There are few differentiators as impactful as the residential experience for a college or university. During junior year in high school many students and families trade-in beach destinations for college towns during spring vacations. Prospective students are searching for a connection to a college to guide their application decisions. For many, it’s an emotional feeling of what the residential experience will be that is the deciding factor between applying and not applying.

What do colleges do to continue to support this connection to a place and the feeling of belonging in an era of social distancing? That’s what GUND Partnership Principal, Christine Verbitzki, and Kenyon College’s Associate VP and Library Director, Amy Badertscher, explored during their recent SCUP 2020 presentation, Adapting to COVID-19 During a Library Building Project: How Kenyon College is (safely) Maintaining its Residential Experience.

One facility that contributes greatly to the residential experience is the college library. Once a place for quiet study surrounded by books, the academic library does more today. When we asked session participants what they thought encapsulates the importance of the library, they came back with descriptions like Community, Collaboration, Refuge, Resource, Information. These word choices point to the mediation point that libraries have pivoted toward, equal parts research and quiet reflection with equal parts support and collaboration.

To arrive at the right program for Kenyon College’s new library, GUND guided stakeholders through a journey of discovery which included library tours and library conferences, work on a service and organizational strategy, stakeholder engagement sessions to uncover hidden needs and a sustainability workshop with students, faculty, staff and administrators. These efforts resulted in a vision and goals for the new library.

Bring everyone together and make things accessible – with student services scattered across campus, the new library building presented an opportunity to rethink the student success model and co-locate many compatible services such as the Writing Center, Student Accessibility & Support Services, Academic Advising, Registrar and Career Development. This will allow easy referrals and warm hand-offs from service to service to holistically support academic and post-academic student success.

Technology and the classroom experience – students will be immersed in the newest technology with a light broadcast studio, an immersive classroom and a digital commons. These spaces will allow students and faculty to create content and multi-media presentations of research.

Research and study space – no two students work the same. Recognizing this, great care and student involvement went into selecting furniture that works for students in the new space. A variety of environments will contribute to quiet study, work with special collections and collaborative research projects.

Collaborative and flexible work environment – staff was looking at new ways of working and knew in order to be successful they would need a more nibble work environment.

Sustainability – students were so engaged with the sustainability workshop that they inspired Kenyon to make the library a LEED Gold building. Students in the environmental studies program are helping to install an off-site photovoltaic array as part of the project.

In mid-March 2020, when stay-at-home orders were being announced in cities and states on a daily basis, the new Kenyon library was under construction. Conversations on college campuses across the US moved away from differentiating their residential experience to crafting strategies to protect everyone once they return to campus. Kenyon, like most colleges, was trying to work through solutions to limit density and reduce high-contact touchpoints while asking important questions like what happens if our faculty can’t return to work because of child-care or elder-care issues? Will our international students be able to return? How do we move from responsive on-line teaching to more thoughtful, intentional online instruction? And just how many students can we accommodate on campus while meeting CDC guidelines?

During these conversations, especially those focused around distance teaching, the yet-to-be-complete library became a model for instructional inspiration. The library is designed with two sandbox classrooms for faculty to explore new pedagogies and new modalities to deliver content. The spaces became recognized as the perfect set-up for synchronous teaching. The ceiling is designed so that mics and cameras can be hung anywhere, and in multiple places, within the room. This gives faculty the freedom to move around the room and still have their voice and image projected online. Because of the gridded mic system, students in the classroom can be heard by students tuning in remotely so that everyone can participate equally in class discussions. With flexible furniture and multiple screens, it also becomes possible for remote students to participate in small group discussions with in-classroom students.

While the library will not be completed until the spring semester, its design is influencing how other spaces on campus are being adapted to safely maintain the residential experience at Kenyon College, whether a student is experiencing that differentiator in-person or remotely. Plans are in place so that every student will have the opportunity to be on-campus at one point during the academic year and upperclassmen who have been living with a temporary library for their entire Kenyon experience will be the first to experience the new Chalmers Library when it opens its doors this spring.