Insights


Returning Safely: Healthy Campuses During COVID

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When Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) was preparing to bring students back to campus for a hybrid form of instruction earlier this fall, their overriding concern was to provide a safe, healthy experience for every member of their community.

In order to help make this happen, CMU’s office of Campus Design and Facility Development (CDFD) worked with a couple of trusted consultants, including GBBN, to develop a strategy. CMU Director of Design & Construction, Jennifer McDowell and GBBN Associate Principal Amanda Markovic recently discussed this process at a “Coffee Chat” hosted by the Society of College and University Planners (SCUP).

How do you provide a safe and healthy on campus experience in the midst of a pandemic?

Here are some takeaways:

  • Know your space. If in-person instruction is a priority for your institution, it’s important to de-densify the classrooms to provide students and faculty with the 6-10’ of space they need to minimize the risk of transmission. At CMU, this meant reducing the capacity of classrooms to 30-50% of their original capacity, depending on their configuration and typical use. In order to make up for some of the lost capacity, CDFD worked with its consultants to compile a centralized understanding of the 700 instructional and 200 departmental spaces that exist across campus, enabling the registrar to begin scheduling less typical classroom spaces.
  • Make a new map. During a pandemic, providing a healthy campus means guarding against transmission. After developing a centralized understanding of the spaces available for instruction, CMU was able to develop temporary occupancy limits and safe layouts for each.
  • Build Community. College is more than what happens in the classroom. Hybrid instruction or not, no one wants students to lead an isolated, dorm-bound existence between classes. To tackle this, GBBN worked with CDFD to determine how the university could provide safe, healthy public spaces that make it easier for students to build community and a sense of belonging. Drawing on our Common Space research, we advised CMU to create spaces that cultivate zones of recognition: those public spaces that enable people to build a rapport (the first step towards forming relationships), by occupying spaces within 6-8’ of each other.

Curious to know more? If you’re a SCUP member, you can see a recording of the discussion here. Otherwise, you can view their slides here.

Want to know more about Amanda? Checkout her work on renovation of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh East Liberty, including their nationally-recognized Teen Hive, or her work on the renovation of Carnegie Mellon University’s Sorrells Library.

You can also read about her work championing Blueprint for Better Pittsburgh.