Implications: University Space

Throughout its 252-year history, Columbia University in the City of New York has always grappled with its status as an elite university constrained by its urban environment.

From its first classes held in a schoolhouse adjacent to Trinity Church on Wall Street, to its midtown campus, and now at its Morningside Heights and Washington Heights locations, the blessing and curse of subsisting in the country's largest city has placed space issues at the center of the University's attentions.

University President Lee Bollinger's tenure has been no exception. Since taking over his post, Bollinger has repeatedly said that Columbia cannot keep up with its peer institutions without finding room for research, instruction, and other University uses.

"Unless Columbia locates a very significant space for the future, it will not be a great university 10 to 20 years from now," Bollinger said to a group of undergraduates in 2003. "It is simply a fact that Columbia must come to terms with this fundamental issue. When you start looking at it area by area, there's a compelling case for space-if not Manhattanville, then someplace else."

While a proposed campus in Manhattanville would not be completed for an estimated 30 years, Columbia's administration has taken steps to address its space concerns for the short term with plans to move several academic and administrative divisions to new locations and build the final piece of the Morningside Heights campus on its northwest corner.

This supplement takes an in-depth look into space at Columbia. How will a new campus located in West Harlem affect the nearly 21,000 undergraduate and graduate students that attend the school? What can be done to address the issue of space in the short term? Is the space that Columbia currently occupies being used efficiently? These are but a few of the questions that we endeavor to address.

Click here for the full list of articles from the supplement.