This article was originally published in the March 2025 print edition.
With meandering walking paths between classic red brick buildings, a botanic garden spanning 127 acres, and the glistening Paradise Pond, the Smith College campus has been home to student life for 150 years. Landscape and architectural design luminaries from Fredrick Law Olmstead to Maya Lin have contributed to its beauty and functionality.
Yet, the Smith campus also faces challenges with changing social, academic and environmental needs on campus. From student requests for more outdoor seating and late-night study spaces to managing the immense project of converting campus to geothermal energy, the Campus Use Plan is looking at how the Smith community uses its campus and what changes could be made to guide campus use in the coming years.
On Dec. 16, 2024, Smith College President Sarah Willie-LeBreton announced the creation of a Campus Use Plan aligned with ongoing strategic planning at the college in a letter to the community. The Campus Use Plan (CUP) will aim to “provide guidance on how we utilize our buildings and open spaces to better support our mission,” according to a Jan. 19, 2025 email announcing the start of the Campus Use Plan process.
“We’re excited about this, it’s an opportunity to think about how to define the next, at least, ten years of planning at the college,” said David DeSwert, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration who is on the CUP Steering Committee.
The CUP will look at how stakeholders — students, faculty, staff — interact with the built environment on campus and create a plan for what the next decade will look like on Smith’s campus. This project is still in its early stages, with most work focused on data collection and gathering input from stakeholders. The project is being led by Erinn McGurn ’94, Interim Associate Vice President for Sustainable Capital Programs and the Campus Planning team. The CUP Steering Committee, composed of trustees, faculty, staff and a student, oversees the process.
Smith College has hired Sasaki, an interdisciplinary planning and design firm based in Boston, to conduct a 10-month study of the campus. The first phase of the plan has included pop-up listening events in the Campus Center and Compass Cafe for students to provide feedback on how they use Smith’s campus. Additionally, the “MyCampus” survey allowed students to explain how they use spaces on campus on an interactive map and answer questions on residence life, social spaces on campus, and academic needs.
“Once you understand how [the physical environment] is being used and what the issues are, what works well and what doesn’t, then you can create the Campus Use Plan, which will be, to my understanding, guidelines about how we use the spaces on campus, and short and long term goals,” said AC Manning ’25, the campus planning intern, who helps facilitate student engagement in the CUP process as part of her position.
“For example, an aspect of the physical environment at Smith that people are asking for is outdoor seating,” said Manning. “Short term, maybe we can get some outdoor seating. It’s much more actionable than, perhaps we need another dorm. But that’s sort of the scale, from a chair to a dorm, that’s being thought about.”
Students have been able to identify concerns with the physical campus and campus life during engagement sessions. Frustration with the Campus Center has been a reoccurring point, with students saying it feels like wasted space. “Why is it just a big hallway?” asked Manning, echoing student attitudes at engagement sessions.
Other issues that have been identified are the lack of 24-hour study spaces besides the Alumni Gym, a lack of spaces for social gatherings and dining halls. Students have mentioned that they would like another dining hall on Green Street, and many have asked for Cushing/Emerson dining hall to be brought back after it was closed for the 2024-25 school year. Some students have expressed interest in centralized dining, while others support Smith’s current decentralized dining. The CUP aims to help the Smith administration consider pros and cons for these questions and provide a framework for the future of how campus space is used and organized.
The Campus Use Plan is aligned with Smith’s Strategic Planning Process, led by Wellspring Consulting, which began in 2024. The CUP will “provide a framework for the development of the built environment at Smith, including infrastructure, facilities and land use, to support and enable the strategic plan goals.” Previous campus planning is also a part of the CUP; in 2022, Smith completed their Landscape Master Plan which was developed over 4 years and is supposed to be included and incorporated into the Campus Use Plan.
“Having been part of the original landscape Master Plan process, it was one of the most comprehensively community engaged projects that Smith’s ever done,” said Reid Bertone-Johnson, lecturer in landscape studies, who is on the CUP Steering Committee.
“We have a plan that we like a lot, but most of what [Sasaki] asked us to do on the map and in the mapping survey is duplicating work done when we created the landscape master plan, and it’s already codified in the landscape master plan and all the documents there. So I’m a little bit concerned that it may not get incorporated enough.”
The Landscape Master Plan created a 20-year plan for how Smith’s landscape can evolve and proposed many projects for moving towards an adaptable, inclusive, educational and connected campus. Pilot projects, which were meant to be completed quickly after the plan’s completion and test transformation of spaces that herald longer-term initiatives, included putting in a meadow of native plants and taller grasses at the main entrance gate at the intersection of College Lane and Elm Street, and a pop-up plaza with outdoor gathering space and seating replacing the round-about and parking in front of Sage Hall. Longer term proposals included converting College Lane into a pedestrian walkway, a courtyard and outdoor classroom in the space in front of Davis Ballroom, and an accessible woodland walk to the Mill River from the Paradise Road side of Emerson House.
Currently, a design concept for the restoration of the geothermal well field site next to Comstock House, guided by the Landscape Master Plan, is under consideration, according to McGurn. One possibility is the creation of a paved patio for outdoor dining at the Comstock/Haynes dining hall.
“This will be the most dramatic change to the landscape and campus over the next seven years, as we’re finishing geothermal. The campus has the chance to dynamically shift quickly towards what we hope should be more friendly, and social, and environmentally sound,” said Bertone-Johnson. “I think that with the comprehensive use plan and the prioritization of projects that might come from it, it will position the college to make better, more forward thinking choices than purely reacting to circumstances on the ground.”
Students have been able to participate in the planning process through listening sessions and the MyCampus Survey, but only one student currently sits on the Steering Committee. Salma Baksh ’28 was nominated to the committee in January based on work she has done on SGA as a Senator.
“It’s huge. It’s like re-envisioning the buildings, the spaces, the green space that’s all around us,” said Baksh. “I think that really what’s on my mind the most is social gathering spaces. And I think hopefully that this committee will be insistent on that, and so perhaps not students in this graduating class or the next four, but students who are coming in years from now can expect a more social Smith.
Baksh has been a part of discussions about social spaces on campus, including on how the Neilson Library is a central place for socializing on campus, while the Campus Center is not.
In Oct. 2023, the Campus Center architectural programming and conceptual design plan outlined a multi-year plan to make changes to the Campus Center, including to make it more student focused and build more gathering spaces. However, only phase one, involving making the lower level more student focused, was implemented, while subsequent phases, including a planned phase two for the summer of 2024, were not completed. According to McGurn, the plan is now being evaluated and incorporated into the comprehensive planning process.
“I hope [the Campus Use Plan] will prioritize student agency over space and set that forward, with actionable goals to attain it and what student agency in every space would look like. Maybe it looks like more 24 hour spaces. Maybe it looks like a Student Union,” said Manning.
The last time Smith made a similar comprehensive campus use plan was in the 1990s. Technology and student use of space has evolved rapidly since the start of the 21st century, with one example being mail services. With the prevalence of online shopping and services like Amazon, Smith College Mail Services handle far more packages today than they would have in the 90s. The new Campus Use Plan aims to create a framework and guidelines for projects that will help campus respond to student, staff and faculty needs into the next decade.
“I would love to encourage other students to find ways to get involved or make their voice heard about all these things,” said Baksh. “We can complain about X, Y and Z things and how they’re affecting our lives, but if we aren’t telling anyone or the right people that these are problems that we’re facing and that they’re intersecting with these other problems, then they’re not going to get solved.”
Be First to Comment