At Mississippi State University we are of the philosophy that the appearance of the campus is one of its strongest recruiting tools. However, the campus is a relative newcomer to this idea. Only in the 1960's did our high administration make a commitment to make campus appearance a priority. Up until that time, very limited resources, financial and otherwise, were committed to improving the visual quality of our campus. Even the quadrangle in the Central Campus, called the Drill Field (the school started as a military/land-grant school in 1878) was mowed only occassionally.
By 1970, our President had all he could take and set about to put together a top quality landscape management team. Financial resources were made available to secure highly qualified persons and equipment to manage campus grounds. Within a period of just a few years (1970 to 1975) the campus won several national awards for turf management of the general campus as well as varsity and athletic turf. However, the campus still had virtually no designed outdoor spaces for campus users to enjoy.
Campus buildings had developed over time with very little attention or budgets devoted to developing their sites. Typically, meager funds were available for even basic "landscaping" as new buildings were funded and built. The result was a physical campus environment that was very austere and resembled a prison complex. The campus was not a very inviting place to walk and "discover" on foot. Except for having a most welcoming green carpet of well-cared-for turf and numerous very large shade trees, there was very little else to enjoy out-of-doors.
We soon began to hear requests from various members of the campus community to have designed outdoor spaces for the use and enjoyment of all campus users. Realizing that any outdoor space enhancements would have to be funded by monies not from the original budget, we began looking for other funding sources. That meant that we would have to find funding from self-generated or private sources both inside and outside the university community.
We had lobbied for several years to anyone who would listen that our extensive outdoor spaces should be designed and developed to tie our diverse architecture together. As with many college university campuses, Mississippi State had grown over the years with no theme for using the building architectural design style to tie the place together. Consequently, we have buildings with some personality to no personality whatsoever. We have always contended that the only common denominator to our diverse architecture was the outdoor space that connects all of these buildings together. We further contend that with the appropriate design of these outdoor spaces, this should be the unifying entity.
To begin moving and developing a concept for designing our outdoor spaces to present a unified appearance we had (and continue to have) another major obstacle- an all-but-complete lack of a history of campus planning. Because of this lack of a campus plan, let alone a way to fund and implement one, we have few overall goals for the way we wish our campus to physically develop. We continue to be plagued by this problem but have been successful with many campus design projects, nevertheless. The sources for our campus improvements have come from the following entities: The Dept. of Housing; the Student Governing Association; the Dept. of Intercollegiate Athletes; the Div. of Cont. Education; and others.
Beginning in 1979, the first campus project in our campaign for campus improvement was for the Department of Housing. They were losing the recruiting battle to off-campus housing. In addition to upgrading residnece hall rooms, they funded major site developments at a number (to date six are finished) of residence halls and most are married student housing units. All of these projects feature plazas with extensive seating, gathering paved spaces, and lush plantings of ornamentals, annual flowers, and turf. Most of the residence hall projects feature some type of shade producing-structures, from glass roofs to fabric awning arbor systems to help counter our hot and humid summers. The residence halls that have been completed continue to remain the highest in occupancy rate, its obvious benefits revealed on the bottom line of Housing's income sheet.
The Student Governing Association, in a most unique move, has funded two outdoor projets whose combined construction costs were close to $450,000. By voting onto their tuition a two dollar per semester surcharge, the students have funded a "Student Gathering Park" in the center of the campus, and an amphitheater which can seat thirteen thousand persons for paid concerts they bring to campus several times a year, as well as for pep rallies, private student and staff organization functions.
Even small, private organizations on campus have funded what we market as "mini-parks." We try to keep the costs of such projects to a $15,000 - $20,000 price range in the hope of making them affordable to a larger segment of campus organizations and other potential funding sources. To date, four such projects are either finished or underway. In addition, private gifts from alumni have enabled us to design and construct nearly three hundred thousand dollars worth of site improvements at our Chapel of Memories and Alumni Center.
We continue to find that the more outdoor space improvements we make on the campus the more are demanded by the campus community. There is no doubt in our minds, based upon our experience on our campus over the past fifteen years that campus appearance is indeed one of the strongest recruiting tools of the institution. Further, we have found that "recruiting" can express itself in many different ways. Our experience has shown us that all persons involved with the campus take great pride in the place and want to do what they can to help make it better. No small part of the phenomena is how appropriately designed campus spaces make campus users just plain "feel better: about interacting with the place on a daily basis.
It is our philosophy that if the campus design echoes and reinforces what the students are here for to begin with as they pursue the higher meanings, possibilities, and opportunities in life that their learning experience will be even further enhanced by being in a total physical environment that pursues the same goals and aspirations. LASN