Board of Trustees on Friday. I took some notes on his presentation and they are below. I will post a full link to the presentation, once it is available. I was really shocked to hear some of the plans but think that they are going in the right direction.

Here are my notes – let me know if you have questions on them. I’ll try to organize them the best that I can.

The Strategic Plan
The Strategic Plan is for the next 12-15 years. Most of what is noted below will happen in the next 7-8 years. Obviously money is an issue. They have determined their most immediate needs, and then have prioritized the rest.

They have decided to focus on the areas of campus that run Thurstin to Mercer and Wooster to Merry, and divided it into zones.

They did a detailed analysis of each building on campus, and mapped it.

They are trying to tie learning together with socialization and residential. They want all parts of campus to be used all day. Also, they want to get away from smaller, specialized buildings and make the buildings more useful to a wider variety of students/programs.

“Old campus” Zone
“Traditions” buildings – Moseley, University, Hanna and South Hall – will be remodeled and updated.
Moseley Hall will become a intro science building – geology, geography, other science classes, etc. Idea is that rooms will be set up so that they can be used by a variety of different programs, science and art for example.

Looking to connect city with U, create a front porch. Ideally, Administration building would be torn down to open up that end of campus – “Ideally, you could stand on Court Street by Campus Polleyes and see all the way into University Hall.” I saw renderings of this and it looks amazing!

West Hall and Family/Consumer Sci would be taken out at the tail end (8 years or longer)

In the long-term (longer than the strategic plan), Founders would probably go.

I asked about South Hall because when I was in school, the plan was to demolish it because it was a dump and it would open campus up. He said that it would not be a good idea to take it out because you would lose the “enclosed” feel to that area and you would have all sorts of noise from traffic. Plus, it is a square building and there are a “lot of possibilities” with a remodel.

Northwest Zone
They are going to defer investment in the Math-Sci, Life Sci and tech buildings until enrollment warrants

Northwest Residence Hall will have all suites and target sophomores and upper classmen and hold 630 students. It will be state of the art. “Our quality of residence halls is very poor compared to our peers.”

Old Mac dining hall will move to new building, not attached to Mac, in Fall 2011. It will have a 700-person capacity and be LEED certified. May be first LEED certified standalone dining hall in country.

New northwest green. Some of the East leg of Mac will be removed and street between Math-Sci and Mac will be converted into green space – street will run south from Merry and stop at the Life-Sci loading docks.

Library Zone
New business building to be built in current parking lot behind “traditions” buildings.

Education Building to be demolished, too costly to renovate.

Education program will then move into either remolded (old) business building or one of “traditions” buildings.

Not sure what they will do with Memorial Hall – gymnastics not taking over Anderson Arena as previously thought. Sounds like Memorial Hall is a real question mark for them.
Something needs to be done with the library – new dean starting in fall and she will be a large part of that determination process. It will be costly to renovate.

South-Central Hall will hold 640, all freshman.

New Commons Dining Hall, will be full-service dining hall like MacDonald, and will be LEED certified as well. It will be self-contained.

Other Notes:
Music and Fine Arts are good programs but buildings aren’t good. There will need to be some discussion on what to do with those buildings.

Health Science Building will be renovated and health center relocated.

They will need to do something with Student Rec center.

Parking is being studied. There will be no parking decks because they cost 10x more – $20,000 per spot as opposed to $2,000 per spot on lot.
Most traffic will continue to be kept out of campus. Much more green space.

At this time, sports facilities have not been included in this plan.

Among their next items to discuss: replacement of Greek life area, landscape and structure, a detailed parking analysis, a detailed science program analysis, determining what library of the future looks like, arts facility study, student health center and rec center.

All in all, it was a GREAT session and I highly encourage you to take a look yourself, once it’s online. Once it has been posted online, I’ll link to it. Let me know if you have questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.

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