How would faculty members on your campus feel about sharing office space?

A university architect came to lunch yesterday and said that professors' offices are a contentious issue at her institution right now. Faculty members are complaining that the state-mandated standard, 120 square feet, isn't big enough. Meanwhile there's a severe space crunch on the campus, she said, and classrooms are in use from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

That led me to wonder whether every faculty member really needs an office. No doubt some professors use their offices a lot, but others are probably behind their desks only a few hours a week, preferring to work at home when they can. On a big campus, if even a quarter of faculty members agreed to some sort of office-sharing arrangement, that could free up a lot of space—a building's worth, or maybe two.

The architect protested that offices are status symbols for faculty...

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Ashley Thorne, of the National Association of Scholars, wrote me recently to say that she had quoted one of my recent articles in her latest salvo against sustainability in higher education. Her piece—as I read it, anyway—tries to dissect the role of ethics in sustainability: Is higher education engaging sustainability because it's an inherently virtuous thing to do, or because it's in our best interest, or what?

I'll leave it to others to grapple with her arguments about the social component of sustainability and the motivations behind sustainability programs. But I should correct her misinterpretation—or misrepresentation—of my article.

Ms. Thorne bemoans the notion that (in her view) people pursue sustainability for amorphous "virtuous" reasons, and not for more-measurable reasons, like saving money on electric bills. Then she alludes to a blog item I wrote about a roundtable...

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By the time David Alexander became one of my favorite college presidents, in the early 1990s, he was already Pomona College's president emeritus. He and his wife, Catharine, had bought themselves a place right by the campus, a lovely but largely overlooked cottage by the famous Arts and Crafts architects Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene.

I wangled an invitation for cocktails, partly because I wanted to see the house, which had become something of an obsession for the Alexanders, and partly because I remembered from a couple of previous meetings that Mr. Alexander was endlessly entertaining. He did not disappoint, happily showing off details of the 1903 house, gleefully telling story after story about Pomona and about higher education in general, and making me feel as though we had been the best of friends for decades.

Mr. Alexander, who died Monday at age 77, was president...

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A three-building mixed-use facility at Rutgers U. will have 1,500 beds. (Design Collective image)

Rutgers University plans to break ground this fall for a 1,500-bed, $140-million mixed-use development on its Livingston campus. The three-building, 648,000-square-foot project will feature apartment-style housing mixed with ground-floor retail.

Most of the units will have four single bedrooms, plus a living room and a kitchen. But about 200 beds will be in two-bedroom apartments intended for graduate students. The undergraduate facilities will have study lounges and classrooms as well.

Two of the buildings will have landscaped courtyards meant for both studying and socializing. The third will open onto a large retail plaza. Architects for the project are Fletcher Thompson, the architect of record, and the Design Collective, the design architect.

Darton College, Albany, Ga.

Building Type: Administrative

Construction Type: New

Cost: $5.9-million

Square Footage: 32,500

Architect: Flynn Finderup Architects

Contractor: Jones Construction

Opened: 2008

The college replaced its old administration building with a facility housing a one-stop student-services area, as well as top college administrators and support-staff members. Sited on one of several campus axes, the building features a three-story lobby atrium as well as sweeping canopies distinguishing its entrances. The first floor contains services most frequently accessed by visitors and students, while administrators occupy the second and third floors.

(Photos: Flynn Finderup Architects)

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