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Students walking together on Palmer Field

Life-Changing Education

Enhancing Learning and Research Excellence

The goals, objectives, and principles of Campus Plan 2050 support Life-Changing Education through a focus on enhancing the learning and research experience, campus vitality, renewal, and strategic investment.

Goal 1: Offer amenities and services that enrich the teaching, learning, and research experiences on the Ann Arbor campus.

Objectives

  • Promote mixed-use development enriched by robust amenities.
  • Encourage social, recreational, and cultural interaction.

Goal 2: Promote collaborative environments.

Objectives

  • Increase opportunities for interdisciplinary research and learning within facilities.
  • Encourage the flexible use of space.
  • Create new collaboration hubs that promote neighborhood engagement.

Goal 3: Enhance campus character.

Objectives

  • Respect and enhance U-M’s heritage historic buildings and structures while encouraging innovative, creative, high-performance facilities.
  • Identify opportunities for redevelopment and infill to use existing land most efficiently and to increase density.

Goal 4: Support the university’s mission-driven needs and plan for growth.

Objectives

  • Rationalize campus space to meet current and projected needs for academic, research, and clinical requirements.
  • Increase housing inventory to meet needs and replace aging facilities.

Life-Changing Education Principles

  • Provide a variety of services and amenities of existing and proposed buildings to strengthen campus life and vitality.
  • Provide equitable, welcoming, and accessible educational and research experiences on all campuses in support of the university’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives.
  • Create both exterior and interior accessible human-scale spaces that encourage social, recreational, and cultural interaction.
  • Establish a mix of land uses—arts and cultural, health and well-being, recreational, academic and research, residential, social, etc.
  • Promote generous access to the arts and humanities on all campuses; identify opportunities for public art and interpretive signage and information.
  • Provide open spaces at a variety of scales that are pleasant, accessible, and that enhance the user experience and well-being.
  • Embed spaces with opportunities for collaboration, study, gathering, and reflection.
  • Site locations in areas that are accessible to housing, academic, and research uses.
  • Respect and enhance the integrity of heritage historic buildings and structures during renovation and repurposing, improving energyefficiency through deep energy retrofits.
  • Evaluate options for re-use or redevelopment of buildings reaching the end of their useful life relative to programmatic needs and the best use of the site. Maximize redevelopment; replace or renovate inefficient, low-density, outdated, and obsolete facilities with carbon-neutral, flexible, and adaptable buildings.
  • Protect existing viewsheds and explore opportunities to create new, iconic views with redevelopment initiatives.
  • Protect open spaces that have a special place in the life and history of the university.
  • Optimize the density of future development in identified areas of the campuses to ensure efficient utilization of land and infrastructure.
  • Respect surrounding areas and buildings in terms of height, massing, scale, setback, materials, and roof line where appropriate when planning new buildings, additions, and renovations with exterior impacts.
  • Optimize capacity and maximize flexibility through efficient utilization of land.
  • Prioritize highest and best use of available development zones based on its unique aspects (density, location, access, natural features).
  • Utilize campus land to support the academic, research, clinical care, student life, athletics, and sustainability missions of the university.
  • Plan with flexibility in anticipation of future programmatic requirements that cannot be predicted today.
  • Incorporate a range of new civic spaces to strengthen the collegiality of the campus to meet a diverse range of needs and preferences.