Stretching Institutional Dollars through Optimized Space Utilization

Published February 24, 2016 on labdesignnews.com

In this month’s column for Lab Design News, we explore the ideal way to optimize space utilization in STEM facilities as a cost cutting strategy.

Institutions continually face critical decisions regarding increased expectations and growing student population, while managing decreased funding for higher education, especially as it relates to technology intensive STEM facilities. It is challenging to keep pace with the rising cost of education due to the decreasing value of the dollar, the downward trend of ancillary funding, increasing administrative costs and large scale fundraising. In an attempt to keep up with rising costs, institutions have resorted to numerous measures to meet both need and expectations. Cost cutting strategies often include; increased class sizes, pay and/or hiring freezes, deferred maintenance of the institutions’ facilities, and reliance on graduate students and adjunct and non-tenured professors for student instruction. These trends are flawed in that they do not improve the quality of the student’s education, nor are they sustainable as long term, fiscally responsible, solutions.

Rather than attempting to “fix” budgetary issues in this manner, new STEM facilities are able to implement lab support, and space utilization strategies which require less space than “traditional” facilities. Reduced program space translates to a savings in both operational and first costs, and can result in a modern day STEM facility with less financial compromises. The following addresses projects which optimize space utilization while simultaneously improving aspects of the student’s education, their experience and, as a result, allow the institutional dollars to stretch beyond expectations.

Traditionally, STEM facilities are pressured to provide unique spaces for each discipline. The more specialized the space requirements, the less likely it is that the space can be appropriately configured and utilized for multiple courses. It is not unusual to see 8-12 course offerings in Biology, 3-5 in Chemistry, 2-4 in Physics, and 2-3 in Earth and Environmental Sciences. With each of these distinct program types, STEM facilities run the risk of requiring an excessive quantity of space types simply to meet the breadth of courses offered. Depending on the course demand, its popularity and the number of students accommodated within a pre-defined class configuration, multiple spaces might be required within each of the space types to accommodate the necessary through-put of students. With lab blocks typically scheduled 2-4 hours, 1-3 times a week, closely sequenced courses are a necessity. Preparation for these labs may include significant time for chemical and equipment set-ups prior to the commencement of the session. Additionally, student lab time is typically needed to complete coursework outside of official class hours. Both of these issues can severely impact the optimized scheduling of lab spaces, which adversely impact overall utilization.

Existing Lab Use: Two chemistry courses, each with two lab sections, and associated preparation, independent student use and post lab clean up, within the same program space.

The proposed design of the Skidmore College Science Center addresses inefficient utilization, lab preparation and student access. Within the College’s existing STEM buildings, spaces originally intended as preparatory environments for the teaching lab spaces were commandeered due to expanding enrollment. This is a common occurrence at many institutions. Our strategy reinstated the separation of lab preparatory functions, allowing the lab preparation to occur simultaneous with the instruction in the adjacent lab. This is the first of two strategies implemented which increased the number of labs scheduled in a teaching lab space. The preparatory set-ups can be transferred to the lab for the subsequent lab course within minutes of the completion of the first session, which effectively enabled the scheduling of more lab sessions, compressed within a given week.

In addition, the institution accommodated “open student lab hours” within labs throughout the day, which allowed students access to the lab environment to complete lab assignments and other work. This prevented optimal utilization of the most costly lab spaces. By providing, “ancillary course work rooms” at a fraction of the size and cost of the typical teaching labs, student access to an appropriate work environment was unencumbered while keeping the labs available for scheduled courses. Combined, these two strategies reduced the number of labs required to meet the demand of scheduled courses, and resulted in flexible and efficient student space with the potential for teaching lab spaces to be better utilized for their intended purpose.
 

Proposed Lab Use: This schedule represents a 50% increase in labs over the existing utilization due to the removal of the lab preparatory, and student use functions, from within the lab proper.

The programming and design of Hudson Valley Community College (HVCC) solved a similar dilemma differently. The removal of the preparatory function from the teaching labs spaces was also fundamental to their solution to optimize utilization. However, the preparatory space planning strategy differed.

At HVCC the preparation programs were combined to service all the labs from a remote, consolidated location, accessed by means of dedicated service corridors and a service elevator. In this instance, monetary savings came in the form of reduced construction costs for a single, larger preparatory space, rather than multiple smaller prep rooms scattered throughout the building. Additionally, there were financial advantages born from the increased operational efficiencies due to the single, centralized preparatory facility.
 

Hudson Valley Community College: One of three typical levels (above), are serviced from the centralized preparatory spaces on the lower level by the dedicated elevator and service corridor.

There are clear benefits in the efficiency of the building when combining multiple, scattered, discrete prep spaces and consolidating and co-locating them as a singular entity. First, combining multiple prep spaces to a single, centralized preparation location avoids the duplication of equipment that would have been distributed among the isolated prep spaces in order to effectively service their corresponding teaching labs. This redundancy can be costly, and the distributed prep spaces may not be optimally sized, since its area is somewhat predetermined by the lab module width, and the depth of the adjoining labs. Additionally, the building area and infrastructure (including building services required by the equipment and systems for environmental control) are able to be reduced when redundant equipment is omitted. This operational cost savings for the building infrastructure is enhanced by the staffing efficiencies when preparation occurs in one suite of spaces, rather than preparing lab set-ups from many locations throughout the building. This strategy was furthered by the dedicated support staff already in place at HVCC.

We implemented a similar strategy, at a much larger scale, at the University of Kentucky, where their Academic Science Building serves over 35,000 students per year. This student population represents more than four times the combined totals of the other two institutions. Rather than a single preparatory lab for the entire building, we determined that the program would benefit from consolidation of prep spaces by designing the preparation to occur within a single program space, on each of the three levels of the building, rather than within a single consolidated suite of prep spaces.
 

University of Kentucky: Labs at each level are serviced from a centralized preparatory space, at the same level, by the dedicated service corridor.

The scale of the labs, and quantity of lab set-ups required on each floor factored into this decision. The preparation spaces are vertically stacked and directly adjacent to the dedicated service corridor and elevator. The preparation spaces serve labs which accommodate over 200 combined student seats on each level. As with the HVCC example, the use of the dedicated service corridor creates a safe environment for the building occupants by separating lab chemical distribution from the public circulation.

At the University of Kentucky, where space is at a premium due to the number of students required to participate in introductory courses, another cost effective solution resulted from a shift in pedagogy. Rather than providing multiple, duplicate labs, each designed to accommodate 24 students and requiring 1,300 NSF of space to accommodate the demand for biology courses, technology enhanced active learning environments (TEAL Rooms) were provided to more efficiently meet the demand. These TEAL rooms support collaborative learning by merging lecture, simulation and hands-on experimentation. TEAL rooms are a good match for advancing specific biological courses of study. TEAL rooms are appropriate for the introductory Biology curriculum because the current pedagogy recognizes that skills such as analytical thinking and writing are just as important to scientific training as learning from experimental work.

At 750 NSF these TEAL rooms accommodate the same number of students as the lab environments nearly twice their size, while providing a more optimal learning environment for much of the biological syllabi. Over 4,000 NSF of teaching lab and preparation space was not necessary due to the implementation of this strategy. This equates to a significant savings, especially because the TEAL space was provided at a reduced cost/SF when compared to the cost of traditional biology teaching labs. Additionally, the TEAL rooms do not require the ancillary preparatory programs to support them. Some of the remaining Biological programs still required the more typical lab space. However, much of the biology coursework is optimal for the active learning environment native to a TEAL room. Additionally, TEAL rooms are flexible spaces which use furniture rather than fixed casework, and accommodate other academic programs readily.

Traditional STEM teaching facilities represent some of the most costly buildings in an academic setting to construct, operate and maintain. Planning strategies which optimize utilization of the program spaces within these facilities translate to better use of construction and operational funds. Strategies that consolidate space use are the key to stretching an institution’s dollars over the buildings’ lifetime. Rather than implementing more traditional cost cutting measures, these examples optimize the accommodation of the same programs in less space. These examples have; provided more functionality in less space, configured more optimal building support systems, implemented safer environments and incorporated the most current and appropriate teaching modalities, which resulted in the execution of a strategy superior to traditional methods. This allowed each institution to stretch their dollars the betterment of the institution, its faculty, staff and most importantly, the students.

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