Summer 2007 -- Vol. 60, No. 3

Building for the Future

Demolition began this summer on the small homes and duplexes on your right as you enter campus on Hwy. 93, just before you reach the President’s Home on your left.

Like the “prefabs” and “Tin Cans” before it, Douthit Hills was a remnant of a bygone era, the post-WWII building boom.

That was a period of great change at Clemson. So, too, is our era — the early 21st century.

At our final faculty meeting in May and at Alumni Reunion Weekend in June, I discussed how Clemson is making a much-needed and long-overdue investment in physical and technological infrastructure for the core campus that is of a magnitude not seen since the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

We expect to build, break ground or begin planning and design work on facilities and infrastructure projects totaling at least $225 million between now and 2010.

Our priorities will be to:

• add and enhance classroom and academic space
• increase research capacity
• provide support systems for students, faculty and staff to reach their goals
• improve environmental sustainability and conserve energy
• create an information technology backbone that makes us compatible with peers we’re aspiring for — America’s top-20 public universities.

A renovation and expansion of Rhodes Engineering Research Center near Cooper Library will get under way this fall. We also expect to break ground this fall on a new Sonoco Packaging Design and Graphics Institute, which will be located behind the Fluor Daniel Engineering Innovation Building.

We have advertised for architectural services for a major life sciences facility to go behind the Poole Agricultural Center. And we are developing funding strategies and business plans for a new chemistry building, a nanotechnology/engineering building, renovations to Long and Lee halls, and a visual arts center.

Though classroom and research space are our highest priorities, planned facilities such as a stand-alone Academic Success Center and a new on-campus IT facility will free up space in the library and improve support services to students, faculty and researchers.

A major new initiative will replace the old University Union, Harcombe and the last section of Johnstone with a vital student engagement complex encompassing housing, dining, a new post office and green space. It will complement the beauty of the renovated Greek Quad and the new dorms that replaced Johnstone.

The “P word” — parking — is never far from a university president’s lips when discussing new facilities. Plans for Clemson’s first enclosed parking deck have started moving through the state approval process. One location under consideration is near the Hendrix Student Center.

Our core campus redevelopment, however, is about more than bricks, mortar and parking spaces. We will make substantial behind-the-scenes upgrades to rebuild our campus computing network and add support for high-performance computing. By fall, we should have made initial connections to the national computer network, the National LambdaRail, and we are leading the effort within South Carolina to connect universities and medical research centers to each other and the national network.

There are also important decisions being made about how we will do business. For example, we require that all new buildings be designed to meet a minimum of LEED Silver certification. These green building standards are a measure of energy efficiency and environmental sustainability.

We are also doing a total reassessment of campus safety, emergency preparedness and communications systems in the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. When we talk about technology infrastructure needs, communications technology upgrades clearly are included.

Significant investments will be needed for all of these priorities. We will make them by leveraging existing or appropriated state funds, institutional bond capacity, auxiliary revenues and private gifts. In some cases, funds have been secured; in others, funding plans are in development along with project plans.

These investments are needed for Clemson to reach its true potential.

In the 1960s, Clemson was becoming a new kind of university. We had moved from being an all-white, all-male military school with a fairly narrow academic focus to a doctoral-granting university whose arms were open to a huge new wave of students previously denied the opportunity to join the Clemson family.

Today, we are once again building a new kind of university, one committed to maintaining a “right-sized” student body to enhance undergraduate learning while, at the same time, growing and building research programs in specific areas that are critical to South Carolina’s economic future.

This new kind of university will require new facilities and new technology, and a new commitment to building for the future.