Columbia University Center for Student Advising by Stephen Yablon Architect

Article source: Stephen Yablon Architect

An Innovative 21st Century Student Advising Center at Columbia University

In 2007, Columbia University fundamentally redesigned their student advising philosophy and approach to enhance the overall undergraduate experience. Like many other American colleges and universities in the last 20 years, the existing faculty-centric advising system was viewed as unresponsive to the needs of the rapidly diversifying student body and the student life, financial, and post graduate planning issues students face in the 21st century.

Image Courtesy Michael Moran

• Architects: Stephen Yablon Architect
• Project: Columbia University Center for Student Advising
• Location: New York

Image Courtesy Michael Moran

Columbia College and the Fu School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University determined that undergraduates would be better served by professional advisers and counselors, enabling faculty to focus primarily on academic advising. As part of this plan, it was decided that the Columbia’s various non-academic advising departments would be brought together into one department. These advising services – which include educational, extracurricular and community programs, student aid counseling, and pre-professional advising – were previously dispersed administratively and physically throughout the large campus. The vision for the new Center for Student Advising was to make advising services much more accessible to students and foster greater informal collaboration among the interdisciplinary advising staff.

Image Courtesy Michael Moran

Columbia recognized that the location and architectural design of the Center for Student Advising would be critical to its success. They wanted a facility that would enable them to bring all of advising departments together in one centrally located student-oriented space. The Dean of Columbia College and the new Dean of Advising specified that the Center should be highly welcoming to students, expressive of Columbia University’s past and future identity and, its concern for the college experience of each student. Two floors in Bernard Tschumi’s Alfred Lerner Hall Student Center, at the heart of the campus, were selected for the Center for Student Advising and Stephen Yablon Architect was selected to create the design.

Image Courtesy Michael Moran

The primary design challenge was how to create a place, consisting primarily of many small advising offices with privacy and confidentiality requirements, that would be welcoming throughout, address the Deans’ requirements, and avoid feeling disorienting and claustrophobic. SYA’s solution was to create an interior “campus” organized around public spaces located near natural light that would welcome students encourage casual encounters with their advisors and other students, and promote interdisciplinary staff collaboration.

Image Courtesy Michael Moran

A pattern based on the paving in front of Low Library, the iconic center of the University, was used on the floors, walls, and ceilings of the “public” spaces to symbolize the department’s mission to guide students through their years at Columbia. On the walls and ceilings, this pattern is composed of perforated metal laminated to reflective stainless steel, literally reflecting students into the pattern. Natural light is brought deep into the floor by these reflective walls which evoke the past and future of the University in one gesture. Back lit signage, using names selected by the students of favorite places on campus, identify each public space and aid in student orientation. Angled counseling offices, faced with a “cloud” of frosted glass, create private and nurturing spaces while providing a sense of openness in a very dense layout.

Diagram

The $3.5M Center for Student Advising opened at the start of the 2010 academic year. Post occupancy data shows that the new Center has resulted in an increase in the number of students coming to advisers for one-on-one and group conversations and in attendance at the over 250 programs run by the Center every year. Ninety-five percent of students agreed that the new Center is a comfortable place to hold advising conversations.

Although many higher education institutions throughout the United States have recognized the importance of a implementing new, holistic advising systems for enhancing the overall college experience, few, if any, have created a facility that is designed specifically to support this new approach. Deans of Advising from throughout the country view the new Center for Student Advising at Columbia as a model for the future.

Tags: New York

Category: University Building

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