Students voiced their opinions on Oct. 17 in the Memorial Union Atrium 1 during an event held by the University of Rhode Island and Sasaki Associates team – gaining student feedback to be used toward the Comprehensive Campus Plan.
The URI Comprehensive Campus Plan website states t he plan will create a vision for improvement and development by gaining feedback from URI students about how to improve URI’s future campus design and the usage of URI campus spaces. The website further explained that designers from the Sasaki team will help with the planning and designing of the project.
“We’re helping to set forward what projects we want to prioritize over the next 20 years that are going to make an impact for students, faculty, staff and even for the community who come to campus,” Sasaki principal Tyler Patrick said. “It serves all – academic, housing, dining, student life, athletics, recreation, the open space, how we move through campus and accessibility.”
The team is currently in the discovery and analysis phase, which includes gathering insight from the members of the URI community about the college campus, according to Patrick. This phase was the focal point of the event.
The event featured different bulletin boards that depicted topics of interest for the Sasaki project team. The topic areas featured were regional and local context, academic life, campus landscape, campus life, and accessibility and mobility.
Each topic included three statements regarding each section with an importance scale of one to five. Students placed stickers onto the boards to rank each statement’s level of importance.
Several students participated in the event by sharing their college experiences with the Sasaki members. These types of events help students feel like their voices are being heard, according to third-year Meilin Quiroa Reyes.
“When you have places like these where you can do it anonymously, voice your opinions and ask questions, they can see what the school is planning on doing and can see the reactions to our opinions,” Reyes said. “So I think these events are pretty useful for students to voice their opinions without worrying it’s just gonna go over their heads.”
This event is crucial to move this plan forward, according to Ryan Carrillo, the URI director of Planning and Real Estate Development.
“The university is here to meet your needs, but what are they?” Carrillo said. “This is a chance for us to get input. This provides that opportunity to provide feedback that we can bring into the plan and look at what the next 20 years will be.”
Sasaki planner Chenoa Schatzski-McClain focused on the campus life booth. Schatzski-McClain said it was important to gain feedback to the different perspectives of being on campus.
“We are trying to find ways for students to have access to spaces that have variety,” Schatzski-McClain said. “Thinking about improving spaces such as [the] Memorial Union or the experience of dining halls – that creates more of a community.”
The project will also look into improving the sustainability of the campus landscape.
“We are going to be looking at the landscape in particular to encourage both those formal park-like spaces, but also the more natural ecological spaces and really see if we can enrich the biohabitat and the ecological quality of the area,” the director of sustainability for Sasaki, Tamar Warburg, said.
Kartikik Sharma, associate urban designer for Sasaki, worked with the accessibility and mobility booth. Their goal is for all URI members to have an equal transportation experience on campus, Sharma said.
“The hope is that all users, those who can walk on foot or using a wheelchair of all ages, can all experience the campus without the dependency on cars or shuttle every time,” Sharma said. “The hope is to understand the constraints from all the user groups and to find where you have conflict.”
The comprehensive project timeline bulletin board shared the final steps of the project. From fall 2024 to winter 2025, the team will move to the planning scenarios phase, sharing their concepts with the public for further feedback.
The campus plan development phase will take place from winter to spring of 2025. This will be followed by the documentation phase from spring to summer of 2025, framing the final concept for future investments.
To learn more about URI’s Comprehensive Campus Plan, students can visit the plan’s website .