In today’s higher-education landscape, meeting admissions goals and improving retention rates are key goals for most colleges. But for historically black colleges and universities, history, students’ backgrounds, cultural nuances, and other factors require some different approaches to student success. Thoughtful campus planning can play an important role in creating environments that promote learning and collaboration.
Many HBCUs suffer from low graduation rates and enroll high numbers of first-generation students. While today’s HBCUs welcome students of all racial backgrounds, fostering deep bonds between faculty members and students remains an institutional priority. That’s why creating a “third place” that is neither home (dormitory or apartment) nor work (classrooms or libraries) — a place that encourages responsiveness and offers opportunities for academic and social networking — is especially important for historically black colleges.
Often, these third places — including some designed by Lord Aeck Sargent, the architecture firm where I work — might take the form of green spaces, common areas, or dining halls. Such locations foster opportunities for community building and encourage shareable moments that can become lifelong memories for students. At HBCUs, third places are designed through the lens of connection — a major reason that students choose to attend an HBCU. They are provided the opportunity to identify with their roots and interact with others who share similar cultural backgrounds.
As part of an expansion plan, Morehouse School of Medicine, in Atlanta, wanted a building that would not only provide classroom space but also offer gathering places that engaged students to relax and network. Our firm’s solution was the Billye Suber Aaron Pavilion, an open and inviting third place situated between two of the school’s primary academic buildings. (It is named for Billye Aaron, a philanthropist and former television host who, with her husband, the baseball legend Hank Aaron, helped support the project.) The facility includes meeting rooms, informal gathering spaces, and a rooftop terrace designed to provide a connective and collaborative reprieve for students and faculty and staff members. With plenty of natural light and a glass facade, the pavilion is the most visible building on the Morehouse campus, which encourages students to spontaneously enjoy the space.
Our firm also recently completed a renovation of Howard University’s Plaza Towers, located just two blocks from the historic campus “yard,” a central gathering space. The complex offers a mixture of individual and group study spaces, formal and informal community spaces, and active-learning classrooms that feature interactive technology. It also houses faculty residential units on the ground floor.
Often, students attend a historically black college because they are treated like family by the faculty and administration, whereas they might feel more like welcomed guests at a mainstream institution. For many minority students, the era of segregation still casts a shadow. On HBCU campuses, they know that third places belong to them.
Historically black colleges often have limited resources and smaller staffs than publicly funded or larger universities do, so architects working with HBCUs must produce designs that are responsive and multifunctional. Responsive design requires careful listening to the needs and desires of all stakeholders, including administrators, students, and other community members, in the early stages of any new facility.
When planning its Center for Natural Sciences, Mathematics and Nursing, which opened last year, Bowie State University expressed a need for flexibility and sustainability. To achieve those goals, the architecture firm Perkins + Will designed a building with flexible classrooms that included movable walls and furnishings to support interactive and collaborative learning. The building’s 25,000 square feet of dynamic glazed windows, which tint on demand, help lower energy usage and provide science on display through unobstructed access to outdoor views and natural daylight. Making the research and teaching spaces more visible to others outside of the laboratories encourages an open and curious culture that invites dialogue and the exchange of ideas.
This special report examines how colleges’ buildings, grounds, classrooms, and public areas help them do their jobs better (or, in some cases, hinder them).
Flexibility is an inherent advantage of exterior, multiuse third places where people go to see and be seen. On HBCU campuses, such outdoor spaces become extensions of fraternity and sorority social spaces, used for recruitment or festivals, step shows, and other events where students gather. The space becomes a casual stage for planned — or often impromptu — performances.
Interior third places evolve into homes away from home where students feel comfortable learning with others. Often these spaces are equipped with communal amenities (such as “smart boards”) that aren’t typically found where HBCU students live, promoting a sense of stewardship.
In the modern job market, most companies seek to hire new graduates who work well with others, resulting in increasing pressure for colleges to provide collaborative experiences. True collaboration, however, is not limited to the classroom. Buildings can be designed to serve as a catalyst for interaction, inside and outside the classroom. At Texas Southern University, the University Towers residence hall opened in 2016 to help unify that HBCU’s campus and promote a sense of community within its urban Houston setting. Our firm designed a ground-level dining hall and outdoor courtyard and plaza to establish a sense of place that connects the new facility to the network of gathering spaces around it.
Because many HBCU students are first generation and may not have had family members who understand the college experience, it is critical that they have access to spaces, amenities, and even favorite foods that can help them feel at home.
As important as it is to design a beautiful building, it is even more important to design enduring environments that enrich users’ lives by providing challenge, learning, and growth. When working with an HBCU in particular, it is essential that the architect builds trust. It all comes back to the well-known saying, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” It takes careful collaboration and a demonstrated commitment to meet an institution’s needs. Architects can start by successfully completing small projects and fulfilling promises related to budgeting, timeline, and goal setting. That kind of service builds trust and leads to long-lasting relationships for future campus projects.
Warren Williams is a principal at the architectural firm Lord Aeck Sargent and director of the firm’s Washington office.
