Case Studies Education

To a lot of folks in southeast Springfield, Missouri, it’s more than just another library. Known as the Schweitzer Brentwood Branch Library, it’s located in a residential neighborhood rather than on a busy urban street. For decades it has been where countless children have discovered and sustained the joy of reading, and where their parents […]

The prospect of designing a building comes with infinite possibilities, and while this is what makes Paul Felder’s job fun, he believes it can also be a trap. “As an architect, you must know when to stop designing,” he says. “I’m not looking to push people out of their comfort zone or attempting to see […]

There’s more than a smattering of early 1970s idealism that’s sustained in Pennsylvania’s capital city of Harrisburg, and it’s a mindset that can cut across all political, ethnic and demographic lines. After all, most any constituency would favor an already desirable downtown becoming an even more livable and exciting place. And that has been the […]

The common denominator is everyone on campus—students, faculty, administrators, maintenance employees—has to eat, and they all agree it should be a pleasant experience. It hadn’t been that unpleasant at Vassar College; it just could have been better. The private liberal arts school in Poughkeepsie, New York, has long prided itself for forward thinking, but somehow […]

The Northeast power grid has been reliable as of late, but prudent clients don’t take anything for granted. Come heat wave, blizzard or flood, the coastal city of Bridgeport, Connecticut, isn’t likely to have to worry about outages, as the midsummer saw its municipal microgrid nearing completion. With the Branford, Connecticut, company of O,R&L Construction […]

How does a family-owned company in a small Heartland city get to be a global heavyweight in the competitive industry of rubber and vinyl commercial flooring while maintaining quaint in-house values that might seem more likely with a mom-and-pop operation? It’s a question that Dee Dee Brickner, marketing manager for Roppe Corp., never tires of […]

When throngs of Texans show up at the local high school football field on hot summer evenings, few think about who rigged up the bright “Friday night lights” that shine down on the players as they dart toward the end zones. If that particular stadium is situated in the rapidly expanding city of San Antonio, […]

The road paved with good intentions needn’t lead to someplace unpleasant. Quite the contrary, as long as good materials, state-of-the-art machinery and a capable work crew are included in the process. McAnany Construction Inc., an asphalt paving and construction company in Shawnee, Kansas, has long been noted for all of the above, and in the […]

Today’s university students are said to expect more variety and depth of experience from dorm-room life, quite a contrast to students of the past, who might have been happy with a single-sized mattress and couch. This has motivated schools like Saint Michael’s College to provide a selection of suite and apartment-style residence halls, offering students […]

Wichita, Kansas, is in the heart of Tornado Alley, the swath of south-central U.S. states especially prone to the most severe wind and hailstorms. According to the Tornado History Project, since 1950, Kansas has seen more than 4,000 tornados. Hundreds of those have passed through Wichita. Then, there’s hail. According to the National Oceanic and […]