The latest in a continuing series of open forums focusing on the Mount Holyoke campus master-planning process will be held Thursday, February 8, from 4 to 5:30 pm, in Hooker Auditorium. Jennifer Jones, a principal with the firm of Carol R. Johnson Associates (CRJA), and Deborah Elliott, senior landscape architect there, will share their recommendations for the campus's landscape plan. Subjects that the firm will address include parking, vehicular and pedestrian circulation, possible siting for future construction, siting for outdoor art, issues related to environmental preservation, and the use of the botanic garden for teaching.

The forum is part of a process initiated by President Joanne Creighton in March 2000. At that time, she formed the Campus Master Planning Committee and gave its members—students, faculty, staff, and administrators—the following charge: through a highly collaborative and interactive process that engages the College's constituents, develop a campus master plan and landscape master-planning guidelines. To this end, the College commissioned studies to form the basis of a campus master plan that will include the botanic garden and buildings. Mount Holyoke has simultaneously embarked upon major building projects for its music, art, and science facilities and for Blanchard Campus Center.
Carol R. Johnson Associates is currently engaged with the campus in developing a landscape plan that will enable the intersection of ecological management, environmental education, preservation, renovation, and revitalization. In keeping with President Creighton's charge, the process has been a collaborative one, eliciting responses from all constituents, including alumnae and town residents, many of whom are frequent visitors to the campus. With the help of a Web site created by the Campus Master Planning Committee, Jones has already shared her early inventory of the campus with the College's various constituents and has collected their responses, which she is using to inform her recommendations.

Jones is addressing not only conservation and management issues but also the needs of faculty and students whose teaching and research depend on the landscape. She has also been working closely with the staff who manage the botanic garden to preserve and enhance the educational and aesthetic potential of the College's collection with a view toward strengthening the academic program and increasing the use of MHC's collection by non-College visitors.
Mount Holyoke's landscape-planning process will be the topic of a presentation at the April conference of SCUP, the Society for College and University Planning.

Learn more about the campus master-planning process at mtholyoke.edu/committees/cmpc.