Goals:       Our main goal is to get the appropriate persons to review our findings and possibly change aspects of the Master Plan to accommodate better facilities and better campus appearance. We feel that if we achieve these, then we will have made CWRU a better school. We hope to gather student and faculty feedback to determine whether the student body feels that the Master Plan is solid or needs revision. We will present this input in our presentation to the budget committee. The major task at hand here is to consolidate the general opinion of the students and faculty at CWRU and to inform the planning committee of that opinion. View the survey! Student and faculty feedback on the CWRU Master Plan constitutes an essential part of our project.    Description:        CWRU is a multi-billion dollar institution with vast financial resources at its disposal. In the Annual Report for 2000, the net assets of the school exceeded $2.4 billion and showed an increase of just under $200 million from 1999. A large portion of this money is invested or tied up in property and cannot be utilized for whatever the board of directors wants, but some of the money is available for projects that are selected each year.     At the same time, some of the attributes of CWRU are severely lacking in quality. For example, the athletic facilities at CWRU are in terrible condition. We have seen high schools with better facilities than exist at CWRU, and there is no high school in the country worth $2.4 billion. Also, the campus is situated in the middle of a major urban area, and there are many possible improvements that the committee can make to clean up the campus and make it a better place to attend college.     With these aspects of CWRU clearly lacking, potential and current students cannot help but carry a tainted view of the quality of education that the institution provides. Although these do not directly contribute to the academics at CWRU, the general appearance of the campus and the quality of the facilities do impact the image of the school.     Currently, CWRU has drafted a Master Plan for improving the campus over the next several years. Among the proposed improvements are increased landscaping, removal of certain buildings, creation of others, and renovation of campus areas. No total cost has been published, but the project seems to be very expensive and is described as having a timeframe of decades rather than years. This new Master Plan, which is a continuation of the original master plan drafted in 1988, may address many of the needs described above. However, it may also be lacking in many areas.    Primary Audience:        This project is primarily intended for the board of trustees and those in charge of the CWRU Master Plan. The hope is that the recommendations set forth are not only considered but acted upon. Additionally, CWRU students and faculty are invited to consider the conclusions reached and the results of the survey set forth above.

Team Members: Jeff Bottger I am a senior at CWRU in the Systems and Control Engineering Department. I too have completed the required classes for this course, including statistics and economics. I have extensive work experience in project teams and have coordinated several projects of my own, so I can bring that to the table. I am in a different department as Laszlo, so I have access to different faculty and staff, which broadens the number of people we can survey for this project. I have spent a summer at Carnegie Mellon University, so I can compare that campus to CWRU. I am from Colorado, and I have visited many Universities out there, so that will also aid in our comparisons. Laszlo L. Lieszkovszky I am a senior at CWRU in the Computer Engineering Department. I have completed the required classes for this course, including statistics and economics, which gives me a background for economic analysis. I own a small company, so I have experience with managing projects. I have experience in conducting surveys. I am from the Cleveland area, so I have an understanding of what the campus used to look like and how it was perceived by incoming freshmen. I also spend a year at the University of Warwick, so I have a comparison to CWRU. Links: Case Western Reserve University CWRU Master Plan Homepage CWRU Master Plan Survey

Major Findings and Recommendations:       During the course of this project, we set out to examine the student body's reaction to the CWRU Master Plan and see if there was a major area of improvement we could address. Once we analyzed the responses to our survey, we found that the students had mixed opinions on a couple major issues. Primarily, a significant portion of the students did not like the idea of moving the undergraduate population to the north campus and moving the graduate students to south campus. Their reasoning behind it was that they did not like the long walk to the engineering classes from the north campus, and they would also be isolated from the graduate students. Since one of the major goals of the Master Plan was to promote campus unity, many people felt as though the unity would be lessened if the undergraduates and graduates separated to the two sides of the campus. Those who liked the idea said that by moving all the undergraduates to the north campus, they would be able to get to know each other better, thus promoting unity among that part of the student body.    As far as our recommendations, we found that it might improve campus quality if the university added some park benches to the quad and some other aesthetic items. Our biggest idea was to try to get the Cleveland Museum of Art to join with CWRU and sponsor a "rotating artwork" exhibit on campus. This would entail the museum donating some sculptures to the university to display in KSL and Thwing Center on a monthly basis. This would allow the students to view the art and get excited about the museum. Then, after a month, the sculptures would be returned to the museum, and different artwork would be placed on campus. We talked to the curators of the museum, and they did not like the idea for safety reasons. This is reasonable because their primary concern should be for the integrity of the art, but we still feel that such a program would be possible if the two sides sat down and seriously discussed it.    Summary of Survey Results:      The survey was ended and tallied on 10/22/2001. The majority of questions received an average response between "don't care" and "agree". Only the suggestion to move Hitchcock house east along Euclid Avenue received an overall negative response. The suggestion to concentrate all undergraduate housing on North Side received a large number of harsh comments, but still averaged a response of neither agree nor disagree. The suggestion to remove Baker and Crawford received the larges number of "strongly disagree" votes, constituting 11% of all votes for that question. About a quarter of the respondents responded with either "disagree" or "strongly disagree" for several suggestions, including the suggestions to: concentrate UG housing on North Side construct several new academic buildings on Case Quad and North Campus construct a new building to the west of Crawfor Hall remove the Northernmost secions of the A.W. Smith building move the health service building across Adelbert Road The most favored suggestions receiving average responses averaging between "agree" and "strongly agree" were to: develop an improved student center develop two new paved walkways across Euclid Avenue build new parking garages on North Campus increase retail, residential, and institutional development on the corner of Euclid Avenue, Mayfield Rd., and Ford Drive.    Date of Publication:    Research on the current Master Plan complete by 10/22/2001 Survey of the students and faculty complete by 10/22/2001 Analysis of the results complete by 11/26/2001 Production of the final report complete by 12/12/2001 Created 11/25/2001 Please send feedback to Laszlo Lieszkovszky at: email copyright © 2001 GC terms of use privacy statement