Realizing the dream campus: with expert help, adding a facility and dining plan to the institution's overall master plan brings your dream campus one step closer to reality.

The dream campus becomes reality when colleges and universities take the time to integrate, organize and prioritize goals and objectives into a coherent plan.

At least that's the case for institutions that have integrated facilities and dining into a long-range, comprehensive campus vision, according to Baylor University's Rick L. Creel, Assistant Vice President for Operations and Facilities. "There is no initiative more important for us than our major push to be included among the top-tier schools," he says, "because that is consistent with our our mission to educate men and women by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community. That is the underpinning for everything that we do at the facilities level."

That comprehensive approach at Baylor ranges from landscaping to dining. For example, planners have recreated one of the university's residential dining halls to delight students and visitors with its flesh approach. RFoC@Memorial (which stands for Real Food on Campus) boasts all fresh menu offerings and standout food presentation in an upscale, eye-catching environment.

"We worked with ARAMARK's Dining Services team," says Creel, "and we asked them to come up with some plans that would make the most of an old cafeteria-style residential dining hall." He goes on to explain that Baylor has set a specific goal of seeing at least 50 percent of its undergraduates live on campus by 2012, and that decision was at the core of the dining services initiative. The Dining Services group was up to the challenge, says Creel.

"They came up with something that would be comfortable positioned next to The Gap. At RFoC, we've brought quality food out from behind the walls, created the upscale type of dining experience students told us they wanted and spent a lot less than we could have spent by focusing on changing the facades rather than the infrastructure." The ability to deliver the "trendy" dining solution--by revamping the venue's look--was a real plus for Baylor in terms of customer satisfaction and budget considerations.

The dining experience as well as the beauty and maintenance of the campus grounds and buildings is determined by successfully implementing Baylor 2012. The plan is a ten-year vision statement developed to set goals for moving Baylor into the upper echelons of higher education. Plans for creating such a vision statement included broad input from faculty, staff, alumni, students and other members of the Baylor community. The 2012 Vision includes a dozen imperatives necessary to become recognized as a "top-tier" institution. These imperatives range from academic and scholarly initiatives to student life to campus expansion and physical improvements to reaffirmation of faith-based learning, he adds.

Three Centuries of Construction

Washington & Jefferson College is all intimately sized, private liberal arts institution of 1,200 undergraduates, nestled among 52 acres in the rolling hills of southwestern Pennsylvania. Without doubt, the campus terrain and location, coupled with the over two-hundred-year-old history, is a large part of the W&J's appeal to applicants. But enrollment was slated to expand to 1,500 students over the next decade. In order to maintain a 1:13 faculty-student ratio and on-campus housing for 90 percent of the student body, W&J quickly needed a comprehensive solution.

Cohesiveness is key. "We knew it was time for an integrated and comprehensive master plan," says Dr. James Dlugos, Washington & Jefferson's VP for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty. "If before you start campus construction you integrate all your goals and objectives into a coherent plan, you are almost guaranteed to reduce errors along the way. But the biggest benefit is that, at the end, you should have the campus and facilities you once only dreamed about." As always, though, there were challenges.

"There weren't even drawings of all the buildings on campus," says Dlugos, adding that since the oldest structure was built in 1789, that was not so surprising. But administrators were facing other challenges as well: "Our small Pennsylvania campus is land locked, with little opportunity for expansion," he points out. "It's in rolling-landscape country, so you can't see from one end of the campus to the other, so we wanted to preserve green spaces and take advantage of existing structures."

Importance of expert liaison. Based on his prior experience successfully managing W&J's new academic building, Bill Glatts, of ARAMARK Facilities Services (AFS), brought an instrumental perspective to the college's master planning committee. Glatts understood how to structure and manage a capital program that best serves the interests of W&J. This expertise was critical not just for the college's interaction with designers and contractors, but also the maintenance and operations staff.

In the summer of 2000 Glatts became the fourth member of a committee, spearheaded by Dlugos, charged with developing a campus document to guide the physical development of the school for the next l0 years. The group included the VP for Institutional Advancement and VP for Student Affairs.

Representing diverse interests. "We had a big job and while we were a small committee, we did a lot of outreach to the campus and non-campus communities," says Dlugos. "We wanted, and got, the widest-ranging views imaginable; in fact, we went into the process with flexibility as our byword." Within the committee itself, the three college members brought prime-user perspectives, and Glatts brought the facility-management planning component into focus. Dlugos cites Glatts' ability to anticipate the needs of facilities as a strong benefit.

From planning and construction, to management. The lesson learned from the partnership with AFS, says Dlugos, is that when the new and rehabbed buildings are open for service, the school's team will truly understand how they were put together. That will ensure that they know how the facilities are best and most efficiently operated, and importantly, what makes them work as part of a greater whole. "In fact," says Dlugos, "we've contracted with the group to manage all our campus facilities from now on. We're trying to make our growth transition as seamless as possible. So far, so good."