Cy-Fair College

Narratives

Architect Narrative

It all started with a little over 200 acres of cacti, scrub, and flat former rice fields and a vision for creating a facility for lifetime learning that would double as a town center. The only comprehensive college in the U.S. built from the ground up in recent years, this College was designed to accommodate 10,000 students in six buildings set in a landscape of 18 acres of lakes and restored coastal prairie featuring low maintenance native grasses. Each building accommodates a variety of academic functions, facilitating the interdisciplinary, collaborative learning style that was selected for the new campus. The Design Team was involved through all phases of the project including master planning, programming, design, and construction administration, and provided graphic design and furniture specification services.

Learning is enhanced through several exemplary design ideas. A variety of learning spaces sized to accomodate individuals, teams, small groups, large groups and the community were developed. Functional learning spaces include not only classrooms and laboratories but also presentation spaces, galleries, studios, outdoor spaces and informal learning spaces. The buildings were designed to provide flexible and adaptable spaces with core/fixed elements for future flexibility. Furnishings that enhance collaboration were provided such as mobile furniture, tack surfaces, marker boards and modular tables. Access to learning is enhanced further through numerous free use computers and ubiquitous wireless data network access.

Because the College was being built from the ground up, both physically and culturally, the college leaders wanted to craft a whole new model for learning and community partnership. The architects were hired even before the curriculum was completely shaped or the faculty was hired. As a result, the project team had to help the college think through the physical environment as it would facilitate how the institution should function. As the educators were forming the curriculum and specific programs, the architects were determining how those concepts could happen physically.

Since the program for the College was driven by community needs, the process involved six months of intensive work identifying community expectations, the role of college in the community, and workforce development needs.

The design team extracted extensive input through on-line and newspaper surveys and meetings with civic groups, area employers, college and school district personnel, and students.

Weekly visioning sessions with college staff were held during the early months of the project to identify and review best practices, to formulate and refine project goals, and to establish project definition.

Before the program was finalized, the project team toured other college facilities recognized as innovative models for both specific facilities (i.e., flexible classrooms, science labs, theaters, internet cafes, learning centers) and practices (teaching, informal learning, student registration, guidance counseling) to establish a common vocabulary of benchmarks. Those benchmarks were then incorporated into the final project design.

Educator Narrative

With the opportunity to design a comprehensive community college in today’s learning environment, the college determined that it would take advantage of the chance to go beyond incremental change in a number of areas including organizational structure, learning signature, classroom design, hiring profile and process and services to students. The vision of the college focuses on preparing students for a rapidly changing world and creating a graduate who is an independent life-long learner. To that end, the college looked at the skills and characteristics necessary in a 24/7 global world with rapid social, technological and workplace changes. The need for knowledge itself has been replaced by information literacy skills and the ability to work effectively with others to solve problems and identify creative collaborative solutions. To accomplish this result the vision of the college centers on collaboration & integration as a way of life and an emphasis on active learning engagement for each student.

Collaboration has been built into every aspect of the campus design including the learning commons, which blends the college library, a county branch library, the college’s tutoring program, an internet café and learning resources into a seamless learning center for both the college and community. To make services convenient to working adults, the one stop enrollment center provides a point of service approach to student services. Each student is referred to a single enrollment specialist who can meet their needs for admissions, registration and financial aid. Students are provided with pagers while they wait for an appointment so they can study or visit the library rather than wait in line. The functions are integrated across the department and the facility to allow for ease of access and efficient services for students. Faculty offices are designed to facilitate collaboration and innovation with a mix of academic and career disciplines blended together. Each suite includes workspace for adjunct faculty to maximize the contact between full and part-time faculty.

The learning signature of active learning engagement began with the selection of a founding faculty of 100 who demonstrated their methods of involving students in active learning during the interview process. Classrooms have been designed with the flexibility necessary to support a wide range of faculty learning strategies. Of note are the classroom clusters with adjoining wall-talker rooms, flexible furniture to encourage group work rather than lecture and both wired and wireless technology available in each classroom. A faculty innovation committee has been appointed to suggest and share new ideas for using the campus’ flexible features. Beyond the classroom, a number of campus features are designed to enhance student success and retention. Wireless technology in lounge and dining areas and computers in the campus café meet the expectations of students who want to be connected 24/7. Lakes, waterways, walking trails, native landscaping and outdoor eating and lounge areas all contribute to a welcoming collegiate atmosphere designed to support student retention. In its first year, the college had the highest fall to spring retention of the 5 colleges within its system.