Laurie Hurson

City University of New York

“Perhaps it is time for the university to serve as a model of how our cities should be

designed. Realizing the full intellectual and emotional potential in students or citizens

depends on establishing a built environment that mirrors their need for human dignity.”

Harold Proshansky, 1977

Abstract

As President of the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), Harold Proshansky authored “The University and the City: some environmental considerations” (1977). In the paper he described the physical characteristics and social affordances of successful educational settings, particularly within urban universities like the one he presided over. Almost fifty years on, the affordances proposed by Proshanky continue to be critical elements of urban university campuses. Recent research conducted with CUNY undergraduate students revealed the enduring desire for the types of campus spaces that Proshansky described and revealed the important role of a new addition to college campuses: networked technologies. This paper highlights the lasting resonance of Proshansky’s environmental considerations and modernizes his vision by exploring how networked and educational technologies have become a critical feature on college campuses today.

Introduction

In 1977 Harold Proshansky authored “The University and the City: Some Environmental Considerations”, an adaptation of an address he gave while serving as the President of the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. In his piece, he described the physical and social affordances of successful educational settings, particularly within urban universities like the one he presided over. Almost fifty years on, the considerations proposed by Proshansky remain critical elements of effective learning environments in urban universities likethe City University of New York (CUNY). 

Recent research conducted with CUNY undergraduate students revealed an enduring desire for the types of campus spaces that Proshansky described. The affordances of an urban university that Proshansky outlined emerged in mydissertation research that exploresundergraduates’ learning ecologies, the networks of resources students use to progress successfully through their degree.  Interviews with students uncovered connections to Proshansky’s original ideas and highlight the integral role of a newer addition to college campuses: networked technologies.  

This paper traces connections between Proshansky’s“environmental considerations” for the urban university and the educational experiences of current CUNY undergraduates. By revisiting Proshansky’s vision and providing historical context from which his work emerged, this paper demonstrates how his original observations continue to provide a strong foundation for designing urban campus spaces. Recent research with undergraduates reifiesthe lasting importance of Proshanky’s contributions and advocates for the recognition of theinfluentialrolethat technology plays in present-day learning environments.

Looking Back: Harold Proshansky at CUNY

Like many of the students he would later mentor at CUNY, as a native New Yorker Harold Proshansky (1920-1990) grew up in the Bronx and attended the city’s public schools (Narvaez, 1990). He received his BA from City College in 1941and his Masters from Columbia in 1942, before receiving his PhD in social psychology from New York University in 1952. After receiving a full-time professorial appointment at Brooklyn College teaching courses in social and personality psychology, he joined the faculty of the newly-created CUNY Graduate School and University Center in 1963 (Andersen, 2011; Narvaez, 1990). He quickly took on more responsibility, serving as the executive officer of the psychology program, the dean of the university’s graduate school, and eventually became the Graduate Center’s longest serving President, a position he held for 18 years from 1972 to 1990.  (Rivlin & Denmark, 1995)

While at the CUNY Graduate Center he founded the Environmental Psychology program with William H. Ittelson, Leanne G. Rivlin, and Gary Winkel. The Environmental Psychology program wasthe first of its kind; early research endeavors attempted to shift “attention to the real-world physical environment and its effect on the behavior of the individual” (Rivlin & Denmark, 1995). Much of Proshanky’s research and writing would focus on what he called socio-environmental values, “broad, pervasive, and deeply rooted general standard[s] for determining and evaluating the relationships between the members of a society and their physical environment” (Proshansky, 1973).

The development of environmental psychology arose in connection withand in response to the social revolutions of the 1960’s(Rivlin & Denmark, 1995)and would soon be leveraged to examine urban changes brought on by major fiscal and cultural revolutions in New York City. Early in his career, Proshansky guided the CUNY Graduate Center through frenetic timeswhen CUNY enacted and subsequently revoked the Open Admission policy in the early 1970’s and suffered from financial instabilityin connection with New York City’s direfiscal crisis in 1975. During his first decade as President, Proshansky’s writing reflected hisdeep focus on the urban environment in which he was immersed. He warned against the assumptions made when designing urban environments (1973) and proposed that “the psychological and social consequences of urban life[were] still very much live issue[s]” (1978).When thinking about the effects of the urban environment on the individuals that inhabit city spaces, Proshansky’s“special interest [was] in the physical setting of the urban university as an effective learning environment… [and the] conditions that enable complex human learning to occur” (1977).

The Urban University& Students’ Learning Ecologies

In the late 1970’s the Graduate Center building where Proshansky taught and worked underwent extensive renovations. These events lead him critically consider how the university campus acts as a site for learning. Recognizing that there are many types of learning, he felt it was integral for a university to contend with the question: “What are the relationships between the physical properties of the setting and human behavior and experience?” Proshansky suggested that learning at the university depended “on how we design, organize, equip, use, and maintain the spaces and places in which the learning process involved in this setting takes place.” In other words, Proshansky recognized that as human actors, we move through the environment to determine its affordances, or the functional possibilities of our environment (Gibson, 1979). He suggested that university campuses could provide students with certain affordances that would make the campus a more effective sitefor learning.

With CUNY in mind, Proshansky contended that the urban university must address concerns particular to its geography and demographics. Situated in an urban environment, Proshansky contended that CUNY campuses might take on some of the “less desirable” characteristics of city life: ““Like the urban center, the urban university became a big and crowded setting...What was true for the city also became true for the urban university: there are far too many people to know, so that a faceless anonymity becomes the rule rather than the exception” (Proshansky, 1977). To mitigate these city stressors,a fruitful learning environmentin an urban university wouldneed to be “functional”,“attractive”, and “meaningful”, and provide students with spacesto interact with one another, while also offering access to personal and private spacesto focus, learn, and grow (Proshansky, 1977).

Recent research with CUNY undergraduates demonstrated that the affordances Proshansky originally described remain vital aspects of campus life. The learning ecologies framework emphasizes connections between physical, social, material, and cultural environments and posits that a networked ecology supports and facilitates a student’s learning processes. In recent literature, researchers have employed a learning ecology framework to understand the student experience by examining the networked relationships between peers, home, school, work, neighborhood, community, resources, activities, and networked technologies (Barron, 2006; Brown, 2000; Sheridan, 2015; Siemens, 2003).

Semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with 28 students across two urban, CUNY campuses, Baruch College and John Jay College. Located in Manhattan, both campuses consist of several buildings within adjoining city blocks and feature newly-built, high-rise towers that act as the center of the campus life.In addition to participating in the interview to discuss their academic experiences,students also completed a mapping exercise (Annamma, 2018;Butler-Kisber & Poldma, 2010; Kolar et. al., 2015)to create a “learning ecology map” in order to visualize the network of resources they interacted with throughout their college experience. The interviews and student maps indicatethat students sometimes (but not always) found their campus to be functional, attractive, and meaningful, though they often had difficulty finding private and personal spaces to work since the campus was typically over-crowded.

The libraries at the urban CUNY campuses function as an epicenter of academic and social life and serve as an integral space for getting work done and connecting with peers. Studentscast library study spaces asboth functional“serv[ing] the simplest and most mundane needs” and attractive, “worthy of the designation ‘college’ or ‘university’” (Proshansky, 1977). Students enjoyed working in welcoming and open spaces that offered variability: “I really like the library. It's really big and spacious, and there are a lot of different levels of quiet that you can go to” (Baruch Student #9). This student and others appreciated the combination of aesthetics and services the Baruch Library (Figure 1) offered, “the library is beautiful, it's all renovated and has a million places to sit, and they have great systems where you can go online to see how packed the computers are.”

Figure 1: Baruch College Library, 2nd floor (entry)

The libraries on each campus also functionedas “meaningful”spaces that“communicate[d] educational and academic integrity” (Proshansky, 1977). Students spent time in the libraryto network with peers and immerse themselves in the college experience: “we still hang out at this library. That's a huge part of college. Yes, a huge part of college is congregating in the library. I'm very passionate about this, because get your stuff done, you get to leave, but you form those bondswhen you've been four days with no sleep” (John Jay Student #4). The functional work stations, access to academic services, aesthetic design, and opportunities for community buildingposition libraries as a backbone for urban university campuses thatoften suffer from space limitations. In thelearning ecology for Baruch student #5 (Figure 2), the library provides access computers or a space to pass extra time on campus; the café on the first floor offer a space to take a break,eat lunch, and socialize with peers. Though situated within a larger network of resources, the library functions as a focal point in her academic experience.

Figure 2: Baruch Student #5 Learning Ecology

Though the library served many students’ needs, the compact nature of the urban university resultsin limited campus space and studentsoften had trouble finding a quiet place to work: “I can't even focus here on campus…it's noisy. I need it quiet. It's hard to find--The school is overcrowded.”To mitigate these issues, studentsdeveloped various strategies to avoid crowds and find quiet places to work.Studentssought out the most isolated desk in library, rented a group study room to be alone, worked in an empty classroom, and even located less travelled hallways in order to sit on the floor and read. These strategies demonstrate the students’ need for privacy, a “quiet and isolated place to study”,and a sense of territoriality to “establish a given spatial area as their own” (Proshansky, 1977). When asked how the school experience might be improved one student suggested: “something like a pod…where we have the opportunity to feel like we can put our stuff down and really let go…. [or]I'd like to have lockers…Somewhere where I could just leave stuff around” (Baruch Student #3). This student is seeking to “[express] a human need to be able to control some area…[to] be free to choose his behavior and experience in it, but also will have the power to include or exclude others from sharing this behavior or experience” (Proshansky, 1977).

Students’ strategies to locate isolated spaces and their desire to for lockers suggest that the affordances of effective learning environments Proshansky envisioned have not yet been fully realized onCUNY campuses. New buildings do provide spaces for students to congregate, for example theplush seating in the John Jay Atrium (Figure 3) and the often-mentioned “corner spots” for Baruch students (Figure 4). However, these areas often afford a transient sense of place, “Sometimes before classes I use those spaces they have, like tiny rooms, I read a little bit up there. But that's just if you're early for classes or something” (Baruch Student #14).The Atrium functions as a through-fare to classes and lacks noise-mitigating structures and the “corner spots” come furnished with small tables and standing computers with metal encasements. Thesefeatures make the spaces inefficient work areas; offering additional resources in these areas would allow students to take better advantage of the space.

Figure 3: John Jay Atrium Figure 4: Baruch College "Corner Spot"

Since CUNY colleges most often serve commuter students who live within and around the New York City areas, students usually carry everything they need for they day and develop a network of places where they can complete work on campus. This student articulated how the commuter-student campus often felt impersonal and disconnected, “At Baruch, there's always this commuter school that everybody's transferring out, everybody's just here for business and for the classes, and to just get in and get out.” Proshansky hoped that thoughtfully-designed university spaces might the impersonal nature of the city. Campus jobs and club areas offered study spaces where students could work and also have the opportunity to socialize with peers about a shared project.

Figure 5: Baruch Student #3 Learning Ecology

Baruch student #3 (Figure 5) spent most of his time in the “NVC”, the 14-story vertical campus on the 7th floor computer lab where he had easy access to printers and in the 3rd floor club area where he worked at the Baruch radio station and the Ticker newspaper. The couches on the 2nd floor offered a comfortable place to spend time before class. However, he reported doing his more intensive coursework at home in his apartment, “blue is the comfortable areas, and then the table here is just if need be, if I've got something that I really need to be annotating heavily, I can't do it with it in my hands so I end up doing it here.” His apartment offers what he cannot find on campus, a quiet and solitary place to work that offers multiple affordances that he can leverage to complete various types of schoolwork.

As Proshansky suggested,in addition to jostling for space students also must workto “compete to be seen, to be heard” in class. Social relationships with peers and professors shaped to students’ university experience. Pedagogical practices often determined how students perceived and engaged in their courses, “Business classes were really boring. [Professors] were just talking and talking with PowerPoint slides. I'll also record the lecture on my phone. So I don't need to be awake in class. When an assignment's due I'm like, "Oh my God." Then I listen [to the recording]" (Baruch Student #2). Students’ disdain for long lectures or classes with little peer interaction was prevalent. Students preferred courses where the professor “liked to hear students talk” and did not “disregard” student input throughout the course (Baruch Student #4). In courses where students found it difficult to engage or approach the professor, they developed strategies to pass the course such as recording lectures, searching for online resources related to the course, sharing notes, and seeking help from peers. A professor’s choices about course materials and their style of teaching determined the resources students needed to pass the course.

Understandably, for many students courses served as an organizing principle for their academic experience. The courses they took determined their time spent on campus, the materials and peers they engage with, and the resources they might access. Discussing students’ process for completing coursework and assignments emphasized the integral role that digital tools and networked technologies play in their university experience. The Baruch student’s learning ecology in Figure 3 depicts “the cloud”, the digital space where he stored most of his work so it could be accessed from any location. His digital ecosystem includes documents, social media, group chats, reminders, and university provided systems like Blackboard and CUNYFirst. Though it appears sectioned off in the cloud, students’ digital resources seemed deeply embedded within their academic lives, facilitating engagement across space and time.

Another Baruch student’s learning ecology (Figure 6) illuminates the embeddedness ofdigital resources in the students learning experience and highlights how courses serve an organizational function for students. In connection with her courses, this student used a range of digital tools to engage in her classes: a personal laptop that she brings to campus "most days", the QuickTime and Notes app on her Mac in class to take notes and record lectures, online resources like Connect for practice questions and Course Hero or Chegg for study guides, and the Adobe PDF app to read textbooks in the “corner spots” or on the train to and from school. Shemight also use the “librarian chat for sources” or a “friend group on [Facebook] messenger” to connect with others when she has questions. This student relies on digitalresourcesto support her learning across physical, social, and material environments. In her ecology and others, networked technologies appear to function as connective actors (Latour, 2005) that linkplaces, people, and course materials into an ecosystem for learning.

Figure 6: Baruch Student #6 Learning Ecology

Since students rely heavily on networked technologies to engage in their learning process, problems arose when they could not access the internet on campus. In line with past research at CUNY (Smale and Regalado, 2016), many students reported that inefficient or non-functioning Wifi networks hindered their ability to complete work on campus and print assignments for class, “theWifi was down last week. So that would make printing hard. You'd have to go back into the computers...So you have to wait forever just to print like two pages” (Baruch Student #6). However, similar to their navigation of campus spaces, students developed strategies for dealing with lacking university resources; many students owned a computer or tabletand students often completed tasks like emailing, reading, or brief writing assignments on their smart phone. They also identified locationson campus where they could consistently access a functional “wired” computer that was directly connected to campus internet. Outside of the library, computer labs were mentioned most often as ideal places to complete work. Specific affordances, such as type of computers available, printing access, and the environment within the computer lab (i.e. noisy, cold), lead students to choose certain computer labs over others.

Throughout their time in college, undergraduates adapt to urban university environment and identify the affordances that will assist them in progressing towards their degree. Though space is limited, they develop strategies to carve out personalized niches (Heft, 2007) to complete assignments, network with peers, study, and successfully pass their courses. Through these adaptation processes, students construct personalized learning ecologies to knit together physical, social, material, and cultural resources to navigate the university.

Looking Forward: Future of the Urban University

Revisiting Harold Proshansky’s environmental considerations of the urban university reveal that they remain pertinent, though perhaps underrealized, in today’s urban university. As illustrated here through the interviews and maps, student perspectives and experiences provide rich and detailed accounts of life on a university campus. However, these perspectives remain an often-overlooked resource. When determining how to design effective campuses spaces for learning, future planning should consider including and privileging student voices along with expert testimony in order to co-construct university environments that serve the needs of all the individuals who use them.

Reflecting on the urban university today, one might contend that the prevalence of networked technologies adds a new layer of necessary affordancesfor creating effective learning environments. Providing reliable wifi, wider access to computers on campus, and private and group workspaces with digital resourceswould create more robust learning environments for today’s students. Moreover, re-purposing spaces to reflect students’ reliance on digital technology could create more spaces where students would be willing and able to work. Installing desks or group seating on little used landings and creating “fast print” stations in wide thoroughfares may ease crowding in congested spaces like the library.Recognition that technology acts as a ubiquitous, structuring entity of everyday life (Gibson, 2010) would change the way campus spaces are utilized. For students, these technologies are not merely tools but rather foundational aspects of their environment and learning ecology. Students think, interact, and learn through and with their technologies.

To improve their university experience, students require increased access to reliable technology. However, access to technology represents only the first step when considering the digital and technological affordances that foster student learning. One must critically consider which technologies are offered at the university and how they are leveraged within the context of a student’s course to facilitate the learning experience. Proshansky was prescient when warned that our “value orientation of modern technology is pragmatic rather than humanistic” (1973). Technologies that situate learning as a process to be “managed” or corporate administrative systems that required students to identify with a ten-digit number sends a message to students that they are merely cogs in the bureaucracyof the university machine. Many of the technological systems in use at universities today approach technology pragmatically, viewing it as a solution to complex problems instead of as a medium that might allow for increased openness, creativity, and student-centered teaching and knowledge production (Watters, 2015).If “realizing the full intellectual and emotional potential in students or citizens depends on establishing a built environment that mirrors their need for human dignity” (Proshansky, 1977) it’s important to critically consider how networked technologies play a role in the university environment and how these technologies could function to foster humanistic student engagement in academic life.

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Figures

Figure 1. Baruch College Library, 2nd floor (entry); [Image]. (2017) Author’s Personal Photograph.

Figure 2.Baruch Student #5 Learning Ecology; [Image]. (2017) Image reproduction of student data.

Figure 3. The Social Cascade, Level 3; [Online Image] (2013).AIA New York Chapter 2013 Design Awards, Architecture.Retrieved June 15, 2019 from https://legacy-aia.aiany.org/John%20Jay%20College%20of%20Criminal%20Justice.pdf

Figure 4.Baruch College, Corner Spot; [Image]. (2018) Author’s Personal Photograph.

Figure 5. Baruch Student #3 Learning Ecology; [Image]. (2017) Image reproduction of student data.

Figure 6. Baruch Student #6 Learning Ecology. [Image]. (2017) Imagereproduction of student data.