The scale model of the future UNL City campus, as seen by 1932 planners.
Cohesiveness campus goal
Current proposals must survive intense scrutiny
BY ALAN PHELPS/'STAFF REPORTER
Looking across the grounds of the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
from a window on the eighth
floor of Hamilton Hall, one might pon
der a question:
How did this happen?
“If you look at the City Campus, it s
quite clear there’s never been an over
riding set of guidelines,” said John
Benson, director of Institutional Re
search Planning and Fiscal Analysis.
Although planning at UNL these
days is a long process in which each
proposal has to fight its way through a
myriad of committees, faculty mem
bers and administrators, that hasn’t
always been the case.
In the 1960s and early ’70s, the
university experienced a period of
rapid growth that required fast action.
“Basically, the director of physical
plant, chief business officer and chan
cellor were probably the people who
made the decisions,” said Ray Coffey,
UNL manager of business and fi
nance. “They had increased enroll
ment and appropriations to get build
ings built, and tney did it.”
In those hectic days of physical plan
ning, most of the decisions were made
by top administrators, perhaps in con
sultation with department heads.
“I can remember a meeting of a
chancellor making a statement and
just like that the project changed,”
Coffey said. “Buildings wound up de
signed without reflecting all require
ments needed.”
Coffey said enrollment began grow
ing so fast that administrators just
wanted to build while money was
available. Emphasis was placed on
creating space for students rather
than on identifying what the academic
programs needed.
Buildings put up during this rushed
period of the late ’60s and early 70s
include Oldfather Hall, Hamilton Hall,
the Sheldon Art Gallery, Love Library
North and Harper-Schramm-Smith,
Abel-Sandoz and Cather-Pound resi
dence halls.
Coffey said that beginning in the
mid-’70s, projects began to be scruti
nized by a broad group.
“Now things are looked at more
closely. The planning process has been
refined and extended. Projects get a
more complete and comprehensive
review at all levels,” Coffey said. “In
the past decade, we’ve done a pretty
good job of defining programs. As
money has become tighter, we’ve be
come more efficient in defining the
needs of the program to go into the
facility.”
Projects first are proposed at the
department level. From there,
several entities, including the
Central Planning Committee, the
Academic Planning Committee and
Institutional Research Planning and
Fiscal Analysis, get a chance to debate
what is needed before the proposal
reaches the NU Board of Regents and
the Nebraska Legislature.
Benson said today’s Central Plan
ning Committee is an internal group
that includes him, Coffey, the univer
sity architect, representatives of Cam
pus Landscape Services and Facilities
Management and the Lincoln archi
tecture firm Clark Enersen Partners.
This team meets with the chancellor
and other administrators regularly,
Benson said, and tries to keep in touch
with many representative people, such
as the six neighborhood committees
from areas sun lunding the university
and UNL’s transportation and park
ing consultant.
Benson said physical planning by
the committee is highly dependent on
academic planning. One of the univer
sity’s current academic goals is to pro
vide “excellent instruction and oppor
tunity for students,” he said.
“In order to do that, we need good
spaces in which to teach,” Benson said.
“So we look at teaching facilities now
and how they need to be modified or
what we need to add as far as teaching
space is concerned.”
Coffey said that because addi
tional people have entered into
the decision-making process, it
is possible to pay more consideration to
many details in proposed buildings.
For example, today’s structures are
built with added attention to fire safety
and other government regulations, he
said.
“Twenty or 25 years ago (govern
ment regulation) wasn’t as important.
Now, all plans get reviewed before a
shovel hits the ground,’’ Coffey said.
Other planning trends Coffey iden
tified are the growing considerations
for service requirements, such as bet
ter docking facilities, and energy-sav
ing measures such as extra insulation
and double-glass windows.
Benson said that over the last 50
years, campuses have been moving
away from classical design traditions.
“Man> campuses (in the past) were
formally structured and architecture
and spaces were very classical exter
nally and internally,” he said. “That
approach is still valid; it can produce
some impressive views. But (in many
campuses today), we see a rnucii more
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