Case Studies College and University

Davidson College’s approach to athletics has never followed the conventional Division I script. Tucked just outside Charlotte, the institution has built a national reputation rooted not in scale or spending power, but in academic rigor, continuity, and a clearly defined identity. For Scott Applegate, deputy director of athletics, that identity has shaped both his career […]

From launching an automatic orbital welding program for installing high-purity stainless steel piping in pharmaceutical pilot plants to working as a sheet metal supervisor, Steve Eckert has accomplished a lot in his three-plus decades as a project engineer and in facilities management. He started his career in October 1990 as a project engineer at Summa […]

In 2013, when students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said they needed better recreation centers and a plan to improve the overall health and wellbeing of campus, administrators knew they were right. The two centers on campus were decades old and hadn’t been upgraded in years. In addition to being small and not having expected […]

MacEwan University may be in Western Canada, but the people who comprise the facilities department speak at least one word in Japanese: muda. That, explains Stephen Luyendyk, translates as waste or uselessness, terms that were anathema to him and his crew even before 2019, when an outside speaker put a catchy name to the many […]

With its skyline views, proximity to Boston’s downtown Freedom Trail and a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, it was a housing lottery ticket Suffolk University undergraduate students could only dream of: a room at the former luxury Ames Hotel. Approaching the fall semester of 2020, anticipation was building to welcome first-year students […]

Though the subject can’t be avoided, Stephen Vedral would rather discuss something other than COVID-19. For months it’s seemed an all-consuming concern for his Northern Arizona University facilities team, giving rise to what he calls the very contagious “COVID fatigue.” He also reminds that when he assumed his responsibilities at this Flagstaff campus in the […]

In 1865, just five months after the end of the Civil War, one of the parent institutions of what is now Clark Atlanta University was founded by two former slaves, setting the foundation for a school that is the oldest Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the South. The recently repaired bells inside the […]

Uprooting a brick house that is a campus landmark was not in his plans when Steven Pecic arrived at Detroit’s Wayne State University in 2006. Then again, neither was overseeing the entire facility’s operational portfolio and maintenance of the campus, or participating in the construction of the $65 million project that takes the place of […]

A mechanical engineer with a master’s from the University of Texas and undergrad credentials from Pune University in his native India, Sameer Kapileshwari raised eyebrows among his colleagues when he left a plum private-sector position to direct and manage facilities in academia 17 years ago. “My friends would ask why I’d go to such a […]