Next Generation

Designing for Millennial Students
Learning takes on a whole new meaning for administrators and faculty teaching the current generation of students.
These recent high school graduates — known as the Millennials or Echo Boomers — have always used a calculator to solve math problems, have grown up with unparalleled access to information through the Internet and cannot fathom life without a cell phone and text messaging.
This multi-tasking, parent-driven, sustainable-thinking crop of students requires a new approach to teaching that offers interaction, flexibility and access to technology.
Those concepts remained at the forefront of the planning process when the Dallas Community College District decided to move forward on a 55,000-square-foot, $10.9 million expansion at Eastfield College in Mesquite, Texas.
Carol Brown, president of the college, says Millennials have multiple modalities to learn from, including television, cable, the Internet and texting.
“These students learn in informal and formal ways,” Brown says. “For baby boomers, learning was formal, with the teacher in the front of the class and the students listening and taking notes. Millennials see themselves as consumers. They want to know what a college or university can offer them. Due to online learning and the number of competing educational institutions, they know they are shoppers with many options.”
Learning Redefined
To accommodate these new learners, the traditional classroom is changing to contain high-tech learning environments that utilize wireless technology with online course syllabuses, coursework and grading.
The authority-centric, front-of-the-class, lecture-based institution is passé. Modern education is characterized by engaged, team-based learning.
“Instead of just the office, it is socially acceptable for faculty to sit with a student in a social area or anywhere on campus to communicate and share,” says Terry Hajduk, learning environment specialist with ARX Design.
With that in mind, planners broke from tradition and designed 24 learning spaces for the expansion as flexible, technology-equipped learning studios, accompanied by informal spaces for transit and informal learning.
Corridors were not designed as spaces to get from point A to point B, says Mark VanderVoort, principal/director of the HKS educational group. They were widened to create social niches for meetings or discussions before, during or after class.
“We experimented with the environment, pedagogy and technology to determine the best overall solution,” Brown says.
The learning studios vary in size and shape, are technology-equipped and have an informal, interactive feel. They can accommodate multiple small groups simultaneously or a large group of up to 40 students.
“These spaces allow for more collaboration among students as well as between the students and faculty,” says Dan Arrowood, project manager for HKS.
Lori Gee, education solutions lead at furniture supplier Herman Miller, says the project team wanted to create classrooms that are more technology-friendly, user-friendly, flexible and fun.
The new studios include moveable furniture to allow students and faculty to change their environment based on the learning experience. WiFi laptop connections and high-tech smart boards allow faculty and students to do research and share it online.
“Every element of the space is designed to stimulate the brain, from the wall color palette to the natural light seeping through the windows, to the colorful carpet,” Hajduk says.
Pilot studies were held in the learning studios over two semesters with a diverse curricula and multi-generational faculty and students. The results were positive, with student-retention rates improving significantly and interaction among room occupants increasing exponentially.
“When interviewed, one faculty member said that because the learning studio is a social environment, the students worked together, helped each other and were more engaged,” Gee says.
The quality of completed assignments improved 15 percent in that classroom and another class was able to finish its coursework two weeks early, Gee says.
In addition to the design changes at the campus, members of the faculty are encouraged to be accessible to the students whenever they are on campus – whether they are walking down the hall or in their offices, which are located near the studios.
“To promote accessibility and encourage interaction, the lobby includes an Internet café and conferencing facilities that can be used after hours for different school and community activities,” VanderVoort says.
A new bridge connects the existing campus to the new addition and overlooks landscaped courtyards and interior balconies that provide places for passersby to sit and talk, furthering opportunities for communication.
“The new campus design recognizes and celebrates who students are and how they learn,” Brown says. We know these 24 learning studio spaces will make a difference for students in terms of learning, retaining and being excited about education.”

Mellennial Demographics
Students today:
• Spend 3 ½ hours everyday online
• Read 2,300 Web pages a year
• Write 500 pages of e-mail per semester
• Watch television 1½ hours
everyday
• Listen to music 2 ½ hours
everyday

Source: Kansas State University, “A Vision of Students Today” study

A $10.9 million expansion at Eastfield College was designed to cater to Millennials.

A variety of study spaces are included at the Eastfield College expansion, including group-study areas (above left) and areas for informal learning opportunities (below right, opposite page).

Breaking the Mold
Independent Schools Look to Unique Buildings to Lure Students
By John A. Prokos

Independent schools compete politely but fiercely for the best students. In those competitions, key themes include academic and athletic excellence and the consistent placement of students in top-notch colleges and universities.
A new campus building that breaks the traditional mold can provide a competitive advantage and sometimes even ignite a trend that other independent schools will follow. In fact, many high-caliber schools consider innovative designs indispensable to their success.
Independent schools often have a collection of historic or new buildings that help shape their identity or brand. A building with an innovative design can be unique without disturbing a school’s defining characteristics. It can strengthen a school’s campus fabric through a thoughtfully crafted, contextually sensitive design.
Also, innovation does not equate to expensive. Careful and creative use of a client’s budget — large or small — can create great value for a school.
Contemporary and Classic
The Westminster School in Simsbury, Conn., has re-imagined the design of academic facilities in a bid to tailor learning spaces to fit today’s more communal style of learning.
The new Armour Academic Center contains the school’s three main academic facilities: math and science, liberal arts, and the library.
The design aims to create a sense of community by eliminating traditional double-loaded corridors in favor of a three-story central atrium with circulating balconies on two sides that lead into classrooms. The third side presents an internal façade, which is the external wall of the library.
Throughout the atrium, seating areas accommodate impromptu or planned meetings between students and faculty and provide expansive views of the surrounding campus.
The new facility also features several green components including a high-efficiency irrigation system that is expected to reduce water consumption by 50 percent, efficient plumbing fixtures, a high-efficiency mechanical system, and a geothermal heat-exchange system.
The academic center continues the tradition of unique facilities at the campus. Twenty years ago, designers brought Shakespeare’s Globe Theater back to life with the design of a theater arts building.
Situated in a prominent location at the northeastern corner of the campus’s central quadrangle, Westminster’s 400-seat Werner Centennial Center consciously brings the performing arts into the physical and academic mainstream of campus life.
The theater’s massing, sloped roofs and tan brick exterior respond to the school’s historic buildings. An arched main entrance leads to the facility’s two-story lobby. Corridors off the lobby narrow into small passages that open into the three-story theater that rises up to a multi-colored domed ceiling.
To reduce costs, the ceiling features glass-reinforced, factory-fabricated gypsum panels that closely resemble much more expensive materials.
Food For Thought
In recent years, some independent schools have broken the mold of traditional dining halls by replacing cafeteria-style serving lines with food-court serving areas.
The Taft school in Watertown, Conn., is constructing a food-court-style serving area complimented by three dining rooms.
The food court provides views of kitchen equipment, including a brick-style oven.
The three dining rooms, adjacent to the serving area, feature designs appropriate for breakfast, lunch and dinner in various seating arrangements.
The North Dining Room, for example, has cozy booths and a coffered ceiling. The East Dining Room provides small round tables with seating for six and tall window walls on one side of the restored space provide natural light. The formal West Dining Room features a decorative plaster ceiling with vaulted wood trusses, a large fireplace at the end of the room and tall, gothic windows cut into the walls along the length of the room.
P.E. Facilities
Instead of breaking the mold of physical education facilities, independent schools are making bigger molds.
For example, the expansive new natatorium completed in 2006 at the Hathaway Brown School, an independent school for girls located in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, spans 20,000 square feet.
Windows lining the sides of the high clerestory roof bring in natural light, while minimizing glare on the surface of the water, a problem frequently encountered with indoor pools.
Exposed, white infrastructure systems, along with white tile flooring, help brighten the space. The colonnaded perimeter is punctuated by tall, wide windows that bring in more natural light and form the base of a mansard roof that matches the roofs of other buildings on campus. The space contains so many large windows that the pool often seems like it is outside.

John A. Prokos, FAIA, LEED AP, is principal of Gund Partnership.

A performance space at Westminster School in Connecticut was designed to replicate Shakespeare’s Globe Theater.

Roof Retrofits Can Lead to Financial Benefits
By Chuck Howard

Only a fraction of the 40 billion square feet of roofing annually installed in the United States involves retrofit projects with sloped metal systems. However, replacement and repair continue to account for approximately 75 percent of all roofing work, and industry sources suggest that 30 billion square feet of roofs will be in need of major repairs in 2009.
Most roof retrofit work includes adding slope to an existing flat roof, which can generate a strong return on investment with lower energy costs and little or no maintenance for decades. In most circumstances, a new roof can be installed without having to remove the existing flat roof.
In today’s market, the cost of adding a sloped metal roof system over an existing roof is, in most cases, less than the cost of removing a flat roof and replacing it with built-up roofing or a modified bitumen roof with tapered insulation.
A slope as low as one quarter of an inch per foot is sufficient to satisfy most metal roof warranties and can be achieved by installing light-gauge steel columns in varying lengths. After the columns are installed, steel purlins are positioned between each of the columns and the necessary bracing is installed. A new metal standing seam roof panel system is then placed on top of this sub-framing system. When the job is completed, it’s almost like having a small metal building sitting atop the original roof.
If properly maintained, the exterior surface should last at least 30 years and reflect up to approximately 80 percent of the solar heat that would normally penetrate the building. Adding unfaced fiberglass insulation in the newly created cavity can further increase energy conservation and limit heat transfer to interior spaces.
Environmentally conscious building owners and managers will relish the fact that metal framing systems, roof panels and trim are manufactured from recycled materials and are more than 80 percent recyclable at the end of their life cycles
Old Meets New
Owners who may not be looking to add slope but simply want to replace their existing sloped metal roofs can do so without the expense and hassle of removing the original roof. It’s simply a matter of positioning a light gauge structural member — notched to span over the original roof’s ribs or corrugation — directly over the building’s framing system.
The member is attached to the roof purlins through the bottom flange of the structural member and the existing roof sheet. A new standing seam metal roof is then attached to the new member. The cavity between the old and new roofs can be used to add insulation, which should allow the retrofit process to begin paying for itself quickly through energy savings.
Another reason to consider re-roofing over an existing sloped system is that the existing roof often fails to meet current code requirements for wind uplift. For metal roofs installed on pre-engineered buildings, the standard 5-foot purlin spacing often will not satisfy panel clip spacing requirements in edge and corner conditions in order to meet design loads established in current building codes.
In metal roofs installed over solid metal decks, the panel’s clips are often mispositioned to satisfy uplift loads and panel capacities. Placing the new structural members properly can correct these deficiencies without the need to remove the existing roof.
A metal-over-sloped retrofit also introduces the possibility of utilizing the newly created cavity between the old and new metal roof surfaces to provide convective cooling. By providing a continuous air gap from the eave to a ridge and venting the warmer air, the energy efficiency of the new roof assembly can be improved.
Tests at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated that this natural ventilation can reduce heat flow into the building by up to 30 percent. Above sheathing ventilation costs practically nothing yet yields significant savings.
Other systems can also be added to metal-over-sloped retrofits to reduce energy consumption. One system that works on a similar principle as the above sheathing ventilation is solar thermal heat recovery, which integrates air heating and ventilation collectors into a photovoltaic system. The collectors use air as the heat transfer circulating fluid.
Building owners who install such systems are eligible for federal solar energy tax credits valued at up to 30 percent of the entire roof system, with no dollar limit. When combined with a special accelerated depreciation, the tax credits can pay for more than half of the retrofit improvements.
Another energy saving system that can be integrated into a metal-over-sloped retrofit is solar water heating, which can help to meet the hot water requirements of the building and reduce energy consumption. In fact, solar water heating can be incorporated into a solar thermal heat recovery system. With either of these systems, the new metal roof can easily accommodate the necessary solar energy hardware.
Engineering Improvements
Whether you’re adding slope to an existing flat roof or re-roofing an existing sloped metal roof, a professional engineer should be engaged to perform the necessary structural assessments. Choose someone who is familiar with light-gauge framing and metal roof structural components and testing.
With proper planning, metal-roofing solutions can positively impact sustainability and the bottom line. When taken together, these factors can enable a metal roof to pay for itself quickly and to continue generating a return on investment for the building owner well into the future.
Chuck Howard is a professional engineer and roofing consultant to The Metal Initiative, a coalition of industry stakeholders created to provide information on the use of metal in construction.

The Metal Initiative
www.themetalinitiative.com

A sloped metal roof covers the entrance of the Animal Teaching and Research Center in Logan, Utah.