When mind sparks mind building the future at Agnes Scott College: merging tradition with high-tech was the goal in creating new learning spaces at a school that hadn't seen a new building in 30 years

Matrix: The Magazine for Leaders in Education, June, 2001 by Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti

When Mary Brown Bullock, president of Atlanta's Agnes Scott College, talks about the new and renovated buildings on her campus, it is with an eye to both the past and the future. She quotes the words of Katherine Marshall, an Agnes Scott alumna from the first half of the 20th century who referred to the moment when "mind sparks mind"--when the interaction between students and faculty makes learning more than the sum of its parts.

"Learning is individual, but it is also corporate," Bullock says. When she took office with the task of increasing enrollment from 600 students to 1,000 (aiming for a capacity of 1,300), Bullock set out to create an environment where the women of Agnes Scott could experience the kind of learning synergy that Marshall had described 70 years earlier.

The Importance of Space

Bullock had a large task in front of her: increase the learning space on a campus that had not seen a new building in 30 years, add technology, and respect the historic appearance of the campus. A tall order, and one that called for a new approach to the use of space.

"Space is important to what we do, both in terms of conduciveness for personal and interpersonal interaction," Bullock says. So, the architects hired by Agnes Scott spent a great deal of time examining how those spaces would be used. The team observed students as they studied in groups and alone, watching them pull chairs together to form a study group or throw their legs over chair arms to create a comfortable solo position. They considered the nooks that were used for togetherness and those used for privacy.

What emerged from the observation was a new way of creating learning spaces--buildings that combined the technological needs of the students with the classic look of the campus to create. Take the McCain library expansion, for example.

"Noise is no longer verboten in the library," Bullock says. Instead, students are encouraged by the architecture to find places to work together. And technology has also been welcomed into the conversation: "[Students] can plug in a computer but also can sit by a fireplace."

Keeping the fireplaces intact was part of the overall plan to respect the existing architecture of the library, which was originally constructed in American Collegiate Gothic style. When expansion plans were made to double the size of the existing library, one plan called for altering the large, formal reading room, a hallmark of that style. However, a decision was made to retain the classic room and add space in other ways. Today, the library includes not just the traditional reading room but a reading terrace and high-tech computer labs.

"I have a profound belief that spaces affect behavior," says Fran Fergusson, president of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and an architectural historian by training. She has seen the effect that a physical environment can have on learning through observing Vassar's own classroom and study spaces, many of which have been remodeled to encourage what she terms "transactional learning." "People have to become engaged" in these spaces, she says.

Building these spaces reflects the expectations of learners in the university environment. "Students now think of themselves as learning in groups and teams," Fergusson says. She has noticed that "the `murmurous' quality of the library," in which students congregate to study together, has replaced the "dead quite of yesteryear."

Fergusson also applauds efforts to integrate technology into learning spaces in a way that appears natural and which maintains the beauty of the building. Preserving traditional architecture "reminds students that they are building on tradition," she says. And, she describes the inclusion of technology as an integral part of an otherwise traditional-looking learning space as "symbolically terribly important."

"There's value in showing people that all this can be integrated," she says.

Designing Women

Bullock saw this project as an opportunity to make a statement about the college's beliefs. "We're women using our own money," Bullock says. "What statement could be made?"

One obvious statement was "we care about the professional careers of women," Bullock says.

So, the college decided to send its requests for proposal with a notation that architectural firms owned by women or with women in senior positions would be favored in the search. Far from limiting the search, the addition of this criterion made the architect search even more competitive, leading to the college's selection of some of the nation's most well recognized--and well-paid--firms.

"[We wanted to] see what design ideas [would result] when women are designing for women," Bullock says. And she wasn't disappointed. Bullock found the firms to be "very sensitive to participatory design," involving the end users of the buildings in their design process.

Paying the Bills

A project that would ultimately cost $120 million took careful planning for the use of the Agnes Scott endowment and for alumnae support. Original funding for the project was based in large part on the health of the college's endowment, which, in the early 1990s, was benefiting from the solid position of a large block of Coca-Cola stock, according to Lewis Thayne, vice president of institutional advancement for Agnes Scott. He is taking the recent downturns in the market in stride. "We're not sweating the Coke stock," he says. Instead, he is depending on "gift support to offset the decline of Coca-Cola."