Planned Serendipity

This is my response to Ken's point number 4 - regarding offices.

The issue of scattered offices has been much talked about because of the “decanting” that is about to occur as we open the new Campus Center. With the new building housing departments that were previously spread out over the main spine there will be considerable space opening up. As such, the immediate question is how should this be filled and on the basis of what set of principles. Should we make it convenient for students and have all school offices together? Should we make each school coherent so that faculty members are clustered around their school office – with each school having its own wing? Or should we do things in a more haphazard fashion, more in line with how they were organized in the past?

Each of these plans has been considered, and certainly the first two have been rejected in part because they don’t fit with the college’s historical use of space. What represents convenience from the perspective of the student is something that is hard to determine, so the idea of using this as an organizing principle is perhaps of limited utility. One-stop shopping was strong in the 1990s, and this idea largely shapes the thinking behind the Campus Center, but using it throughout the college (i.e., beyond the Center) might be going to unnecessary extremes – unnecessary because students gather information on the computer and do much of the work they need to do on-line. Having all the school offices together might only lead to considerable congestion and frustration as everyone would be “living” and working on top of each other.

Making each school a coherent space with its own wing has numerous problems, one of which is that it goes against the founding ethos described by Ken in his piece. We do lose something when we divide into silos based upon disciplines or a cluster thereof. Stockton through its curriculum and through its interaction of people from different academic locales is a place where serendipity exists more, I believe, than elsewhere. This has been my experience at any rate.

But the original planners did not believe things would be simply haphazard – they thought that there would be possibilities for development in accordance with changing pedagogical needs, or changes occurring in the curriculum. There are reasons to put PSYC labs together, just as there are reasons to put art studios next to each other, and music practice rooms in the same area. So, as the decanting occurs, there will be some organization of the space that allows the space to be used in ways that are functional to different programs or schools. However, there will be limits to this, and the limits will be determined as much as anything by the power of property. Faculty are spread all over the main building; they are comfortable where they are (in most instances); they will not be willing to give up their spaces at the command of an administration that wants to rationalize the use of its space.

Once bureaucracies get established they don’t disappear; once space gets claimed, the manner in which it has been parceled out will be hard to change. This is a good thing.