Betsy Craco: Yeah, I, I guess I would riff off of my colleagues here and really talk about loneliness, , which is one of our primary targets. We measure loneliness. And we’re, , you know, Vivec Murphy talks about, Murphy talks about that as the, , you know, social, uh, public health pandemic or crisis of our time.

And, and how does design kind of drive that, this idea that spaces are becoming more and more atomized. And, and I, I read something, I think it was in The Atlantic. I’ll, I’ll find the link, uh, about how, , apartment spaces and private spaces keep getting larger and public spaces keep getting smaller when folks are like designing apartment complex, things like that.

And so, . As we think about designing residence halls, I think it’s important to think about what has to happen in a public space and what’s in a private space, and even from sort of a nervous system perspective and a mental health perspective, which is more my arena. You know, does it make sense to put all these study spaces in the bedroom, right?

Keith Edwards: Hello and welcome to Student Affairs. Now I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Psychologists Higher Education Scholars and others have long known about the impact on the environment, on people, behavior and learning. Yet the environment often remains an afterthought in designing student learning and success.

Today’s guests have been focusing on the impact of the environment on students in many different ways. I’m excited to have this conversation and learn from you all. Student Affairs now is the premier podcast and online learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs.

We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. Find details about this episode, or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Folio designs and manufactures furniture specifically for residence halls and high use student housing with more than 10,000 completed residence hall projects and 35 years of experience.

They’re one of the most trusted names in the space, and we’re happy to have one of the Folio folks here with us for this conversation. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards. My pronouns are he, him, his. I’m a speaker, author, and coach, and I work to empower higher education leadership for better tomorrows for us all. You can find out more about me@keithedwards.com. And I’m recording this from my home in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the current and ancestral homelands of both the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. Thank you to our guests. Welcome to everyone who’s being here.

We got Betsy, Stefan and Elliot. Let’s begin with just an introduction. Betsy. Let’s start off with you.

Betsy Craco: Great. Thank you for having me and I’m excited for this conversation. My name is Betsy Crock and I serve as the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Campus Life and Wellbeing at UMass Amherst.

And so that collaborative is constituted by recreation and wellbeing residential life. So we have over 15,000 students living in residence the Center for Counseling and Psychological Health, our folks who are doing substance misuse prevention and wellbeing strategy. I come to the work as a psychologist and someone who has spent her whole career.

Really sitting across from students in individual therapy and doing the collegiate mental health work. And about seven years ago had this opportunity at UMass to really dive into and lead in a space that had a broader view, a more holistic view of wellbeing a mind body approach among other things.

So I’m excited for this, obviously. Space is part of what we think about when we’re thinking about residential life and recreation and all of those things. And really my interest in some ways is ancestral around this topic. I come from a long line of design builders stone carvers who immigrated here from Italy.

And so my whole life people have been paying attention to the built environment. So thank you for having me.

Keith Edwards: Yeah, very cool. Very cool. Thank you for being here. And I, some of that I didn’t even know. All right. This is great. And we have Stefan Il. Who is with Folio and has been doing that work for a long time.

As we heard in the introduction. Stefan, tell us a little bit more about you.

Stephane Belisle: Yeah I’ve been with Folio from the late nineties quite a while. Graduated at in literature and linguistics at McGill University and then ended up in furniture and furniture.

Mr. Folio had his company doing residence Hall Furniture, so I’ve been since the very beginning. The DNA of Folio is student housing residence hall furniture. So from early on in my career, remember my first Aku OI in 2000 and so I’ve been to, 25 30 Ys naspa, A CPA have really enjoyed the, the voyage of working with higher ed professionals.

So my job is to promote folio Furniture, but also to make sure of the customer satisfaction so we we work in student residence also. Safety has to be nice, has to be sustainable. We’ve done over a million rooms over the past 30 years. Also, we tackle lounge spaces, common area spaces.

We’ve done over, thousands of common area spaces. So that’s really my specialty. I also supervise the design. So a lot of the designs comes from actually feedback from the professionals and also from students. So that, so my job really, I’m on the road almost every week, so I’ve seen the, I’ve seen all types of of spaces for sure in the room and in the common spaces.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. And not only have you seen these spaces, you’ve been having these conversations over, as you mentioned, 30 years and we’ll maybe get to how some of those have shifted and changed both with the staff and the leadership, but also with students. And we have Elliot, Felix, PAC Elliot’s, the author of the Connected College and a whole bunch of other stuff.

But Elliot, tell us about what you’re bringing to this conversation about an environment.

Elliot Felix: It’s good to be back and I’m looking forward to learning from my fellow panelists, Betsy and Stefan. I think we’re gonna have a great conversation. I’m a student success author, speaker, and consultant.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with more than a hundred colleges, universities, helping them redesign what they offer, how they operate, the way they’re organized to enable student success. And I’ve been lucky enough to help more than a million students in the process. My own background. I joke among friends that I’m a recovered architect.

I started off in architecture and I realized I could do more good on the front end, not so much solving a problem as doing the research, talking to people, engaging with folks to define the problem to be solved. And and in doing that work over the last 25 years, one thing I realized is how. The built environment impacts student success, but how many components there are that are related.

So what I do often is, how do we reinvent our library for the next generation? And you can’t really reinvent a library by changing the spaces alone. You also have to think about first, who are the students and how are, what are their needs and how are they changing? And then what sorts of spaces do we need and what sorts of services will we offer in those spaces?

Writing, tutoring, advising data, media, labs, maker spaces, and then how are we gonna staff those services? And what systems are we gonna use and what’s the strategy that guides it? And so that’s really what I enjoy doing is taking that. Holistic approach to making people’s experiences better by understanding them and the people, the programs, and the places together.

Keith Edwards: Yeah, I always love hearing you speak. I can see the architect always there. Sometimes thinking about the actual built space, but often thinking about the experience. How do we architect the experience and what do we need to think about? So I’m really excited about this. This whole conversation is Betsy’s fault.

Betsy and I were having a conversation about the conversation Betsy was having on campus about the impact of the environment and all the things that we don’t consider that we start need to start considering. And once you start opening that box, it starts to become, and this and this. And what about this and what about this?

And it can. Be a little bit overwhelming. As we were having that conversation, I immediately thought about Elliot and his architecture experience and all the ways that he thinks about this, which I think is just such a gift to higher ed. You bring such a. Such a thing that’s valuable to higher ed, but it’s from a really different perspective than most of us bring into it.

And then the opportunity to talk with Stefan about a very, again, very different angle on this. So I just wanna give each of you you did great jobs introducing yourself, but I don’t wanna give each of you a little bit opportunity to talk about. Sort of the focus you’re bringing on how we design the environment and its impact on students.

And Elliot, why don’t you just you were doing great. Just keep going.

Elliot Felix: Sure. I think there’s so many ways that the environment can enable or inhibit student success. And a few of my current preco preoccupations, I would say one is certainly around. Community and belonging. And another is around how you provide services and another is how you enable work on projects.

When it comes to community and belonging, I think a lot of the way that students find their people on a campus is by finding their place. They’re often interrelated, and it might be an affinity group or an identity group space. It might be a common space like the library, it might be through events and programming.

And we know that only about two thirds of students nationally feel like they belong at their institution. So I feel like that’s a role that space can play in closing that gap. The other thing I see a lot is that, you’ll do focus groups with students and they’ll ask for something and you’re probably already providing it.

There’s so many amazing things on every college or university campus that so few students know about, and so I’m always fascinated at the way that spaces can make services more evident so that, and maybe even normalize using them, getting help, like everybody goes to the writing center, everybody get, goes to advising.

It isn’t this stigma thing, it’s this success thing. And so I’m always looking at. How can you blend, study and support, if you’re reinventing a library? And one, one of my favorite examples of this, I recently learned, there’s a new building at VCU where in they created a science commons. And so instead of faculty doing office hours in their offices, they did them in these common spaces and they got, I think, 60% more traffic.

So 60% more students. Came to office hours and a third of them had never been to office hours before. So because they changed the kind of the place and the process at the same time, they got these outside results. And I also, I just think experiential learning is like the closest thing we have to. A magic wand in higher ed for building skills and relationships and demonstrating value.

And so I look at how spaces can support those projects. If you’re doing a class project with a company, that means you need space to work, space to get together, maybe space to meet with that company physically, virtually. Maybe you need a place to practice a presentation. You need a place to print a prototype.

You need a place to shoot and edit a video. And so I, as I think about space and student success I’m always interested in how it can promote belonging, better deliver services, and better support projects.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. Beautiful. I love that suggestion about office hours. I was just reading in Hacking College about the power of office hours to, for forge mentoring relationships and how so many students feel like it’s shameful to need to go to office.

Like you need help. You don’t get it. You don’t understand when it really, it’s an opportunity to connect, to build relationships, to expand your network and making that visible. I also really resonate when you were talking about so many things student want, students want. We already offered. They just don’t know about it.

And remembering being at McAllister College and students really criticizing the institution for not doing really anything around sexual violence prevention, and we felt like we were doing so much, but they associated this initiative with orientation. Not the institution. And this initiative was with athletics, not the institution.

And really it was all being coordinated, and this is not the environment, but we created a logo with an umbrella that had all of these things together. And all of a sudden students said, look, what all, finally the institution’s doing something. And it was the same things we had all been doing. So how do we make this explicit, make it visible, make it known?

I think it’s just really powerful in many ways we can do that. Stefan, you mentioned you’re focused on furniture, you’re focused on mostly residence hall spaces. I am really curious though, about how this conversation has shifted. You’ve been having these conversations for 30 years with, as you said mostly housing, reside life professionals, but also the students in those spaces.

I just know that my mental model of college is built on something that’s. Not quite 30 years, but we’re get, we’re getting there. And it’s totally outdated, but when I talk with people who graduated college three years ago, they say their mental model of what college was like, it’s completely outdated.

So I’d love to hear more about you, about how you think about the environment and how you’ve seen these conversations shift over time.

Stephane Belisle: Yeah, and you it, it is surprising the number of institutions that haven’t changed specs on furniture for 30 years actually, where they still, their specifications, they’re still asking for a file drawer.

With, the little rods in it and when students are not using papers anymore, but, that’s I guess everybody’s choice. But the yeah from the late nineties to now, the, I actually there’s less. There’s less furniture in the room than it used to be.

Exactly. For that reason. No, no papers. The desk have shrinking by half. I remember those 48 by 30 deep desks with these big carols. And now and through student surveys, we, I. Probably participate in a hundred little showcases where students come, RAs come and housing res life people come and and the focus is really more on the having a.

Having more space in the room to be able to move the stuff around. Forget the big desk, forget the big drawers, having more cubbies. So very, the the space to be able to take advantage, to enjoy the space, I think has become very important versus. Filling the whole room or even the common area spaces, filling the whole space with furniture.

So I think the space and of course in, and our challenge also is safety, durability flexibility. And also for now, a lot of universities go with those outlets, they’re adding outlets in the desk. They’re athletes. There’s everybody, every student has at least two, three phones, I iPhones la laptops.

So very two, provide the students more. What they want and what they like.

And I think the surveys are the, a great way to as help changing that mentality.

Keith Edwards: Help you stay up with what students are needing. I remember, looking at maybe re renovating a massive space that hadn’t been a residence hall into a residence hall.

One of the things I went and did is I went to some of the coworking space here in Minneapolis. ’cause they’ve spent a lot of money and a lot of time thinking about how people operate and how they move. And it was really different from your traditional lounge or residence hall or campus center space.

I just remember being really excited oh, this is very different. And they also have paying customers, right? And if who give feedback, which is really different. Not that students aren’t paying, but I think they think about that relationship in a different way.

Stephane Belisle: And I think the sense as Elliot said, the sense of belonging is very important.

When we go through furniture selection, the school university colors or a logo on a rail or making them feel at the university even when they’re inside the bedroom. So I think that’s, that’s a plus. And it could increase engagement and, reminding them that, hey, we’re on campus.

So I think that there’s many ways to yeah. To increase the sense of belonging when we pick furniture.

Elliot Felix: I love that idea.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. Betsy, I said, this is all your fault. And I also said that once you start looking into this and start thinking about, then you realize, oh, we gotta also think about this, and you gotta also think about this.

You gotta, and I’m guessing it can be a little overwhelming. So as you’ve really put your focus here what are you learning?

Betsy Craco: Yeah I guess I would riff off of my colleagues here and really talk about loneliness which is one of our primary targets. We measure loneliness. And we’re Vivec Murphy talks about that as the social public health pandemic or crisis of our time.

And how does design drive that, this idea that spaces are becoming more and more atomized. And I read something, I think it was in The Atlantic. I’ll find the link about how apartment spaces and private spaces keep getting larger and public spaces keep getting smaller when folks are like designing apartment complex, things like that.

And as we think about designing residence halls, I think it’s important to think about what has to happen in a public space and what’s in a private space, and even from a nervous system perspective and a mental health perspective, which is more my arena. Does it make sense to put all these study spaces in the bedroom, right?

When every sleep specialist is gonna tell you if you’re trying to sleep? Put your work somewhere else and these ideas that we could have public spaces that offer flexible space for students to connect and study and not feel alone in needing help. I think those are the things we’re thinking about.

And just this idea of we’ve created these beehive environments with doors that probably automatically close for safety and security reasons. But in. When you and I went to college, not to put us in the same category but I think we might be there. The doors were propped open and you had to talk to each other because there was no, you could call your parents once a week or your friends from high school.

And now in this era where you can connect with anyone anytime, we have to be more scaffolded and intentional about creating third spaces that students wanna be in. I think Starbucks has perfected this, but. How do we do that in the collegiate setting is some of what we’re thinking about or I’m thinking about anyway.

And can I just

Keith Edwards: double click on a couple things? You mentioned atomized and beehive and I’m not sure I know what those are. Could you help?

Betsy Craco: So this idea that we’re creating, all of these spaces where an individual can go and have private time and look at their own screens, right? Growing up there was one TV and we’re all gonna watch Welcome Back, Cotter Together, not to give, very dated reference.

And I’m sure if you ask people who are young now, they’re all in their own they’re selecting their own thing to watch on their own screen. And so that’s what I mean by Adam. We’re creating these. Little atomic spaces for people to be in a personalized experience, an individualized experience versus a communal experience.

And so that’s really what I mean by that. And then the design of spaces has followed that.

Keith Edwards: Yeah, that really resonates. I have two teenagers at home that have a very large screen downstairs that’s entirely theirs, and they often will sit on the couch in front of this 70 inch screen.

Watching their separate shows on their tiny little phones together. It’s mind boggling to me. But I think you’re pointing to that’s that’s how they want to do it. They wanna have their own experience. Yeah,

Betsy Craco: and I think the, I think one of the only ways out of that is. Literally a knock on the door.

I, I just was talking to our residential life staff yesterday or last week and they were saying that they’ve trained their RAs, do not email your students. If you need to talk to a student, go knock on the door. And I really think that’s a game changer. Like

400 RAs who have been trained to go make an interpersonal connection is a huge deal,

Keith Edwards: yeah. Such a little thing, but it like you said, could be a game changer.

Elliot Felix: Yeah. We, I see that in the workplace, right? You might have someone a new hire and they’re saying, so and so hasn’t gotten back to me, and I’ve emailed them two or three times, and you say have you called them?

And that the thought doesn’t even, wouldn’t occur to someone. But sometimes that’s actually what you have. You have, you need a change of medium and something where you can actually have a, have an interchange or an exchange real time and there’s tone of voice, maybe there’s body language, whatever it might be.

I think that’s such a the knocking on doors I think is such a great idea.

Keith Edwards: Yeah.

Betsy Craco: It’s simple. Yeah.

Keith Edwards: I wanna invite you all into the conversation and just think about what are some of the environmental considerations of space of furniture, maybe even lighting. Anything that you want to think about that you think are overlooked.

What are some of the things that are more important than people give attention to? Stefan, let’s start with you. What are some of the things that are overlooked that you’re, maybe you’re reminding folks, Hey, have you thought about this? Hey, have you thought about this? Yeah.

Stephane Belisle: The mo when we’re talking about renovations or a resident saw that has been online for five, 10 years I think people kind of stick with the first.

Used what the space is supposed to be used for. So let’s say if if it is supposed to be a lounge at the end of the hall and then, and then there’s no one there, right? Nobody’s using the space. So why people are not using the space? Is it because there is already a lounge downstairs and people wanna work there.

People wanna see tables. So I think asking or observing the students’ behavior and say why would you go there? Why don’t you go to this space? Because if we are renovating and we are putting. The same furniture, and it was there with a different company, a different color that won’t increase traffic.

And I think what institutions want is to have students use the space. So I think it’s, I think it’s a lot, to it’s about the students. It’s about how can I attract traffic to that space? And I think that’s the, that’s one thing that I think people sometimes forget doing when they’re looking at renovating a space.

Keith Edwards: What are some of the ways that people are shifting, right? If we have a lounge at the end of the hallway that’s not being used to come together to watch TV together what are some of the PE things that people are realizing? Maybe shifting that space too.

Stephane Belisle: It could be working tables, it could be communal tables.

It could be any other type of of use. Could be if there was no tv maybe the, you add a tv. So there’s a lot of ways, not only furniture, but also the some of. The colors or is it attractive? Is it the light? There’s not only related to furniture, but a lot of things that can be.

Modified I went to recently to a basement where it was a mismatch of furniture, like a beautiful space and where it was being used as almost storage, of anything that was leftover on campus. And of course, students don’t feel like going. There, there’s a lot of ways to, I think, to attract students, to,

Elliot Felix: yeah.

Stephane Belisle: A space to, to be using all the space in a residence hall, for example. There, there’s ways to do it. I think architects and designers and, furniture makers for sure can help.

Keith Edwards: And sometimes when you’re renovating the space, you don’t have a ton of options, you’re stuck with the the envelope that you have, and you can do some superficial things and add this, and maybe remove that, but there’s some limits to that.

Stephane Belisle: It might be also connect, sorry. It might be also connectivity. No outlet. People don’t go because they can’t plug their phone, so I’m gonna go somewhere. It could be a very small detail,

Keith Edwards: or the wifi is terrible. Only once you get more than three, then things slow down.

Stephane Belisle: Yeah.

Keith Edwards: Betsy, what are some of the things that you’re finding that people are overlooking or maybe when you start asking questions, they have that aha moment.

Oh, why didn’t we think of that before?

Betsy Craco: I love this question because it gives me an opportunity to talk a little bit about the Okanagan charter and the national movement around US health promoting campuses. And the mission there is to embed wellbeing into sort of all aspects of university life.

And it’s an international movement. We have the Canadians to thank for it. But as part of that, we’re really trying to look at academic practice partnerships and relevant to the lounges at the end of the hall, one of our professors of architecture. Has her senior design studio focus on we love our towers here at UMass.

But there are some end of the hall lounges that are poorly used and really has her students dive into the literature around public health, around design interview students who use that space and then study the use of it after it’s been redesigned. But one of those projects looked at.

Something as simple as the view to the outside. So you get to see my lovely snow and trees out here. A lot of our towers overlooked this gorgeous mountain range, but all the tables were so low that you really couldn’t see the view. So the simple act of raising up the table so people can, sit at a cafe bar stool kind of height and see the view.

I just was giving a lecture this morning in our new public health space, so I asked the students, knowing I had to come here, what. What are the things that you like about this new building? And the first thing they said was all the windows.

And so really this like connection to nature and so much in the wellbeing space is reminding us, our human bodies and our ancestry and our link to nature. And I think really bringing those elements into the design are, those are critically the outlets and that, but the outlets are

Keith Edwards: Nature. Outlets though for sure the outlets, but also nature.

And I think as we can see we can see behind you for folks who are. Not watching. We can see snow, we can see trees, we can see sky. And I think having the opportunity, such a smart thing to think about just raising the tables and the chairs. Yeah. It can really bring that in more ways, which is a relatively inexpensive thing for, rather than adding windows or changing, things like that can be quite a bit more

Stephane Belisle: Sorry, just if I add something.

Also, people used to buy a lot of sofas, like three seed or and then you end up, if one student sits on the sofa. Nobody else who’s, who do you really wanna sit next to? Someone on a sofa? So if you want to increase traffic, just buy individual pieces that maybe can connect together. But then if people want to be alone and they can separate, they can do so there’s just another way, right? You can increase traffic in in a, a place where nobody goes.

Keith Edwards: Not 300 pounds. So we can move them around. So we can move closer. Yeah. So we can move apart, right? Yeah.

Stephane Belisle: Yeah.

Keith Edwards: Elliot, you have all these conversations with all these different folks. What are some of the things that you find are often overlooked?

Elliot Felix: I’m fascinated by the organizational and operational. Aspects that come with changing spaces. To pick up on the thread from Betsy about knocking on doors or from Stefan about the empty lounge. I think what people often underappreciate or under think is the program and the operations of a space.

So it might be that the people aren’t in the lounge ’cause there’s nothing cool happening there. And maybe it’s a, something as simple as an ice cream social right, maybe it’s something as sophisticated as a speaker or a program or something that stu, that students organize.

And I see this disconnect between spaces and operations pretty frequently. And I think when you can think about them together, think about the calendar and the floor plan together, then you really get a sense of like, how am I gonna operate this? How am I gonna activate it?

What’s gonna make it come alive? And Keith, you mentioned like going to coworking spaces. One of the things that makes coworking spaces different than most offices is they have a community manager. They have someone who’s thinking about programming a way for members to meet each other. And and so that, I think about the space is the hardware, but you need the software, which is like the programming, the culture, and the norms.

Together. That’s what makes it work. Otherwise, your iPhone’s just like a brick, right? Without the, without the software. And I think the same for that, that empty lounge. So the more people can think about the operations, I think the better. And when they’re thinking about the operations, that usually means, oh wait, we’re gonna have to think about our organization too.

Because usually just changing a space, people don’t magically work and learn differently. You need some kind of change management process where you’re act helping people learn new skills, help people learn from each other, see examples, and take them on that journey. ’cause otherwise you end up with people doing the old thing in the new space, which in a way is worse because you’ve just spent all this time and money and the new space is probably not as good for the old thing.

So you wanna do a new thing in the new space.

Keith Edwards: I remember going to these coworking spaces and just about all of them had this half is social and this half is focused and which meant no talking. Complete silence. Earbuds in no conversations, no phone calls, and over here, have your meeting. Do your phone call, talk with each other, chit chat with each other, and one I thought that.

Separation was really interesting. This was a massive space, so you could do that. So I was thinking maybe on the first, third and fifth floor is social lounges, and second and fourth is maybe focused lounges. I also just like the language of that. We would quiet we would call it quiet space, which is a bummer, right?

Focused has a whole different tone. It’s positive. That’s where you go to be focused rather than quiet is that’s where you can’t do this thing. Social, so I just thought some of the language there was super helpful as we think through some of that some simple little things like that where a lot of marketing dollars going into some research had found these solutions and we can benefit from some of that.

Yeah. You’ve, the three of you have really put this on people’s radar, and I’m imagining many of our listeners and viewers thinking, oh, this is really interesting. I hadn’t thought about that and I hadn’t thought about that, and I hadn’t thought about that. I’d like to think about these things more and.

My job is already full. So I’m wondering if you could give us some suggestions for how higher ed leaders of all kinds of, we’ve talked about residence halls, we’ve talked about libraries, we’ve talked about science buildings, we’re talking about all of these different things. How can folks integrate this into the work they’re doing maybe with students and for students?

So Betsy, you mentioned a really great one, which is don’t email or text the residents, but go knock on doors. Elliot was suggesting we even use these. Phones for calls, which I, to be honest I often say, you, you can text me, I don’t really use this thing for phone calls. But what are some of the ways that we can integrate this into our work with and for students?

Betsy Craco: I think the questions are in front of us all of the time, I had the privilege of going to, it’s several points in my life going on retreat for growth and reflection and all of that. And so there’s a retreat center in Massachusetts known as klo. I was thinking about the university.

I’m like, we have all the things that people are paying a lot of money to go to KLO to have. A room that looks exactly like a dorm, a, a a cafeteria with healthy food. And UMass, we get, we’d be remiss if we didn’t say we’re number one dining in the country, nine years running. Woo. But reflection spaces, communal spaces, a workout facility like Outdoor Nature we have all of these things.

And so I think it’s really just a matter of shifting our perspective to how for me anyway, what do, how do we bring wellbeing into all of these? Existing infrastructures. At one point we were developing a P three project that had a, open ground floor. And the question was, what do you wanna do with the ground floor?

Okay, we could put in study carols, we could put in oh, my chancellor’s not gonna be happy with me. A gaming facility. What we ended up doing was a climbing wall, like a bouldering facility, and then a lounge area that I basically handed them pictures of The old Faithful Lodge where, you know, people hang out around a fireplace and play games on rustic furniture and was like, this is what we want.

And now when you go to that space, it is nothing but community, right? So what choices are you making when you have the choice to make? Because we’re making choices all of the time. So I think I think we really can program this space in a way that leans towards student connection and wellbeing and for the whole community, not just students.

Yeah. And in welcoming our community in as well. We just opened a campus pantry that’s open to the entire community. That’s, it’s huge. How are we dealing with food insecurity

Yeah.

Keith Edwards: I think that’s you’re calling back to the labeling of social and focus spaces. A lot of times wellbeing is about what you can’t do.

What you shouldn’t eat, what you must do, what you have to do. Yeah. And when I’m leading workshops, one of the things I often inve invite is, I’d just like you to give us the gift of your presence for the next 90 minutes or the full day. And I know that can be hard, but. If you went away for a seven day silent retreat and had to give up your phone, you pay thousands of dollars for the luxury of doing that.

Yes, let’s just put our phone off to the side and just enjoy the luxury of that. I’m not saying you can’t be on your phone, but what if we just took a break for this next chunk of time as a luxury, as an indulgence, as a delightful thing to do, and I think you do such a great job of framing some of these wellbeing practices not as obligations.

Must do this, must not do this. But wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to engage in some of this?

Betsy Craco: Yeah, and I think just for me, as someone who really is bad at giving things up it’s just right, think about summer camp, think about all of the things that make you feel human. And I do think it is a return to humanity are, in so many ways we have a thousand examples of how our screens and technology.

Having robbed us of that in some ways. And so I think this generation for whatever you wanna say about Gen Z is the first generation to question that seriously and really start movements towards, the attention activism

Keith Edwards: yeah.

Betsy Craco: Yeah.

Keith Edwards: I watch my daughters have a real hard time giving up their phones until they go to summer camp, and then they’re so happy as long as their friend will keep up their streaks for ’em.

That’s really what they care about. It’s just their snap streaks. But other than that they’re delighted to give it up and and their relationship after, a week at summer camp where they didn’t have access to it all is shifted. And just if we were to go to a silent retreat or something like that.

Stefan, what are some of the ways you’d suggest folks integrate this into their work with and for students? You mentioned a number of times not just working with housing residents, life professionals, but really having a lot of conversations, surveys, conversations, engagements, showcases with students.

How can we build this into our work without it being another thing we have to add on top?

Stephane Belisle: I what I love to do is to go see rooms where students are living right now. If I have a meeting with with a professional with a housing officer, res life person, is there any in advance, is there any rooms that I can go see and we can go see it together?

And often the student is in the room or not. And then and then you can really analyze, you can really see what the student is using if they like it or not. So I think that’s a really easy way. So we know. Anyway, we, you all, we, we all have meetings with vendors, so let’s have the meeting.

Walking, doing some steps, going into the rooms, looking at I remember, this dresser had an expendable shelf underneath the top and the student after six months didn’t know. They didn’t know that the shelf was there, right? So it’s and so why is it there? So that. There’s a lot of things sometimes that people don’t use, the students don’t use.

So I think that’s an easy step to involve suppliers. You don’t know any furniture, but any anything else to walk on campus. And also the if you have time to do a little survey ask suppliers for different markups. And have a little survey from students, from the RAs.

I think that’s very helpful. The same thing for lounges. That’s easy. Suggestion box in the lounge. What do you what do you what would you like to see? And students, we have design, like I, I have designed furniture. I have changed the design because of students’ feedback and professional’s feedback.

Like seriously. It’s in the catalog. It doesn’t have the student name on it, but it’s an idea from a school or from a student. So I think that’s very important.

Keith Edwards: I’m picking up a lesson from you and I just wanna check and make sure you agree. The thing that I’m picking up from you as we move over time, is that we’re moving in a less is more, less furniture, less stuff on the furniture.

Simpler furniture. Is that true?

Stephane Belisle: As a furniture sales person, yes. It’s a shame I sell less furniture. No, but it it’s different. Like the desk is smaller. I, the cubbies the a bed is a bed, a chair is a chair, and you need a couple drawers. But I, we see more shelvings wardrobes that are more simple.

Like doors less. Le less drawers. So there is less. And I think it’s a it’s wise to go. It’s not quantity it’s more like quality.

Keith Edwards: Yeah.

Stephane Belisle: And the quality of life of the person living in the room. I think having a bit of space. They can bring their own stuff. It’s easy now to go to Target, Walmart and buy a little side table for, the $30.

And they can decorate their own room their own way. So I think that also brings kind a kind of wellbeing to be able to decorate and add little things like this in your room.

Keith Edwards: And some ownership. Yeah. And I’m hearing it also in the shared spaces, just more spaciousness, more flexibility to put four chairs together and work on a project together.

Yes. But also separate them out and. Watch my own show or do my own reading or do my own thing. I do notice students studying in quietly in the library. Some students love that and other students studying in the dining hall for three hours with all of the noise and the loudest possible place, and all of the commotion.

Love that. And so how do we offer that? And everything in between. Yeah.

Stephane Belisle: Yeah. Also, you can call I went to UNLV and they have a lounge called the Dance Floor. There’s an actual dance floor.

Elliot Felix: Love that.

Stephane Belisle: But it’s all communal tables, and there’s a lot of students studying there, but nobody’s dancing okay.

Keith Edwards: All

Stephane Belisle: right. You can name, bring some,

Keith Edwards: you gotta wait for the after hours, right?

Stephane Belisle: Yeah.

Keith Edwards: Particularly in Vegas. Elliot, what are some of the things, some of the ways that that you’re seeing or maybe you’re suggesting folks integrate some of this consciousness and awareness into their work with and for students?

Elliot Felix: I’m learning a lot from this conversation, and I think what it makes me think of is how are teams that are planning and operating spaces themselves learning? And if you want spaces that work really well. You need them to be planned and operated by teams that work really well together. And I don’t think we spend enough time thinking about what makes a high performance team.

Often a space project will involve pulling together disparate folks. They may not have worked together before. You have a new user group. You have your facilities team, you have your furniture vendor, you have your architect and designer, your professors, whoever it might be, and taking the time upfront.

To have that team, as, go through the, forming, storming, norming, performing cycle and think about who’s at the table. Are the people that are operating a space, the faculty who are gonna teach, the custodians, who are gonna maintain the staff who are gonna activate and. Run program.

Do programming, are they at the table? Are students at the table? How are you learning together? Are you going on a study trip or seeing examples that gives you like a shared vocabulary. We want more like this and less, we want less dance floor, more lounge or whatever. You establish that.

Vocabulary. How can you test things out? Like Stefan, you’re talking about mockups and maybe a cut above a mo mockup as a pilot, right? Where people are using the thing and they can kick the tires. So I think investing the time to create a high performing team so that you get a high performing space really pays dividends.

And to do that, people have to be learning. From each other and learning together.

Keith Edwards: I’ve really appreciated Stefan really reinforcing again and again talking with students, asking students, surveying students, polling students. You’re reminding me another incredible resource experts on student behavior, which are custodians and dining workers.

Where do they find the trash? On the night shift where what are the patterns? What are they seeing? What are the dining workers who are, maybe cleaning up? What are the things that are constantly an obstacle, constantly in the way? How could this be better designed? Students never sit at circular tables.

They always sit at squares or returning or, I don’t know, I’m making that up. But they probably know exactly where students sit, where they don’t sit. What do they tend to, what do they move to? I think those folks are. As we talk about overlooked, really an untapped resource about with expertise in student behavior and just monitoring and seeing things.

Elliot Felix: Yeah. And you can make their, if you’re tapping into that knowledge, you can also make their job easier and better. Because they can tell you where the pain points are. This is the, yeah. This is the thing that’s always breaking. This is the thing that’s, students are always moving this, or, which could be a good thing, could be a bad thing.

Keith Edwards: Yeah.

Elliot Felix: And I think that just gives you, that gives you a way to make the space and how you operate it, how you care for it.

Keith Edwards: Yeah.

Elliot Felix: More in sync, which helps everybody,

Keith Edwards: the these are the points of friction, let’s remove those as much as we can. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks all. We are running outta time and as this podcast is called Student Affairs.

Now we’d like to end with this question about what are you thinking troubling or pondering now might be related to the conversation or might be something different. And if you wanna share where folks can connect with you, that would be great as well. Stefan, we’re gonna start with you. What are you thinking troubling or pondering now?

Stephane Belisle: You know what Elliot just said about custodial maintenance, that’s a whole other topic, right? Because we think about student wellbeing and the happiness of the students in the room, but. Most of the time people, the end users, the people taking care of the buildings are also involved in the process.

So it’s the we design for students. So it’s a hard job to design things that students like. The students will use and lounges or bedroom, but we need to think about the outcome, like how this furniture will be maintained, how this will look like 15 from now. So it’s always a hard decision what I like and what can be done and what can be durable with time.

I think I think that’s maybe another topic.

Keith Edwards: No, thanks for bringing that in. Elliot, what are you pondering, troubling, or thinking now?

Elliot Felix: To your point about less is more as folks are thinking about their campus and as they’re thinking about how they can create environments that.

Spark learning and inspiration and provide information and help students feel like they’re part of a community and work on these kinds of projects with impact. I think now is a really good time to step back and take a hard look and audit what you have because over the past several decades we’ve been in adding mode.

We’ve been in growth mode nationally, the. Campus facilities have grown at twice the pace of enrollment over the last 20 years. Now some of that is the research enterprise, which doesn’t track with enrollment some of that totally fair and to be expected, but I think an audit of what you have.

Do you have any duplicate functions? Do you have some things that are disparate that could be together? Not just to save to save space and to save money, but to make things better for people because now they get a more seamless experience. So I feel like now it is the less is more.

Time when we can step back, audit what we have, and find ways to better coordinate, collaborate, consolidate in some cases, and do it in a way that makes things better for students, staff, faculty community alumni altogether.

Keith Edwards: Yeah. I love that. It’s a great observation. ’cause we are adding buildings at a time when we also have huge deferred maintenance issues for the buildings that exist, right?

So we’re not keeping these buildings up to speed, but adding those. And then also if we just keep adding, and I see some campuses where every bit of green space has got a new building on it. And as Betsy pointed us to earlier, that green space, those trees wide open spaces to play for, to throw a Frisbee.

There’s real value in that for the student experience, for wellbeing for so many different things. Betsy, what would you like to close this out on here?

Betsy Craco: So many thoughts. What’s coming to mind is the experience we had on this campus when the eclipse was happening. And how you can be on a campus and think there’s no one here.

I had the thought that day what? Why is there no one here? Is everybody taking a long weekend? I don’t know. And then all of a sudden, like a, like back to that beehive thing, everyone came out and had this communal experience looking at the eclipse. And I just think maybe to your point, Elliot, we have created so many separate spaces.

It’s very easy to feel alone and to feel like we’re not a community. And also to your programming point is there an hour a day or whatever where we’re all here, an eclipse moment where we can connect. And so I think that is both the built environment and shared language and building teams and a shared.

Intention to be a community because otherwise we can just all be, and that’s something very different. And that’s probably controversial to say, but

Keith Edwards: I think you’re good. I think you’re good. Thanks to all three of you. I really appreciate your thoughts your experience and your thoughtfulness and sharing it with us and our audience here today.

Anything, any folks want to add before I wrap us up? No, you’re good. Wonderful.

Elliot Felix: Thanks for a great conversation.

Keith Edwards: Yeah, this has been terrific. Great conversation. I’ve got so many ideas and so many notes. So thanks to all of you. I also want to thank folio. Thank you Stefan and Folio for sponsoring this episode.

Folio Special specializes in furniture for residence hall spaces, as you’ve heard that assist in creating functional and welcoming environments for college campuses. With over 10,000 completed residence hall projects. In 35 years of hands-on experience, they bring serious expertise to student housing.

From design through long-term durability. Learn more@folio.com. That’s F-O-L-I-O-T.com. As always, a huge shout out to our producer, Natalie Ambrosey, who dissolve the behind the scenes work to make all four of us look and sound good, and we love the support for these conversations from you, our community.

You can reach, help us reach even more folks by sharing this episode, subscribing to the podcast, or subscribing on to the podcast, YouTube, or our weekly newsletter. Where each week you get our latest episode. If you’re so inclined, you can leave us a five star review, which does help us reach even more.

Folks. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guest today and to everyone who is watching and listening, make it a great week. Thank you all.

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