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Mohammed Abdelaal, project manager for Facilities and Campus Services, and Robert Ryan, professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, recently published an article in the Society for College and University Planning’s journal, Planning for Higher Education.

Abdelaal and Ryan spent over three years researching the many risks faced by place-based institutions, such as funding uncertainty, declining enrollment, rising costs, public skepticism, future workforce requirements, evolving academic technology and decaying facilities. Their new article, “A New Campus Planning Paradigm Emerges,” explores how major public research universities in the U.S. are adapting to address those risks, draws correlations between administrative, academic, and facilities-related challenges, and identifies a new campus planning paradigm that emphasizes adaptability, efficiency, data-dependency and space optimization.

In a news piece about the article published on the Facilities and Campus Services website, Abdelaal underscored that his research highlights how UMass Amherst is “leading the way in successfully addressing these growing challenges in higher education, particularly for campus development.” The article notes that the university is part of a select group of 11 public institutions which have “developed strategic and campus plans reflecting high levels of awareness of the ongoing transformations in higher education, and have implemented innovative and integrated planning strategies in response to shifts in learning modalities as well as administrative and facilities challenges.”

Ryan and Abdelaal’s article, which was published for members in the Aug.-Oct. edition of Planning for Higher Education, will soon be accessible to UMass community members via the UMass Libraries.