Campus facilities pros have long worked to lower energy costs while keeping building temps comfortable. As they know, complaints about comfort can quickly clog facilities department phones and make work orders pile up. Compounding the issue: Everyone seems to have a different idea about the best temperature. Studies show that men generally like buildings a […]
What’s the biggest misconception administrators outside the facilities department tend to have related to heating and cooling campus buildings? “Administrators believe [that] just because they have invested a lot of capital in an expensive energy efficiency upgrade to a facility, the opportunity for behavioral energy conservation savings is minimal. The reality is, energy efficiency upgrades […]
When Winter Storm Jonas dumped nearly three feet of snow on Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in January, Dickinson College turned to outside contractors unfamiliar with the campus to aid its massive snow removal effort. Guided by geographic information systems (GIS) mapping, the contractors coordinated efforts with Dickinson’s regular maintenance staff to clear the grounds efficiently. Specialty maps […]
Students don’t quite run the show when it comes to course scheduling. But colleges and universities are striving to make it easier for them—with their ongoing juggle of work, family and school commitments—to take the classes necessary to meet educational objectives in time to graduate. Course scheduling policies and practices tend to date back—way back—to […]
Course scheduling technology providers were asked: What are the biggest hurdles colleges face when trying to implement the scheduling options that students may want? “Most institutions add new programs and course offerings at a much higher rate than they remove them. This leads to many programs and courses lacking the enrollment required to make them […]
David W. Andrews begins his term as president of National University in California April 1. Formerly the dean and a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Education, he led that institution to No. 1 U.S. News rankings two years in a row. He promoted "smart growth" strategies in enrollment and program development and raised […]
California’s colleges and universities have made strides in providing mental health care to students—when higher ed as a whole has struggled to keep up with a growing demand for services. Recent studies suggest that up to one-third of college students suffer mental health problems. California’s Mental Health Act, passed in 2004, assesses a 1 percent […]
As faculty members at a small, tuition-driven private college in the northeast, the familiar refrain of contemporary higher education in shambles rings in our heads. How will our college's low-endowment—combined with less than optimal name recognition—reconcile with the declining number of high school graduates in our region? How will the arms race of amenities and […]
Remember IBM’s Watson, the star of Jeopardy! a few years back? The computer system learns by examining data and earlier results it provided, then formulating even better answers and results for the next problem. Watson is probably the most well-known example of artificial intelligence, which has come out of research labs and onto college and […]
The traditional MBA, the flagship of graduate business education for more than a century, is losing ground as applicants increasingly turn to online degrees and specialized master's programs in business-related fields. The decline in enrollment in full-time, two-year MBA programs has prompted business schools to roll out a wave of new graduate programs, from one-year […]
