A Good Campus Plan, Like a Good Education, Makes for a Solid Foundation for Success
As one of the fastest-growing community colleges in the United States, what the College of Western Idaho (CWI) offers is highly desirable: a great education at an affordable price. Established in 2007, their in-demand offerings have since garnered the college a population base of more than half a million students — plus the attention of local businesses and industries looking for skilled employees.
To meet demand, CWI had to move quickly to create spaces for learning. This meant leasing buildings not initially intended for scholastic purposes, which were spread across Canyon and Ada counties. Knowing a more permanent, unified solution was needed, CWI leadership began working with Cushing Terrell to develop a comprehensive plan for its campus in Nampa, Idaho, and its other various locations, and to formulate a vision for the future.
To get a clear understanding of how CWI’s goals could be turned into design solutions, we followed a process consisting of three phases: assessment, exploration, and application.
Steps of the CWI Comprehensive Plan
Step 1: Assessment
To fully grasp CWI’s vision for the future and assess how it could best fulfill the college’s mission and meet the needs of students, staff, and local businesses, we began an in-depth process to engage with stakeholders. This entailed developing dual-language online surveys and a web-based information portal while promoting these tools through a variety of communications channels — from local news outlets, CWI announcements, and social media, to in-person meetings and presentations. The planning team also visited the school’s various locations and held open houses for the public.
We made the process interactive and fun, often garnering the most feedback when we offered food and drinks. One of our team members, for example, walked around open house meetings with a barista backpack full of coffee, filling up mugs and engaging people in dialogue. Our goals were to make people feel comfortable, ensure they knew their feedback was valued and would have an impact, and get them talking about how they felt CWI could best support the region.
With nine months spent gathering insights, including 1,269 survey responses and input from in-person public meetings, we had an immense amount of data that we could assess and leverage to inform, guide, and prioritize campus improvements. Out of this process came the guiding principles for the comprehensive plan, which are:
- Provide high value, accessible, and flexible learning, including online programs.
- Maximize the utilization and adaptability of existing learning spaces.
- Expand hands-on learning spaces, labs, and maker spaces.
- Increase spaces for highest job demands, such as health care and STEM fields.
- Establish convenient spaces for student interaction, study, support, and wellness.
- Create spaces for industry networking, apprenticeships, and workforce opportunities.
- Provide cohesive campus environments to foster student community and success.
Step 2: Exploration
We believe the best comprehensive plans are ones in which no ideas go unvetted: small ideas, large ideas, starting over fresh, or dozens of different iterations of one idea. But we must also identify overarching strategies, and in this case, the key ideas to help CWI meet their guiding principles. With school administrators, CWI leadership, students, and business partners, we whittled the options down to the top ideas and evaluated those together.
We asked questions such as: “Does this idea create the best college experience?” “Does this idea help drive student success, both academically and socially?” “Does this idea connect people with business and industry partners?” The ideation process included 3D model visualizations so stakeholders could see the layouts tangibly, showing the differences between the concepts.
Ultimately, out of the exploration process, the planning team identified two high-level strategic recommendations:
1) Consolidate into two primary campuses in Nampa and Boise.
Nampa campus: The first phase of new construction (currently in process) will be concentrated to the north of the canal on campus to maximize future flexibility. The new buildings will be placed to create a quad to enhance campus synergy and improve access to all programming and services. New construction will include a health and science building and a student learning hub, as well as consolidate and expand the college’s horticulture and agricultural science programs into new buildings on the campus, removing the need for leased space for those programs.
Boise Campus: CWI previously invested in a 10-acre property located in downtown Boise adjacent to the Boise River and Greenbelt to serve Ada County students. Currently, many of these students attend classes at the Boise Center, which consists of four leased buildings located in the Black Eagle Business Park. CWI’s strategic direction includes investing in the Boise site and developing a mixed-use project, allowing for transition of current programming from the leased Boise Center to a centralized, owned location.
2) Support campuses with strategic centers.
In support of the two main campuses, CWI will optimize the use of existing facilities, renovating and transforming these spaces to address changes in programs and user needs. These centers include the Micron Education Center, Canyon County Center, and Aspen Creek Center.
Development for the Nampa campus is focused north of a canal on the 100-acre site to maximize future flexibility. New buildings will create a quad to enhance the feeling of a cohesive student experience as well as centralize student and faculty resources for convenience, efficiency, and adaptability.
Step 3: Application
It was now time to take everything we assessed and explored, and apply it. This was the detailed development portion that showed the unified vision and how to implement it. That includes phasing, scheduling, budgeting, and more. Importantly, we had to think carefully about how to develop the new buildings on the Nampa campus while CWI maintained regular college courses throughout the year.
We were also very fortunate to be awarded the design of three components of the new Nampa campus, the Student Learning Hub, the Health and Science Building, and the Horticultural and Agricultural Science Buildings. Thus, steeped in CWI’s vision and goals, and as co-authors of the comprehensive plan, we dove into the design for these key areas of the campus.
Nampa Campus Development: First Phase
Here’s how the three new developments on the Nampa campus site address the college’s guiding principles through thoughtful design. With these projects being such a fantastic collaboration of talents, I’m bringing in some of the design leads to describe each building or set of buildings: the Student Learning Hub, the Health and Science Building, and the Horticulture and Agricultural Science Buildings.
Student Learning Hub with Architect Amy Lindgren
Overarching goal: Bring students together while addressing their individuality.
Concept that makes it pop: The tree at the heart of the community.
We thought a lot about the idea of interconnectedness for the Student Learning Hub. Many of the conversations considered relationships both within the school and within the larger community. We landed on the concept of a “hub tree,” which symbolizes this interconnected network of students, staff, and the community. It allowed us to consider how the students grow, what grounds them, and what makes them reach higher. Just as tree branches are interconnected and reliant on a trunk for support, that became the hub’s design basis to support the students. We also incorporated the concept of a front porch in the building, with a two-story glass space that has a canopied section we refer to as a tree house with its branching structure.
Inside the building, the tree concept begins on the first floor — you can think of it like a forest floor — and works its way up to the “tree canopy.” Architecturally, we emulated this idea with “leaves” that don’t quite touch but come together to form the canopy, similar to the way each student is an individual part of the whole community.
Amy Lindgren, Architect
CWI Project Lead
Cushing Terrell
Focus on… everything under one roof. A traditional college campus often has a student union at the center of it all, and we wanted to provide CWI students with a similar experience — just on a smaller scale. This building incorporates a library, student hangout spaces, food vendors, registration, counseling offices, and other student services. It’s the heart of students’ interactive community, a place where they make connections with each other, their teachers, staff, and other faculty. It’s the hub.
Prior to development of the Nampa campus, there was nowhere for students to congregate with those in different programs. Not only does the Student Learning Hub house the services they need all in one place, it also has the capacity to bring together more of the student body. The lounge is the jewel box portion of the building with a two-story lobby where platform steps (for relaxing and communing) connect the first floor to the second floor. The student lounge area is meant to be a “buzzier” part of the building.
Focus on… a space to find your place. We spoke at length with the school about allowing students to be on their own journeys by attending CWI. Many of the students are nontraditional, or they’re starting out at CWI before moving onto a university. With such a wide variety of student types on their individual paths, we wanted to reflect this idea in the hub. We chose to have one direct route through the building with easy wayfinding, but otherwise the building provides an opportunity to wander about. There’s a clear path if needed, but there’s also a chance to discover the space as it’s revealed to them. We used geometric shapes and patterns both inside and in the exterior landscaping to elicit the sense of a multi-faceted journey.
The second floor includes a library and study spaces, which are intended to be quieter than the first floor, with less interaction and opportunity for heads down work. The third floor includes student services. The design of the building draws students in, allowing them to see that it’s a space to use as they see fit. It keeps the more personal spaces — for study and counsel — a bit cozier and quieter.
Health and Science Building with Interior Designer Randi Thomas
Overarching goal: Provide a real-world experience and collegiate atmosphere.
Concept that makes it pop: Circulation that mimics the human body.
For this facility, the design team drew parallels between major systems of the human body and major building systems. For example, we imagined the building’s structure as the skeletal system, pictured the mechanical and electrical components as the circulatory system, and HVAC as the respiratory system. Treating this building like the human body helped us bring together the different elements in a way that instinctively makes sense to users as they make their way through the facility.
The building is L-shaped, and we liken the connection point of the two wings to an elbow. This is where the entrance is located, along with the three-story daylit staircase and student common areas. Functionally, this is the center point for the building, where movement and systems flow out and into the “extremities.” Much of the structure was left exposed in the common areas and in the hallway so you can see the “skeleton” and other systems of the building. We juxtaposed that with the experiential rooms: Just as you would want to keep sensitive parts of the body shielded, these healthcare environments need to be protected for sanitation purposes. It also makes it clear these rooms aren’t open to the general public.
Randi Thomas, IIDA, NCIDQ, WELL AP
Interior Designer, CWI Project Lead
Cushing Terrell
The Health and Science Building is L-shaped, and we liken the connection point of the two wings to an elbow. This is where the entrance is located, along with the three-story daylit staircase and student common areas.
Focus on… the real-world experience. This facility will largely serve programs such as nursing, surgery, and dental. As such, the experiential aspect is crucial so students learn in an atmosphere that closely resembles their future jobs in the real world. We drew from our experience in healthcare design and chose finishes that would be used in medical environments. The skills labs feature typical healthcare equipment, such as dental chairs, mock operating suites, and hospital bed set-ups. The goal was to design as closely to how healthcare facilities are structured so students grow familiar with these settings.
We also chose a color palette commonly found in healthcare spaces — blues and greens — and incorporated elements of biophilic design mixed with medical-related patterns. For example, we drew on the similarities between the jagged edge of a leaf and an EKG line. We created some open, higher-ceiling areas for high-activity purposes, then a sense of compression as you move down the corridors toward the lab and classroom spaces.
Because there are opportunities for members of the community to visit the facility as volunteer patients, we designed the building to have clear wayfinding features so that volunteers can understand where to enter and proceed.
Focus on… a place to connect and study. The facility needed to speak to the overarching campus goal of offering spaces that make it feel like a more traditional college experience. This meant weaving in student hangout spaces and areas for study. Those in the health and science program, in particular, are in cohorts where they develop close relationships with their classmates, thus we wanted to be mindful of designing a space where they could commune and collaborate outside the classroom.
Of course, not everyone needs a buzzy spot, so we tiered the common spaces. The first floor common area is a bit bigger and includes the kitchen. The second floor is a smaller — and likely quieter without the food component. The third floor is the smallest and quietest of the zones.
In another effort to involve the community, the flexible learning commons were designed with a large adjacent conference room should industry partners or other business leaders from the community wish to meet with students for a career fair, exhibit, or other activity.
Horticulture and Agricultural Buildings with Design Director Charlie Deese
Overarching goal: Provide students opportunities for hands-on work — be it in the field, the lab, or a store — and to make connections with industry.
Concept that makes it pop: Cycling the outside in and the inside out.
This site is part working farm, part classroom, and part food incubator — and we tried to smooth any transitions inherent to these related functions. We wanted to ensure a clear feedback loop between instruction, research, practice, and partnering with industry. There’s a public-facing “farm store” where students can sell products they produce, and farm-to-table events. It takes the curriculum out of the classroom and into the market, without leaving campus.
The transitions for students and staff needed to be considered in this cycle of movement as well. There are areas in the building where individuals can enter with muddy boots that can be stored in lockers, along with shower rooms students can utilize before moving into cleaner classrooms or sanitary food processing areas. These transition spaces aren’t just cognizant of the processes happening on campus, but — as this is a community college — it’s being aware that some students may only spend part of their day on site before heading to a job or other responsibilities. Having the ability to change clothes or sit down for lunch in the lounge area helps simplify their own daily life cycles.
Charlie Deese, AIA, NCARB
Design Director, CWI Project Lead
Cushing Terrell
Focus on… getting their hands dirty. This part of campus is not about the architecture; it is all about facilitating a hands-in-the-dirt experience. Because much of that happens on the outside, we tried to orient the structure as a threshold or a gateway into that activity. We designed for this not only through its layout, but also the articulation of the building itself.
The entrance of the building — which is kept intentionally plain — is meant to emulate garden walls as a gateway to this agricultural experience. The central feature of the entrance not only funnels you through to the building itself, but also pushes visitors to the outside worksites. Even the roof material wraps onto the facade in an effort to push the energy through the frontage and into the rest of the site.
The character of the building changes at the back. There’s ample glass that allows you to easily see the outdoors and roll-up garage doors that give students a direct relationship with the outside world. Overhangs also help to extend the functionality of this space in different seasons.
Focus on… business partnerships. The CWI Nampa campus isn’t an island away from the rest of the community. There are preexisting pathways that run alongside the property that naturally welcome you to CWI, but we’re also adding new access ways directly into the campus. Not only is there a desire to bring outside partners into what the students in the horticulture and agriculture programs are doing, but — because it’s a community college that uses public funds to help support the school — it’s important that the campus be an accessible space.
We chose to split up some of the functions into two volumes of space: one is primarily for the students, with classrooms, lab spaces, staff workstations, and some flex space. The other volume is where we want to invite the public and have the flexibility to hold events and seminars. We expect frequent outside visitors at this site — alongside tractors, delivery vehicles, and animals — so we were careful to ensure there are safe crossings for those moving about. We also placed the greenhouse toward the front of the site to showcase the work being done.
The Shape of Things to Come
We couldn’t be more proud to be part of CWI’s visioning and planning process, as well as to continue our design work for the buildings that are now taking shape on the Nampa campus. CWI’s impact on individual lives, families, communities, and the economy is significant, helping to provide people with meaningful education that will fill critical job needs across the Treasure Valley and beyond. With CWI leadership anticipating growth to 50,000-100,000 students per year, the facilities on this campus will be the backdrop for so many seeking a bright future.
See the site under development, and hear remarks from CWI leadership and project design leads during the bridge signing ceremony that celebrated breaking ground on the new Nampa campus projects.
