Over the past few years, led by campus architectural consultants, faculty representatives, and facilities’ administrators, we’ve been engaged in imagining alternative futures for the Georgetown academic facilities.
The planning time horizon for the discussion is long (10-20 years). The work acknowledges that space constraints on the Hilltop campus do not permit innovation at the rate we have experienced in past decades.
Some of this work has addressed new space needs on the Hilltop campus; other work has addressed alternative expansions of our downtown locations.
In one sense, this is a logical evolution of work on the “campus plan,” which addressed key Hilltop issues of future dormitory needs, renovation/replacement of key existing buildings, and integrative approaches to space on the Medical Center and the Main Campus. Academic Master Planning is the rubric for work that also addresses what activities might in the future be located in the downtown area.
One approach to these discussions was to organize the work about goals of the university that have endured over the years – a commitment to academic excellence through a student-centered university, growing the academic program as human knowledge evolves, taking advantage of our DC location to serve the nation and the world, embracing the Jesuit educational heritage, serving our global academic ambitions, and enriching our liberal education tradition.
The group invented different future visions of what activities might be conducted on the Hilltop and what activities might be conducted downtown. One near-term issue was determining a location of the new McCourt School of Public Policy that maximizes the success of its mission as the first Public Policy school created in the 21st century. In that regard, discussions of synergies among McCourt and other schools of Georgetown took place. What location of the school best supports the interdisciplinary nature of a policy school? Will the future have more joint programs among our professional schools (Law, Business, Public Policy, Medicine, Continuing Studies)? What Georgetown educational and research activities are best placed near the government and research institutions in the city? How do we design space to maximize proximity of synergistic activities and minimize the harmful effects of multiple sites on cohesion of the university?
In essence, the group has performed some staff work for colleagues throughout the university. We will have discussions with larger groups of faculty and staff over the coming months, to gain new insights and ideas to guide these alternative visions.
It’s difficult to imagine a future 10 years from now, but failing to do so condemns us to a very constrained set of options. We don’t want this. Instead, we need the good ideas of the entire community to make wise decisions.