Paulien & Associates, Inc. led a project team providing master planning services to the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. The School of Dentistry sought to develop facilities to attract and retain the best students and faculty. The improvements needed to take place in a cost effective manner.
Early in the project, it was established that four major goals should be accomplished.
·
Analyze, document, and address quantitative and qualitative
deficiencies,
·
Improve adjacencies by function,
·
Increase the flexibility of space, making it easier to respond to changes in
enrollment or funding, and
·
Foster interaction, collaboration, and sharing.
The study focused on the need for a significant increase in laboratory research space, adjustments to the undergraduate and graduate specialty clinics and the faculty practice suite, adjustments to the teaching spaces to reflect new curriculum initiatives and the integration of the CAIDENT laboratory (computer aided instruction), and the dental library.
With the University of Michigan School of Dentistry enrollment, staffing, research, and facilities information in hand, the consultants gathered comparison data from dental schools at the University of California-San Francisco, the University of Iowa, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Texas-San Antonio, and the University of Washington-Seattle. The extensive peer analysis was conducted with these five schools of dentistry identified by the Dean to allow further in-depth comparisons with schools that had previously been selected for other School of Dentistry purposes. This involved securing detailed information about research and clinical activities as well as information on instruction and continuing education.
The process involved multiple meetings with a project steering committee and with individual committees, representing laboratory research, the clinical activities, the graduate program administrators, and the academic departments. The Dental School created a Steering Committee which met with the consultants on each visit, along with the research and clinical committees. Approximately 100 faculty and administrators met with the consultants at least once during the process to discuss the needs of their units. Public presentations of the findings were made to the School of Dentistry community during the last two visits.
The electronic floor plans for the building were utilized by the consultants to reflect exiting uses within the facilities by major function such as instruction, research, clinical and to reflect usage by academic department. Full color drawings were developed so that before and after comparisons could be made for each floor so that the most effective allocations of space could be determined. The consultants also looked carefully at the maximization of the current site of the School of Dentistry and found opportunities for several additions to the existing building along with proposing a number of space allocation changes to better consolidate functions.