Wesleyan Community Invited to Explore the Future of Campus

Beginning this month, Wesleyan will solicit input from all faculty, staff and students about how they use the physical spaces on campus, and how campus should be optimized in the future.

Wesleyan has engaged Sasaki Associates to assist with this semester-long exploration of campus’ evolution over the next 10 to 15 years. The end result will be a digital report containing a framework and principles with which to create a new master plan. The report will be shared with the campus community and presented to the Board of Trustees in May.

“Wesleyan takes pride in the distinctive residential learning experience it offers,” said President Michael Roth, “and we want to explore how campus should evolve to best support scholarship, creative practice and teaching.”

The process will kick off with a meeting of Sasaki and the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) on Jan. 25. Over the days that follow, Sasaki will conduct individual meetings with a number of staff and faculty. And throughout Sasaki will work closely with the Facilities Planning Committee, expanded for this purpose to include students as well as administrators and faculty.

All members of the campus community will be invited to complete an online MyCampus survey about how they use the spaces on campus. Participants will be asked about where they like to study, eat, live, relax, and engage in recreation on campus. They’ll be asked about their favorite, and least favorite, spots on campus, as well as areas with which they are unfamiliar. That survey and a project website will be launched next week.

On Feb. 26 there will be a lunchtime session for 100 faculty, staff and students to think speculatively about Wesleyan’s culture of learning, its future, and its intersection with the physical campus. An invitation will go out next month.

Wesleyan last undertook a campus master planning project in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Among the notable results of that process was the construction of the Usdan University Center.