Master Plan Underway - May 2006 Vice President & General Counsel Chair of the Park University Master Planning Commission Anyone who has visited the Parkville Campus in the last five years cannot help but notice the enhancements to the crown jewel, Park University. Improvements such as the new slate roof on Mackay Hall represent catch-up steps to address maintenance long deferred. Other improvements including the limestone walls in front of Mackay and Thompson, with the many fresh campus plantings, have brought a new polish to the jewel. But as significant as these efforts are, they represent only the tip of the iceberg. Change is coming. Meaningful, positive, broad-based change. Explorations & Transformations 2012: Access to Excellence, the strategic plan completed in 2003, provides the road map for the future of the University. This plan calls for a Master Plan that enhances the University's image and identity, delivering academically excellent higher education programs, assuring that students are wellserved - and that all of this will occur within "one university." E&T 2012 recognizes that this vision will require significant physical changes to the Parkville Campus and that to accomplish this, the University will need a new campus master plan. The planning process began in spring 2005 when President Byers-Pevitts appointed representatives of the University's many constituencies to the Park University Master Planning Commission. The president charged the commission to "consider the development of a new University Master Plan that will guide the physical development of the Parkville Campus, ... and to make recommendations regarding the development of the Plan which will be submitted to the Administration and, ultimately, considered and approved by the Board of Trustees." During summer 2005 the University identified and ultimately hired HNTB Corp., an international planning, architecture and engineering firm headquartered in Kansas City, Mo., to complete an analysis that identifies geologically buildable campus sites. The University also sought a firm to guide the University through a master planning process. After interviewing five well-qualified applicants, the University selected Ellerbe Becket, Inc., a firm with broad-based international experience in university master planning. The master plan will have four phases. The first, information gathering, is complete. An evaluation and analysis of the University's needs, is nearing conclusion. Conceptual planning is underway. And completion of the final report occurred in time for the Board of Trustees meeting May 5. Following the commission's Nov. 21 meeting with the Ellerbe Becket team, the University launched an inclusive information-gathering process that has provided opportunities for meaningful input from University constituencies including students, alumni, faculty, staff, community groups and tenants of the Parkville Commercial Underground. The Board of Trustees has been involved from the start: five representatives serve on the commission, and time during the January 2006 Board Retreat was dedicated to the plan. Master planning information is regularly posted to a dedicated page, www.park.edu/plan. THE COMMISSION'S GOAL IS TO CREATE A PLAN THAT EMPHASIZES:
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