In this episode of Student Success: Built by Design, our host Jeff Johnson is joined once again by Dr. Joel Peterson, and for this episode, they also welcome new guests Eric Jones, Buddy Gessel, and Eric Schultz to examine how athletic facilities in the San Diego Community College District support student success through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The district schools include San Diego City College, Mesa College, Miramar College, and the College of Continuing Education. Eric Jones is a principal and design director at LPA Design Studios. Buddy is a design principal at DLR Group. Eric Schultz is a project director at C.W. Driver Contractors. The panel discusses two projects with a shared mission but different contexts: Mesa College’s $500M+ Athletics Complex (aquatics, tennis, baseball, track and field, gymnasia, classrooms, offices, locker rooms, and training support) and City College’s Outdoor Athletics Expansion and Upgrades (new sand volleyball, reoriented softball field, upgraded soccer field, access, storage, and support facilities). Their conversation emphasizes why stakeholder engagement is so key, the importance of solid safety and quality assurance, and why you would design specifically for separation of athlete and spectator circulation, accessibility, lighting and field conditions. They also go over ways to provide urban security without a “fortress” feel, progressive design-build collaboration, construction phasing on active campuses, and how athletics spaces are also often used as instructional “kinesiology laboratories” that broaden access and opportunity for diverse students.
In this episode of Student Success: Built by Design, our host Jeff Johnson is joined once again by Dr. Joel Peterson, and for this episode, they also welcome new guests Eric Jones, Buddy Gessel, and Eric Schultz to examine how athletic facilities in the San Diego Community College District support student success through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The district schools include San Diego City College, Mesa College, Miramar College, and the College of Continuing Education.
Eric Jones is a principal and design director at LPA Design Studios. Buddy is a design principal at DLR Group. Eric Schultz is a project director at C.W. Driver Contractors.
The panel discusses two projects with a shared mission but different contexts: Mesa College’s $500M+ Athletics Complex (aquatics, tennis, baseball, track and field, gymnasia, classrooms, offices, locker rooms, and training support) and City College’s Outdoor Athletics Expansion and Upgrades (new sand volleyball, reoriented softball field, upgraded soccer field, access, storage, and support facilities).
Their conversation emphasizes why stakeholder engagement is so key, the importance of solid safety and quality assurance, and why you would design specifically for separation of athlete and spectator circulation, accessibility, lighting and field conditions. They also go over ways to provide urban security without a “fortress” feel, progressive design-build collaboration, construction phasing on active campuses, and how athletics spaces are also often used as instructional “kinesiology laboratories” that broaden access and opportunity for diverse students.
Episode Guide:
The Student Success: Built by Design is a production of San Diego Community College District and is produced by University FM.
How facility design removes barriers and creates student opportunities
13:48 [Buddy Gessel] At City College, addressing these foundational and fundamental needs meant removing some of those physical barriers that were limiting students, and what their programs can do. And once that foundation is in place, then we can really begin to address those higher levels of Maslow, of belonging and confidence and achievement. And so, lighting isn't simply lighting. It extends those hours that are available for practice and instruction and competition. And that competition-quality environment really gives the students the opportunities to discover what they're good at, and develop those skills and find that next opportunity, whether it's a transfer or a scholarship or a coaching position or some other career pathway. And so, a lot of times student success starts by removing the physical barriers and really creating that environment that allows the students to see what's possible for them next.
Balancing safety and belonging through design
18:12 [Eric Shultz] As a builder, we do need to remember that the student doesn't experience separate bid packages or structural systems. The student-athlete or general population students experience one Mesa athletics complex. So our job as the builder is to connect all of it. The athlete circulation, spectator flow, ADA-compliant access, emergency access, service and delivery routes, construction logistics, phasing, of course, the cost and the schedule. All those have to be connected in project considerations, into one thing that works as a whole. And so these facilities will also take on, daily repetitive use by the students and the community, for decades to come. So durability and constructability aren't just considered extras to the project scope, they're part of the assignment.
Mesa College Athletics Complex is a whole ecosystem
17:05 [Eric Shultz] Mesa College's new athletics complex, it's not just one building; it's actually a whole ecosystem. And it's our responsibility to make all these sports venues work together, essentially, as one campus environment. That's the underlying goal, to deliver that opportunity for student success.
[00:00:00] Jeff Johnson: Student Success: Built by Design. Expanding the human potential for today's students. Welcome to Student Success: Built by Design.
In this podcast, we explore the fundamental question of how the built environment impacts student success. We will showcase specific design and build achievements of the San Diego Community College District's $3.5 billion Bond Measure HH, whose goal is to further our education and student success mission by designing and constructing learning environments that don't simply host students, but elevate them academically, personally, and socially. Therefore, we design with a clear purpose and build with mission.
[00:00:43] Andrea Stalker: Previously on our podcast, we defined student success as a combination of academic, professional, personal, and social success. But these successes are, in part, driven by how well the range of human needs, from basic physical needs to self-fulfillment needs, are met. So, how the environment meets or misses these human needs at all levels impacts student success.
This then can be the theoretical lens through which we examine the design and construction of San Diego CCD's Bond Project. The built environment is the foundation upon which students can be elevated academically, personally, and socially.
[00:01:28] Jeff Johnson: Welcome back to our podcast on Student Success: Built by Design. In today's session, we're going to be talking about athletic case studies at San Diego Community College District. We'll be continuing our exploration in student success and describe how that's related to the previous six episodes.
So, today, we're engaging our panel, still talking about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how that relates to athletics at the San Diego Community College District. So, we have two projects we're going to be talking about, but they have the same mission, student success. So, welcome back, Dr. Joel Peterson, San Diego Community College District Vice Chancellor and Executive Operations Officer. And we have new guests. We have Eric Jones, Principal and Design Director at LPA Design Studios. And also Buddy Gessel, Design Principal at DLR Group, and Eric Schultz, Project Director at C.W. Driver Contractors. And myself, Jeff Johnson, PBK Architects, Principal, Design Director of Design & Educational Planning.
So, welcome, everybody. Looking forward to today's discussion. And so, in previous episodes, we've been talking about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, kind of relating to the physiological needs from the basic things, including safety, also some of the psychological needs of looking at social connections and looking at self-esteem, and then ultimately, kind of, relating to self-actualization, really looking at how the full development of a student actually takes part.
So, in the previous episode, we were talking about performing and visual arts, and how that related to actual spaces. So, it's exciting in that discussion to see how does it actually play out. So, today, we're going to be talking about two specific projects. So, Mesa College Athletics Complex, designed by LPA, built by C.W. Driver, and also City College Outdoor Athletics Expansion and Upgrades, designed by DLR.
And so, what we're really framing is that athletics is more than just competition. These are environments for performance, learning, wellness, belonging, kinesiology, training, coaching, and community engagement. So, it's really a rich environment that has a lot of opportunities. And so, we'll be framing in some of these discussions and how it's different than maybe some of the typical campus buildings. We'll get into details of how the planning and design, even the construction, can support the topics that we talked about in student success of personal, social, and academic success.
So, before we get into too much detail, I wanted to get a little bit more understanding of each of the projects and how they, kind of, relate and look at compare and contrast. So, Dr. Peterson, what are some of the differences or some of the details of Mesa College and City College athletics projects?
[00:04:18] Dr. Joel Peterson: Just to give an overview of our district might be helpful for our viewers and listeners. The San Diego Community College District, it's comprised of four independent colleges, and what we're going to be talking about here is Mesa College and City College. We also have Miramar College, which is another mostly suburban campus. And then we have the College of Continuing Education, which focuses on career technical education, and that has seven independent campuses throughout our region.
We enroll about 100,000 students annually. Mesa College and City College are great contrasts with each other. City College is our oldest college that we've had, starting from the early 1900s. And it's in an urban setting in the East Village of San Diego. And the athletic project that we're looking at there is, as the name of the project seems to indicate is an outdoor expansion. So, this is some sand volleyball lots that we're putting in, right from scratch. We're reorienting a softball field. We are revamping and upgrading a number of the exterior access points and storage and support facilities, as well as a soccer field that we are upgrading as well.
So, it's a large, expansive complex across a significant area of land, but again, it's focused on the exterior or external kinds of athletics. Mesa College is our largest college in terms of enrollment, about 30,000 students, and it's in a suburban setting in a single large campus. And this is going to be upgrading and expanding a bunch of existing internal as well as external athletics. This is a huge project. This one overall is going to be north of $500 million, and encompasses aquatics, tennis, baseball, track and field, gymnasia of various kinds, ancillary classrooms and offices for the staff, including locker rooms and physical training support areas, et cetera.
So, our design team can go into more detail on both of these, but I think it's pretty obvious from the naming of it that these are significantly different projects physically and design-wise, but that they share a commonality, as you alluded to, Jeff. We talk about Maslow's hierarchy, but what we're saying there is that the built environment impacts human behavior, in our case, impacts student success, by how well that built environment meets the needs of that student.
For those needs that they have, the human needs in a various hierarchy, are the underlying foundation that supports their success. And these athletic facilities have multiple different kinds of things. As you alluded to, Jeff, on the one hand, the performative spaces. You know, we want to see the athletes themselves and the students who are doing the activities are performing, and how do we make sure that they can be at their peak and be successful in that. But then they're also observing and participating in the form of audiences who come to watch the competitions and cheer on.
And again, that's part of the school experience and part of what, again, meets the needs of students to be able to succeed in their academics and social endeavors. But these are also instructional spaces. The track and field, the baseball field, the sand lots, et cetera, are also where we teach. We teach coaching, we teach things about kinesiology. We teach about optimizing of physical characteristics and the physiology. We talk about how the outdoor or heat environment may impact someone's well-being.
And so, there's a whole lot of teaching that has to be done. So, we can't just build for optimum performance. We can't just build for optimum observation and audience participation, and we can't just build for optimum teaching. We have to somehow balance all these, and that's why we have talented professionals like that on this podcast right now. And then those designs have to get implemented into actual physical built environment. That's why we also have our friends at C.W. Driver who can help us with that.
[00:08:19] Jeff Johnson: Well, this is great. And I think for the audience, really understanding the variety and diversity and the intensity of some of these programs. Sometimes we think athletics as being something somewhat simple, but as I think we're going to unpack today, there's a lot more to those. And so, to Eric, through some of the planning process, talking with some of the stakeholders involved, having the faculty, some of the district leaders, coaches, students, student-athletes, why was the range of engagement essential? And what did it reveal about all these 19-sport, you know, complex?
[00:08:52] Eric Jones: Thank you, Jeff. Great question. The stakeholders' engagement is absolutely essential. They know this place way better than we do. Coming into the design, we bring our design expertise, the background, and experience to be able to put all of them together and help answer or ask them the questions that are ultimately going to lead to the design program that is going to be in this project.
Our first step was just to meet with each and every one of the leadership on the Mesa campus to understand what are their overarching goals that they see for this campus. And then from there, meet with the athletic director, who's going to set the tone and the vision of what stakeholders really participate with and engage in this program. From there, we got engaged with the coaches themselves of each of their sports collectively as a whole, and we asked them, "What are your goals for this project? What do you want to see so that we can be successful in delivering something that is going to be absolutely authored by Mesa, the campus, and inclusive of everyone that they need to serve in their community?"
In addition to that, who is the surrounding community that is going to be experiencing this place? And then ultimately down into the student level as well. These students were absolutely amazing. They came in either student-athletes or just from their perspective of the Architecture Club that is on campus, and them wanting to understand what is the design process as well so that they can provide their perspective, them sitting and pursuing architecture, but also wanting to be involved in something that is going to benefit others in the future.
By having all of them help us author this work, we know that this is going to be something that is truly going to benefit the community, and it is going to come from their needs specifically. We know that as we've gone through these, the hierarchy of needs, we want to make sure that this is a safe environment. It's going to provide better access overall, but it's also going to become a sense of place. What is going to define that sense of place for Mesa's campus, which, for the listeners out there, this is in San Diego, Southern California?
So, being specific to adapting this project to the climate, constraints and benefits, and opportunities that it has here, how do we put all of that together with their feedback and ultimately deliver a design that is not specific to us as designers, but is specific to helping them see their dreams and visions come true?
[00:11:28] Jeff Johnson: That's amazing. Yeah. I love this idea of, like, customizing, you know? You're really understanding and empathizing and meeting with the students, and that, kind of, authorship. And that's what's going to really make it, kind of, unique. And, you know, Dr. Peterson talked about in previous episodes about the rich care that they have for their students and the impact that they have. So, having their, like, signature, kind of, idea or thumbprint on the process, it's a rich, rich idea. And to Buddy, at City College, how did the engagement with the Dean of Athletics and also some of the users, how did that impact some of the sport-related goals for that project?
[00:12:07] Buddy Gessel: Yeah, great question, Jeff. One of the things that came through very clearly in our conversations with the Dean and the athletic programs was that this wasn't simply about replacing or repairing aging facilities, but it was about creating opportunities for the students and especially the student-athletes. There were physical conditions that were limiting what these programs and the students could do, fields that were in poor condition or some facilities that just didn't meet the physical requirements needed for competition.
The softball field, as Dr. Peterson mentioned, had orientation issues, and these were limitations on how and when the facilities could be used, especially since they don't have lighting. And in athletics, these are foundational and physical safety needs that become very tangible. And the student needs fields that are safe to play on, that are properly configured for their sport, and they're designed to support the level of practice and competition that they're being asked of. The quality and the condition of the playing surface can directly affect that performance and that potential for injury.
Proper field orientation and dimensions affect whether the program can compete at that next level. And the field lighting provides both a safer environment and that ability to extend practice and instruction, and competition into the evening, when many of the students are available for these types of events.
And these may seem like basic physical requirements, but that's really the point. They're foundational. At City College, addressing these foundational and fundamental needs meant removing some of those physical barriers that were limiting students and what their programs can do. And once that foundation is in place, then we can really begin to address those higher levels of Maslow, of belonging and confidence and achievement.
And so, lighting isn't simply lighting. It extends those hours that are available for practice and instruction and competition. And that competition-quality environment really gives the students the opportunities to discover what they're good at, and develop those skills and find that next opportunity, whether it's a transfer or a scholarship or a coaching position or some other career pathway. And so, a lot of times, student success starts by removing the physical barriers and really creating that environment that allows the students to see what's possible for them next.
[00:14:39] Dr. Joel Peterson: One thing I would jump in on there with what Buddy was, kind of, alluding to with how expanding these facilities allows us to expand the programs. And people may wonder, are athletic programs really that necessary for the mission of our colleges? And we believe the answer is absolutely yes. And the reason for that, that one of our key parts of our mission isn't just student success, but it's to have open access. It's to allow anybody who otherwise may have no other options and paths, who can't afford other kinds of options, can come to our district and pursue education.
And what we've... Particularly for underrepresented and minority populations, and particularly among minority males, athletics has historically offered an avenue of access. And so, if we did not have the kinds of athletic programs and the facilities that enable those programs to be safe, but also to be at the excellent levels, many of the populations that we should be reaching out to most may not feel that they have an opportunity to access because it doesn't feel right with the culture that they've come from or, kind of, the personal socioeconomic background that they may have been challenged with.
And so, we find that our athletic programs and facilities that support them are absolutely core and instrumental to the underlying elements of our mission. And so, just want to keep that in our mind as we talk about why we're doing what we're doing. So, Buddy, thanks for bringing that up, and I really appreciated what you and Eric both said about the programs.
[00:16:15] Jeff Johnson: Yeah. And that brings up a great point about the diversity of your student body and how athletics actually partners, you know, the scholar-athlete idea, that there are many different intelligences, technically there's 10, like Gardner talks about, and kinesiology, that it is an intelligence. And sometimes how they pair with academics is really, kind of, interesting. It actually complements and works together for that.
So, it really, kind of, brings out how athletics is really unique. I mean, it's different than a typical classroom or a library or an office. I was wondering, with Eric, talking about from a builder's perspective, what are some of these fundamental differences with the athletics complex compared to some of the maybe typical projects?
[00:16:57] Eric Schultz: Sure. Just speaking in terms of the Mesa College new athletics complex, it's not just one building, it's actually a whole ecosystem. And it's our responsibility to make all these sports venues work together essentially as one campus environment. That's the underlying goal, to deliver that opportunity for student success.
So, at Mesa, we're combining a new gymnasium, a field house, aquatics complex, renovation of the existing stadium seating and press box. Then we also are adding a throw park and renovating an existing parking lot as well, among other things, resurfacing the track and field. And so, all of those, this is all occurring on a site that has existing improvements that will need to be strategically removed in a proper sequence to minimize the campus operational impacts. Each sports venue has different stakeholders, as Eric mentioned earlier, different technical requirements, different sports standards, different structure types, and the maintenance and operational needs.
And so, as a builder, those are all things that we need to consider. And one point I wanted to make was, as a builder, we do need to remember that the student doesn't experience separate bid packages or structural systems. The student-athlete or general population students experience one Mesa Athletics Complex. So, our job as the builder is to connect all of it, the athlete circulation, spectator flow, ADA-compliant access, emergency access, service and delivery routes, construction logistics, phasing, of course, the cost, and the schedule. All those have to be connected in project considerations into one thing that works as a whole.
And so, these facilities will also take on daily repetitive use by the students and the community for decades to come. So, durability and constructability aren't just considered extras to the project scope, they're part of the assignment. So, kind of, tying this back to thinking about Maslow, as Dr. Peterson brought up earlier in the conversation, the builder actually does have a role at every level. We start by making sure the environment is safe, secure, reliable, comfortable. Once the basic needs are met, the design can, kind of, progress and create that student belonging and that team identity, and then ultimately boost the confidence and the performance of these students, student-athletes.
And a unique thing about the district choosing progressive design-build as a delivery system for these projects, that allows our partners, the builder, the design partner, to be at the table early, to give that candid feedback that helps translate to where everyone's considering a buildable decision at the end of the day, instead of finding out at bid time what things actually cost.
[00:19:45] Jeff Johnson: That's a great point, because really pulling it all together, or you talk about the interconnectedness, that fiscal responsibility, but you still need the educational visioning. So, being in early, the progressive design-build offers the opportunity of really getting all these voices and finding the best value and stewardship for the dollar.
Yeah, now, kind of, getting into some of the details of the project, starting to talk about how does some of the design, kind of, in action actually work? So, Dr. Peterson, sometimes we talked before about like small choices and these things become, kind of, identifiers. So, how does that relate to athletics? How does design intentionally encourage belonging, confidence, safety, security?
[00:20:28] Dr. Joel Peterson: With athletics, what's challenging about it is that most activities that happen in most built environments are inherently kind of safe. You're sitting in an office, you're sitting in your dorm room, you're sitting in a classroom. You're not doing things that are inherently in and of themselves potentially dangerous or risky. But that's not the way it is with athletics. If you are going over hurdles and you're running as fast as you possibly can, that's an inherently risky thing. There's likelihood that you're going to fall, you know, hit your shins. If you're going to play football, that's an inherently risky thing. You're playing soccer, you're playing any one of these sports.
At the same time, you then have large crowds of people that you're putting into close proximity to people who are performing. So, you think of, like, with water polo and how close the audience is, and that they have to get in and out of their stands around pool environments and where there are slip hazards, et cetera. So, it feels like the design has to be incredibly intentional. You really have to take into consideration the circulation spaces, whereas less so in other kinds of things, where your circulation is what you do in hallways and the entryways, but not so much something you think about in other places. But here it's such an integral, kind of, part.
And you have to think about how the performance then interacts and risks the audience as well. I do like one of the points that Eric made, that this focus on how people experience a facility as an integrated whole, not as a collection of small, you know, "Wow, that tile work is great. Wow, that carpet work..." No one does that. We look at the whole totality. It feels like with athletic complexes where the builder really can come in is in quality control, in the QA. Because again, when you're doing inherently risky things, running on a track as fast as you possibly can, any defects in that track add to the likelihood that you could injure yourself. Defects in an artificial turf field.
So, focusing on that, sort of, quality assurance, the quality of materials, quality of workmanship, quality of the final product on an integrated whole basis, becomes incredibly important. Buddy and Eric could design the absolute best type of built environment, but if it isn't incredibly well executed on the builder's side, you've now built in a whole lot of... In fact, you may have completely negated the designed safety components because the quality is so bad. So, I'd love to hear what the rest of the group thinks about this.
[00:22:54] Jeff Johnson: That's a great point. So, as we start talking about the integrated, kind of, campus experience, Eric Jones, with that campus, we're talking about it's a full campus experience, so multiple students. Dr. Peterson is talking about, kind of, these elements of the different experiences, different types of spaces. So, walk us through a little bit, kind of, like the arrival experience and the way it, kind of, serves, kind of, daily life, and how does it relate to, kind of, that student experience?
[00:23:20] Eric Jones: Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. We really got a lot of wonderful feedback from the stakeholders about this topic specifically. The existing facilities that we are in the process of transforming did not have a separation of the spectator and the student-athlete. The coaches immediately brought up, "We need to change that." What we want to do is make sure that the students and the general population, the public coming in, they're not intermixing pathways because it's really for the students' safety, it's for the students' privacy as well.
The other thing that they brought up is that this project, and rightfully so, is as much about the campus, the general student who's going there for academics, and the faculty as well. So, the arrival experience into the campus is critical. What does this athletics project say about who Mesa is as a college? About how inviting it is for every student and every person who wants to come and visit this wonderful place.
So, the front of the project is designed to allow a promenade of shaded canopy under trees to come in, in a very smooth and accessible way for anybody of all abilities to be able to come into this campus and get glimpses into some of these athletic facilities without having direct access. Because we also wanted to make sure that the staff here during the sporting events could protect the spectators, the athletes, the fans, through monitored access points for home team and visiting team. They brought that up specifically that, you know, sometimes the home and visiting team, they don't like to be that close to each other. Especially in these heated competitions when the athletes are performing at their best, and the fans really want to participate as well.
So, everything from the bus drop-off point for the athletes to where the visitors are going to park to where their entry point is to the stadium and all of that was designed specifically to improve accessibility to the whole campus, improve the overall experience for the athletes and the spectators, and make it so that it is intuitive, that it folds right into the rest of the campus. This doesn't feel like it just plopped in from outer space. This feels like it was woven in and completely a part of who Mesa is.
One thing, for example, the bleachers that we are replacing at the stadium currently were an intermix of home and visitor fans that came because the parking lot was close to it. Unfortunately, those bleachers were facing the wrong orientation. They're looking directly west in the afternoon, which is a very hot and glaring location. And also, those bleachers were not centered on the 50-yard line. So, improving that whole experience by just centering it, separating the home and visitor to different sides, giving the home side the preferred seating with shade so that the visitors have a little bit of, you know...
[00:26:22] Eric Schultz: Adversity?
[00:26:23] Eric Jones: I don't know, a fair amount of intimidation when they come in, a slightly less comfortable seat as compared to the home side. But the experience overall for both of them is completely accessible and safe, and is separated entirely from the athletes as well. The other thing that we have worked on transforming for the campus is that the locker rooms on campus are all combined in an older style of locker rooms, the way that they were fit out, where everybody used one common space. They all were expected to use showers in one common space, and then move out to their sports.
Now, we know in a sense of belonging and to improve the overall sense and performance of these athletes, that team rooms are way more effective. That if a team can have a place where they can go and hang their bag, hang their gear, and change in a place where they can have the privacy they need, that ultimately their sense of well-being, their sense of safety, and their sense of overall performance into the sport that they're contributing to is going to be improved as well. So, we've transformed that older model of locker rooms into this team room and improved circulation across campus.
[00:27:30] Dr. Joel Peterson: I like what Eric brought up, because again, it points out the uniqueness of athletic spaces. Unlike the performing arts, where in the performing arts you want to make everyone in the audience and every person performing equally comfortable, in a sense of belonging and ability to perform at their best. But in athletics, you want to keep everybody safe, visitor teams and visiting observers as well, but maybe you want to have one side feel less like they belong and feel a little less welcomed, and a little more challenged to perform at their best.
So, it already tells you that, intuitively, people like Eric and Buddy who are in the business of designing athletic facilities already know that the built environment impacts human behavior and human performance. And then, in subtle ways, you are helping to maximize the performance for the home team and maybe not quite maximize it for the other. So, I find that a fascinating comment and point that you made, Eric, about things like orienting for the sun and that kind of thing.
But the one thing that is very clear is we are focused on everyone's sense of access, everyone's sense of safety, and we build that for everyone. But once you start getting into those higher levels of self-actualization and true meaning and belonging, maybe we could make the visiting team feel a little less like they belong and not quite at their peak.
[00:28:55] Jeff Johnson: Not as encouraged.
[00:28:56] Dr. Joel Peterson: Not as encouraged.
[00:28:58] Jeff Johnson: No, this is great, and I think the audience is starting to see how many little details go into a lot of these parameters. And as we were talking about it, Buddy and Dr. Peterson brought up about removing obstacles and improving access, that everybody has a direct connection. And really, what athletics can bring is this, kind of, branding of campus and district, and sometimes is the draw for students, retaining and recruiting talent. But overcoming these challenges, sometimes, Buddy, I was going to ask, for your project with City College, it's, kind of, a distinctive urban arrival. And there are a lot of topography, a lot of ramps.
So, you were working with the tunnel and all the lighting and the graphics and the perimeter strategy. How did you work through that process to still make it all seem welcoming and belonging?
[00:29:49] Buddy Gessel: Yeah, great question. You know, this is where the physical environment can communicate something to a student before anyone ever says a word. City College has this challenging urban condition, so instead of pretending that the conditions just don't exist, we asked, "How could we turn that into part of the identity of the athletics experience?" If you think about the student-athlete arriving on game day, for softball and sand volleyball, you arrive through this defined Game Day Plaza.
For soccer, you're moving through this tunnel that goes underneath the Highway 163 on-and-off ramp, and you emerge into that competition environment. And the sequence really matters, you know? It tells the students that you've arrived, like, this is your place, you belong here, and what you're doing matters because the college has invested in these facilities. And really, that goes directly back to Maslow and belonging as we start to look at designing these facilities. And we also think about the spectator experience, and that really drove some of the operational zoning on campus so that they have this sense of belonging and this welcome to come and experience, as a spectator, these great things that the athletes are doing.
At the same time, though, there are real security issues at City College, the campus has experienced vandalism and some unauthorized access. And so, we needed to address the perimeter, and we came up with a strategy that secured the complex without making it feel like a fortress, but still allowed for it to be inviting and open. And that just means, like, more visibility and lighting and thoughtful access points and how spectators and students arrive onto these facilities.
And we really had to think about using durable and maintainable materials that are designed to last and serve all the students in the future that get to use these facilities. And we really look at, like, the safety piece, and belonging shouldn't really be competing objectives, but good design accomplishes both of those.
[00:32:00] Jeff Johnson: Yeah, I love that idea, how making those challenges opportunities and really focusing on that experience and how can you use design to, kind of, create a positive atmosphere and again, removing obstacles. So, with that, for Eric Schultz, it was from a contractor's perspective that on your site you had substantial grade change and you had a large facility.
How'd you work with Eric and his team and, kind of, working through those trade-offs and finding best value, you know, working with the topography, circulation, operations, some of the different venue needs? How did that work?
[00:32:35] Eric Schultz: So, Mesa College, of course, it's not a blank site. It's an existing active athletics campus with existing facilities, utilities, circulation, and very real grade changes, you know, topography, as you mentioned. And that matters because every decision has downstream impacts. You know, you move a building and circulation changes. A change in elevation, an excavation, the retaining systems, ADA compliance, all are affected. A change of circulation around that area of campus, and you might affect emergency access or even just the day-to-day operations of the campus.
And so, nothing moves in isolation, and we have to recognize that as we work through our design process and with all the construction and logistics requirements that come after that. And so, the way we work through that, typically, it's, kind of, simple exercises, looking at every option, every, kind of, piece of the project puzzle, if you will. First off, it's always, does it work for the general population or the student-athlete? Does it work for campus operations? Will code authorities accept our design approach? Do we need to put in temporary measures during construction that the code authorities will allow us to use to recirculate traffic on campus during construction operations?
And then, always, you know, it comes back to, can we afford it? Right, with the rest of the project scope. So, not every variable gets optimized at the same time, I think is an important point to make. We bring in campus leadership and help them understand the trade-offs. And our job isn't just to say something is too expensive or it's too difficult, we want to come explaining the impacts that we foresee. We need to quantify it and then bring alternate solutions so decisions can be made on. And so, that's been working really well with our process and the stakeholders integrated with this project.
I'll touch on one specific example for the Mesa College Athletics Project, and that's the Throw Park. It's probably the clearest example of this process I'm describing. With the Throw Park, you have javelin, hammer, discus, shot put. Those events are real throwing sectors with clearances, specific dimensions, safety zones that all need to meet NCAA or CIF requirements. You can't just drop the Throw Park footprint wherever there happens to be leftover space on campus, right? The specific geometry of that Throw Park has to integrate with the surrounding campus, the access, the circulation, all those things on site that's already constrained.
And the campus itself is already constrained for parking spaces, so that's one of the specific items we've been discussing on how we place the Throw Park. So, with the site redevelopment, we, sort of, had to bend everywhere else to fit the Throw Park. And I think Eric Jones and I went through maybe 15 or 20 iterations in that process, when we probably budgeted six or seven, to help guide that decision with campus leadership. We ran the program through repeated design iterations and pricing options. It allowed us to put real information in front of the campus for that decision-making process.
[00:35:37] Jeff Johnson: There's always priorities and, like you said, getting the best value, working with the constraints that you have, you know, what is most important? Bringing those ideas or the iterations that your team, it's a great story in itself.
As we're sitting here, kind of, bringing this home a little bit about something that Dr. Peterson brought up, that it's still a teaching facility. This is still about student services. And I was wondering, Dr. Peterson, how do these spaces relate to kinesiology, training, coaching, health analytics, nutrition, there's so many different parts of this, relating to tutoring, counseling. How did this all, kind of, come back to this idea of an investment in athletics and how it relates back to some of our earlier principles?
[00:36:21] Dr. Joel Peterson: That's a really good point, because when you think of having an athletic complex, you say, you just think of the athletes and say, "Well, how many athletes do you actually have?" And that seems like maybe an overinvestment in too few students. But to your point, we have academic programs where people are studying to get the credentials to be, say, a physical education teacher, to become an athletic trainer, to be an EMT in environments, including things like public activities. We have a whole Firefighting Academy, an EMT Academy.
And so, having venues where they can actually learn their craft in the real world, where, of course, at an athletic event, with that many people congregated, the likelihood of having an injury to an athlete is pretty high, but also potentially to people in the audience as well. We have to make sure that we have the right kinds of spaces that allow people to do this. So, it isn't just a matter of having, to Eric's point, thinking about the athletic teams and their entrance and egress from the field, but we also have to think about how first responders might do things, and how we then have observational classrooms that could look out while they're also being able to provide instruction.
This is an opportunity when you have athletic programs also to have ancillary student involvement. So, you have students that are team managers who take the statistics, who help with the logistics of events. And so, people who are learning about... In our Culinary Arts program, many times we have concessions at these events that our Culinary Arts students may be involved in.
So, it's an opportunity for us to integrate a lot of different programs that we have in terms of the educational programs, and to be able to go ahead and bring in a real-world environment where you have peak performers that are going on, the active, engaged audience, but at the same time now you have coaches and teachers who can have a real-world laboratory.
To our voters, when we asked about if they would support this, we did characterize these places as kinesiology laboratories, and they are. They're active laboratories about how you go about teaching, how you go about performance enhancing, how you go about doing other supportive components. Our education program would be a deficit if we didn't have the kinds of facilities that allow us to be able to integrate it throughout the other kinds of programs that we have.
[00:38:41] Jeff Johnson: This is great. It's really starting to see, again, some of the richness and all the decision-making and the accountability that goes into this. Eric Schultz, multi-year construction can be a challenge, not to sacrifice the student experience for what's coming in the future. And so, how does a successful phasing look like for the track and field and other athletic programs, you know, when the existing needs to still stay alive?
[00:39:06] Eric Schultz: Sure. A lot of considerations, right, with your question. So, great question. We have to, sort of, look at it like we're creating a sequence of interim campuses along the way, with the phasing of the project. We get to this phase, and then we move students and change circulation, and we get to go over here and create our access and do this piece of the puzzle.
So, ultimately, we realize the current students, they only get one Mesa College experience. You know, a large portion of this athletics campus is going to be demolished, reconfigured, rebuilt, and there was going to be inaccessible areas over the life of construction. And so, we do have to work with the stakeholders and, kind of, establish those expectations early. But it's not just a scheduling exercise. We have to keep in mind the safety, functionality, and all those little interim pieces of the campus that are understandable for campus leadership, right? And how we're going to go about our construction plan.
The assignment is to, you know, we coordinate the demolition of existing campus areas to make room for the new project scope, right, basic idea. And in doing that, specific to Mesa College, we're resequencing the track and field resurfacing later in the project. So, finished work as we progress through construction isn't damaging the new track surface, because we will have a lot of heavy construction at the Mesa level and the field levels. We have to introduce alternate parking areas, alternate pedestrian walkways, temporary pedestrian lighting.
Also specific to our project, temporary sports field lighting when we're renovating areas around the stadium. Temporary scoreboards will likely be an element of our project. Temporary scoreboards is probably going to be an element of our project. Temporary campus wayfinding signage, of course. And then the basic things of working on an operating campus where our noisier construction periods, we need to make sure that the planning is not interfering with midterms, final exam weeks, things like that. We plan around those and schedule around those. All this to maintain operational campus circulation and while we're active in our construction zones.
So, safety is the core of it all. Students can experience that belonging, the achievement, and navigating our campus if it feels unsafe or confusing during the construction period. So, we need to put that first and forefront so the student experience is something that's welcomed every day on campus.
[00:41:20] Dr. Joel Peterson: I really like what Eric was pointing out. It's easy to think about, I mean, from a design perspective, you may be focused on what the facility will do in terms of how it's going to support student success and meet all the needs. But as the builders, they have to be cognizant of the fact that they are the physical environment from day one. And that current students are just as important and valuable, and we have a duty to them, to give the environment to maximize their success as much as future students who are going to come into this facility when it is fully done.
I like that, sort of, sense of owning it and realizing that we have to embrace the current environment and do the best we can. As builders, they're creating their own, sort of, structural design of the construction space and the sequencing. That's keeping in mind that these facilities impact all students. The best example I can give is, for instance, people say, "Why are you going to have two separate pools?" Competition pool and a, sort of, practice area.
Because part of it is one of the most participatory, highest participatory courses that we teach is just basic swimming. Most of our students come through, and many of them have never learned to swim. And so, we teach basic lifesaving, basic swimming. And we have things like police academies that we run. And again, those kinds of first responders, and we have a firefighting academy, they have to learn things like water rescue and so forth. So, these are programs that need the facilities to be able to do this.
And with such a large student population, we also need to make sure that we're not going to keep the competition from happening because they were so impacted, because all we're doing is teaching life-saving and basic swimming instruction. So, that's why we need sometimes more of a complex thing than what people might think if we're just thinking about swim team or the dive team. That's much more.
But I really liked what Eric Schultz was pointing out. Their focus on all students, present and future. That's a really important part that people, I think, sometimes lose when they're thinking about doing capital programs. It's from day one that we have to think about student success.
[00:43:27] Jeff Johnson: Yeah, a lot of times we don't understand the complexity. And almost as Eric was talking about, it's like a chess game, fitting in the right timing and making sure you're not crossing over one area or impeding on another.
And so, Dr. Peterson, you're talking about it's a design on itself. That's a great point. And speaking of that, there's so many differences between these two campuses. And to Buddy, I had a question that we have the same mission, but they're completely different, kind of, contrasting challenges. How do you take public campus, urban environmental, regional conditions like these and create a design response and still preserve the same student success goals that have evolved?
[00:44:08] Buddy Gessel: Yeah, I think that's one of the most important lessons from comparing these projects. The mission doesn't change, but the design response does. And City College is very different compared to Mesa. It's urban, it's constrained, and it's influenced by the surrounding roadways, with Park Boulevard that separates this complex from the main campus. You have Balboa Park, and it has limited available acreage as well for athletic use.
But the students' needs are fundamentally the same. You know, they still need to feel safe. They need to have that sense of belonging, they need the facilities that support their physical performance. And they still need those opportunities to learn and have access to an environment that communicates that their college is investing in them. And at City, as we mentioned before, the constraints actually become an opportunity for the identity, the tunnel, the urban infrastructure, the compact site, rather than seeing these as problems, we use them to create an experience that is distinctly City College in the design solutions.
[00:45:15] Jeff Johnson: Yeah. That's great. Similar to Eric Jones, you know, for the Mesa project, was there a point when you really, something connected that sense and design, like putting all these parameters together and you start to see, "Oh, this is going to make an influence," or "This is going to be a payoff"? Was it like through a route or a view or a student experience, a specific space or learning environment? Was there something that connected that?
[00:45:39] Eric Jones: Within the program of the facility, the stakeholders asked us to encourage and promote the students' success in athletics just as much as in academics as well. How can you find the blend of those spaces together?
And when these athletes are spending so much time at practice or so much time to be able to get all of their stuff ready, you know, change and get prepared for their sport, having a space nearby or even immediately adjacent to where they're going to be so that they can have a place to study, to get the support that they need, is going to help them not only be better athletes, but they're going to help them in academics, too. These community college environments are really a launch board for them and their future.
How can they get connected to their next step in life, whether that be transferring to other higher education opportunities or other athletic opportunities? Mesa is known as the place of Olympians, and there's been Olympians that have come out of this program, and I cannot wait to see how many more Olympians are going to come out of Mesa College that's going to be enabled by this athletic complex project that the district has invested in and the community has invested in. I think that it's going to really mean the sky is the limit for any of these students.
The sky is the limit for potential for even the coaching. The staff is going to be inspired by these new places that they're going to be able to operate in. They're going to be able to provide additional training and teaching, as Dr. Peterson mentioned, swimming lessons, for example. They currently have one smaller pool on campus.
When we're providing this 60-meter competition pool, it's going to enable them to do everything that they've been wanting to do from an athletic perspective and hosting the larger and statewide events that they want to, but there's also the instructional pool, a separate body of water that's specifically addressed and shallower and at a different temperature than the competition pool so that people that need to learn how to swim or even potentially want to learn how to do different things like paddleboarding or kayaking or any of the other areas where you need a body of water to be able to do that, the instructional pool provides these life-saving skills to students to be able to be successful not only in athletics but in their life.
I can't wait to see that happen here on campus. The gymnasium, as well, surrounded by all their spectators and everything, it's going to create an incredible and inspiring environment to compete in. At the same time, we're pairing that up right next to classrooms where they can be teaching about wellness, they can be teaching about kinesiology, and we're also providing the training facilities as well where, if they need the extra support to heal, there's going to be the facilities for them to be able to do that.
[00:48:35] Jeff Johnson: It sounds like there's a lot of places that are going to help connect and I think all of these conversations we've really been talking about are focusing on the student experience and really leading into that success. I know this is all still in design, but I know, Dr. Peterson, you've been seeing how this the designs have been evolving. So, if a student is walking through, say, City College athletics environment tomorrow, what's the one thing that they would notice that really tells them that they're special and that this space was designed for them in mind?
[00:49:08] Dr. Joel Peterson: Well, a lot of it is the signage that we do and the branding that we talk about to Buddy's point that, you know, there are subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which we literally have signs that say you belong here, and we go out of our way to try to make sure that happens. We created other environment, not just the built environment, but then we have a programmatic environment, of course. We have campus ambassadors, we have our own safety and security personnel that routinely are around.
So, we just make sure that people feel, again, that they are looked after, they are valued, they're welcome. As we say, we want you to come here just as you are, just to be, and that we will give you the environment and the tools to where you can feel that you belong, and those tools are going to help you become what you're going to want to become for the future, to find a pathway in your life, to move on to prosperity, and that's what we look for.
So, I'm just thrilled to be working with such professionals on the design and the construction team as represented here, and Jeff, thank you for taking us through this fun discussion on topic, and can't wait to have future discussions about some of our other projects that we have going.
[00:50:13] Jeff Johnson: Yeah, this has been great. I really appreciate everyone taking a part in this, and hopefully for the audience that we found out a little bit more about what San Diego Community College District is doing and how it's impacting their students. Just want to encourage everyone to join us next time in our next session, Student Success: Built by Design.
We'll be bringing back some of the team and looking at a little bit of compare and contrast about student experience and student success as it relates to performing arts and athletics. They're really, kind of, comparing how these, kind of, work together. So, thanks for everyone, and remember, student success is built by design.
Thanks for joining our podcast, Student Success: Built by Design. This series is brought to you by San Diego Community College District and its Measure HH Bond Program, whose goal is to further its education and student success mission. We'll see you next time.
Measure HH is a $3.5 billion voter-approved capital improvement bond program at the San Diego Community College District, transforming its 10 campuses, which are housed in four separate colleges that collectively enroll 90,000 students annually. Measure HH will impact nearly 1 million students in its first 10 years.