brightspot strategy, which earlier this year released a survey of college student attitudes and attentions related to Covid-19, this week also released details of their strategic planning and conversations with more than three dozen colleges.
brightspot is the consultancy that, “works with colleges to transform their student experience by better connecting their people, places and programs,” according to their announcement release. In it, leaders said they’d been in dialogue with 38 top colleges and universities, both public and private, related to planning for and dealing with campus realities in the upcoming fall term.
In particular, the release highlighted the dynamic of three groups – campus school architects and facility designers, library leaders, and student affairs leaders. And with it, brightspot released a comprehensive set of collective findings and best practices.
On libraries, for example, the brightspot release says those learning leaders:
“… highlighted a need for identifying the broader network of study spaces across the campus and coordinating student activities across the entire institution. As examples, library leaders at Clemson, University of Rochester and North Carolina State have enacted innovative plans for social distancing, space configurations, check points, limiting touch points, and new training for staff.”
Campus Architects and Planners, the release said, “were concerned about the potential to both overreact and underreact regarding long term projects and more immediate retrofitting.”
Student affairs leaders, the announcement said, feel, “caught in the middle” between the interconnectivity of their roles and that many plans and actions are being made outside their reach. Decisions related to dorms, campus events and school schools, as examples, all impact student services but are typically made by other campus and school leaders.
Further, brightspot says that most all campus leaders share views and experiences related to adapting spaces for social distancing, finding new norms for the new normal and “leveraging the response to make more long-standing institutional changes.”
Elliot Felix, founder and CEO of brightspot strategy, said in the release, “This fall universities will be tested to see if they can reopen amidst the greatest pandemic in a century and we are finding that the power of the network effect – coalescing campus leaders together – is helping them develop planning and incorporate new ideas into their existing reopening plans.”
