2024 Staff Fellows Program

2024 Program Structure

Space usage has consistently been an important issue on the KU Lawrence campus. All stakeholders deserve to have equitable space to do their work and fulfill our mission of teaching, research, and service. KU is committed to providing high quality space on campus for all. Consistent with this commitment is a responsibility to only allocate and maintain the space actually needed to accomplish the KU Lawrence mission. Sustaining our buildings represents a significant portion of the university budget and we should be constantly exploring ways to contain these costs including reducing our footprint where available. The Smith Group partnered with KU to evaluate our space utilization on the Lawrence campus in 2021 and KBOR also assesses our space utilization on a recurring basis.  Their findings, which were confirmed by Perkins & Will in the master plan, indicate we have more space than needed for research and learning indicating that we have opportunities to become more space efficient.

Using emerging tools, including the soon to be released master plan, the 2024 Staff Fellows cohort will research and evaluate current culture and processes associated with space management at KU. The Staff Fellows will provide a summary of their research and findings with recommendations as to what, if any, modifications should be made surrounding space allocation processes and the space management culture at KU including updates to space management policies as appropriate.