Responding to a longstanding need to better manage the university's facilities, Tufts created the Department of University Space Management and Planning to oversee the allocation and management of space on all three Tufts campuses.
Lois Stanley joined Tufts last November as the university's first director of university management and planning, overseeing space inventory, near−term space solutions and long−term master planning.
Vice President for Operations Dick Reynolds said the university has needed a separate planning department for quite some time.
"For a university of our size, with seven schools on three different campuses, we needed a way to coordinate planning between the many facets," Reynolds said.
Stanley said most universities of comparable size to Tufts — including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst — have campus planning departments.
"Campus planning is everywhere," Stanley said. "It is actually a surprise that Tufts did not have it."
The nascent planning department consists of the director, Stanley, and Susanne Spano, space planning information system administrator, Stanley said.
Much of the department's work will deal with managing students' and faculty space requests, including designating special areas for student groups, Reynolds said.
"We're constantly getting requests from student groups who need space for something, or we find out that a certain group of students needs additional housing, and we have to find a solution to their problems that makes sense with the space we have," Stanley said.
One of Stanley's first projects last year was the conversion of the Miller Hall basement — formerly the site of the REZquad Café −− to housing for doctoral students studying with The Water Diplomacy Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT).
The Miller Hall basement became living quarters for IGERT students who need needed housing on the Medford−Somerville campus with access to the School of Arts and Sciences, the Fletcher School and the School of Engineering. The eviction of the REZquad Café resulted in the elimination of 24 student jobs.
"We found what we thought was an ideal location for the IGERT students, so dominoes, including the REZquad Café…" Stanley said. "We talked it through with the REZquad folks and [Dean of Student Affairs] Bruce Reitman, and I think we ultimately arrived at a solution that will really support these students."
The first doctoral students started to move into the new space earlier this month. Not all the former space devoted to REZquad was used in the graduate student project, and some of the remaining parts will be used for additional practice spaces for individual students and musical groups, Stanley said.
The planning department will offer a much−needed overall perspective to campus space planning, Stanley said.
"It no longer makes sense for us to plan on a one−off basis," she said. "We need to be keeping the bigger picture in mind."
Stanley plans to improve the online map of Tufts' campus.
"I'd like for us to get a [Geographic Information System]−based mapping system so we can make a map of campus that is more interactive for the students," she said.
The department will also be responsible for filling short−term space vacancies, according to Reynolds. A committee composed of Reynolds, Stanley and Director of Facilities Services Bob Burns will make these decisions.
"The point of the committee is to make sure that when we fill a vacancy on campus we're not just doing so on a one−off basis, that we're considering all the mitigating factors," Reynolds said. "We're trying to look it all in a more holistic fashion."
