ACUHO-I News Blog

Duke’s Smart Home, the first LEED certified platinum residence hall, will not be easily replicated, said Duke’s dean of residence life and executive director of housing services, Eddie Hall. And that’s okay. Hall’s presentation, with his colleagues Gary Thompson, director of facilities planning and operations, and John Duncan, manager of apartment operations, is meant to serve as more of an inspirational story than a paint-by-the-numbers book. They discussed the Smart Home on Monday at the ACUHO-I Annual Conference and Exposition. Inside HigherEd reported on the session.

Hard work, dedication to the project and a common vision helped, but there was also serendipity and opportunity involved. The trick wasn’t the specific circumstances, but recognizing a benefit when it presented itself.

A Duke student’s graduate thesis, based on the concept of a sustainable residence hall, attracted the attention of a member of Duke’s Board of Visitors, who also sat on the board of Home Depot. This happy circumstance set the planning process in motion. The Smart Home came for free, but it won’t stay free. There’s a lot of new and experimental technology in it with which the facilities department will have to familiarize themselves. The appliances were donated, which is great, but that also means they didn’t come with warranties.

The home also includes two laboratories where residents can innovate further. Their first innovation? It concerns an issue that is heavy on the hearts of all college students: beer theft. Students developed a thumb-print identification censor for kegs. Many smart projects have come out of the Smart Home, or are in process. Students have been toying with ways to improve the home’s function, appearance and utility. A list is available on the Smart Home’s website.

Hall, Thompson and Duncan advised session attendees to do what works best for their schools and what is most sustainable for them, rather than aiming for a specificLEED rating.  As The Chronicle of Higher Education reported last year, sometimes the LEED rating has its own financial and environmental costs. They acknowledged that the Duke Smart Home could not be easily replicated elsewhere. The important thing is to know the resources and technology available, and be open to opportunities.

New York University is building a new campus in Washington D.C.

In this lot.

See? It’ll be in that narrow, 60-foot-wide area just behind the streetlight, between the tan building and the dark brown building. The campus will occupy a 75,000 square foot building (to be constructed) and will be known to the acronym-happy as NYU-D.C. The campus will include five floors of student living space and classroom space. The living area will house 200 students, whose classes will be through the College of Arts & Sciences. History, journalism, politics, art history and economics will be the initial offerings when the campus opens in the fall of 2012. Nesting all the functions for daytime learning and nighttime living was quite a trick for the architects, according to a story in the Washington Business Journal: “It was like putting a little Swiss watch together, but we got it to work,” said architect Laurence Caudle.

Those Golden Gophers from Minnesota are the the first college in the country to use Build America Bonds to help fund new campus constrution projects. According to InsideHigherEd.com, these bonds were created to help state and local governments raise money for building projects by making it significantly cheaper for them to issue taxable bonds.

Among the intended projects listed in the official release from the school, was a new residence hall on the university’s Crookston campus. The article also discusses how the University of West Florida is taking advantage of additional changes in tax law that will open more funding options for their much-needed new residence hall; receiving a $15 million loan that would not have been possible just three months ago.

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s current issue offers an article that’s unfortunately timely and appros. Debt Bomb is Ticking discusses an unfortunate confluence of events: higher education institutions borrowed a lot of money to build and renovate structures (including residence halls). Thanks to the lackluster economy, the value of the assets held by the institutions have plummeted, leaving the institutions with a risky debt-to-assets ratio. An unbalanced ratio may violate the terms of the institution’s agreement (or covenant) with the bond holder or bank. In these circumstances, the loaning institution can demand repayment of all or part of the loan.

As with other elements of the declining economy, the effects can cascade. The US Department of Education uses financial data to determine institutions’ eligibility for federal student aid. Some of the debt swaps institutions made to hedge against rising interest rates on their debts have now become problematic, and unless interest rates change considerably by June, these transactions will have to be labeled liabilities in year-end financial statements.

A selection of college housing and student affairs headlines from InsideHigherEd.com. Look for these on a weekly basis in the ACUHO-I news blog.

BUILDING CAPACITY, SLOWLY: New federal data show small increase in number of Americans enrolled in college in 2007 — with fastest growth in for-profit sector.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/11/enroll

SUSTAINING STUDY ABROAD: Campuses are going green and going international. With air travel as the elephant in the room, how to reconcile the two?:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/12/studyabroad

IS THE LAPTOP LOVE-IN OVER? Colleges that helped provide students with computers were once celebrated. But as budgets tighten and more students come with their own machines, institutions are rethinking the value of laptop requirements:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/12/laptops

Not a lot of institutions have spare cash lying around, but for those who do–or those who can scrounge some up–now is prime time to request bids for construction projects, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education article. The cost of construction materials are declining, and of course firms could use the business, so prices can be very competitive.

These tight times will mean that some firms will likely cease to exist, as the weak are winnowed from the herd, so to speak. And of course this period will be (one hopes) short-lived, so there are a limited number of schools that can use the downturn to their advantage.

The folks at Unviersity Business decided that if ACUHO-I can have themselves a residence hall competition, they can too, and they’ll use the dreaded “D-word” while doing it.

“Dorms of Distinction” highlights residences with choicey amenities; innovative designs and aesthetically pleasing details. If you need inspiration, this list is a good start. The evaluation team noted the distinctive halls often had several things in common:

Student input heavily informed much of the design, furnishings and amenities of many of the halls. The buildings have a homey feel; many feature furnishings similar to those in private homes; many have private bedrooms and smaller bathrooms that look more like those in houses. Finally, most of the halls have plenty of comfortable and inviting common areas, where residents can gather.

If you’re building, consider hosting one of the 21st Century Project prototype halls.