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[Speaker 7] (0:00 - 0:29) workshop. It's six o'clock on Monday, June 8, 2026 and we have seven regents in attendance. One Regent Thomas is online with us and Chairman Santana will be joining us shortly.

So we do have a quorum. We will move right into agenda item number two which is the facilities master plan update from Lugar.

[Speaker 1] (0:30 - 1:14) Good evening. First, I'd like to thank everybody for taking time out of their schedule. I know this wasn't a planned meeting but we're very excited to have the opportunity to brief the Board of Regents on the progress that we've made thus far on the master plan.

So we've been diligently working for the past four months behind the scenes which seems like probably quite some time for everyone. I know it's been a long time coming and we'd like to share the progress made to date with everybody. That's all right.

I can wing it.

[Speaker 12] (1:14 - 1:29) You can take it out too. Well if you can hear me, if I can project from here then even better.

[Speaker 1] (1:31 - 2:07) Okay, well thank you everyone. Appreciate it. Well thank you for the technical assist.

Appreciate it. So I wanted to share with you a little bit about where we are in terms of the schedule. We started off towards the end of January and been working in the first phase of the full master plan.

So the master plan is broken into four distinct phases. The first phase being the discovery phase which is usually the phase that takes.

[Speaker 11] (2:27 - 2:38) Hello? No, thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:45 - 27:31) So as you can see for the past four months each circle represents a touch point. The type of touch point is denoted by the legend. So we have had a series of touch points.

If there's a numerical number within the circle that you see, that is either a date that we had an actual touch point or future touch points just so you can reference and follow along. And where we are today, the 8th of June, we're happy to tell everyone and inform everyone we've moved out of the first phase of discovery and moved into what we call ideation. So discovery is mostly a data collection and listening
and understanding moment for us because we don't have the same institutional knowledge as all you or people that work either staff or faculty at Lee.

So we're at a slight disadvantage and then we spend that time really ramping up our knowledge and understanding of what makes Lee tick, what are the pluses, what are the concerns, where the opportunities lie. And that can only happen through immersive work sessions, listening, really trying to delve into the material. So it does take a while for us to get to that point where we feel like we have enough understanding and confidence in order to proceed with the master plan.

So that's really what's been happening for the past four months. And that's why at this moment we finally have reached that point of pivoting to really actively starting to work on the more traditional parts of the master plan. Just wanted to briefly tell you what was going on during the discovery session and what makes up the whole phase.

So the first thing we do when we start on a project is we have what's called a visioning. So a visioning session is really a work group that combines the governance behind a master plan. So the governance of a master plan is broken into three types of groups.

The first group is the steering group, the second group would be the working group, and the third group is called the focus group. So think of the steering committee as the approval group. They're the ones that really at the end when there's decisions to be made, make those decisions.

The working group is a group of folks that we work with on a daily basis and they help facilitate. They facilitate information we need. They facilitate answering questions that we have.

They really affect our partners. They're our counterparts here at Lee College. And then finally, the focus groups, think of them as your subject matter experts.

So whenever we come across through the discovery session aspects that require a greater detail, greater knowledge or understanding, we then really delve into it through focus groups. And so the first one being a visioning, pull together all those groups. What we do there is we really try to establish what we call are the guiding principles.

So think of the guiding principles as your goalpost, if you will. So those are the rules of engagement when doing the master plan. When we come to the fork in the road and the decisions to be weighed, whether to go this direction or a different direction, we always fall back on the guiding principles.
The guiding principles is what are the established rules as to the why. This is what we're trying to do. These are the priorities.

This is the lens that we'll see it through. And so as you can see, it's very interactive. It's meant to engage the folks here at Lee.

It's not for us to tell you what you need. It's for us to discover. And so we ask a series of questions and we always root those questions against your pillars.

So we look at your strategic plans. We look at your academic plans and we look at what your pillars are. And we ask questions relative to those pillars.

And in that way, when we get feedback, it's germane to Lee College. Through that process, there were five guiding principles that were established. And so what ended up happening is during the visioning, we would have all of this feedback through people putting posted notes on various pillars, basically.

And so taking that into consideration, we then analyzed all the various feedback we have, which is identifying the top issues, the top challenges that are facing Lee currently and for the next projected 10 years. And in doing so, we worked with the working group over a series of workshops to fine tune that. And then at the point in which that was fine tuned, we would go to the steering committee and walk them through what we discussed in the working group.

Again, it would also go through a little bit of adjustment and refinement. And through that, this are the five that we established for Lee College. And so in future exercises, these are the five goalposts that we will use when prioritizing and deciding on different patterns that relates to the master plan.

The discovery is broken into a couple of different activities. So for us as architects, a lot of our activities are focused around different types of workshops and different types of analytics. So we conducted between February and May, a total of nine workshops, three of them being steering committees, three working groups, and three focus groups.

We also conducted seven different analysis, IT and security analysis, facility programming, facility assessment, campus analysis, wayfinding traffic, and then we did a survey. So the survey was a relatively comprehensive survey, meaning it's available to all those that are either faculty, staff, students, or even members of the community they so desire. And so with that survey, unfortunately, the timing of the survey was just a little bit off.

So it really hasn't taken in a lot of the student input yet, but that
survey is still valid and will be available for students, both in the summer and when they come back for the fall semester. So I will say that this survey is absent the student input that we seek. So we expect when we get the student input, that it will change some of the responses or some of the dynamics, but not significantly.

We think there'll be, you know, each category of people respond to the surveys have different desires and different things that they prioritize. So that's usually very reflective in the service that we conduct. But just so you see that we've had 157 different responses, 64 percent have been on campus that attend on campus five days a week.

And you can see some of the other stats. You'll see that we had 83 staff, 56 faculty, predominantly Baytown campus, a little bit of McNair, and also online. So this is one data point that we have looked for.

So it's one data point. It's not necessarily the be all end all, but we take that into consideration. That's part of the discovery phase is collecting data.

This is a data collection exercise for the most part. Some of the other things that we can share with you so far in terms of the survey, you know, what we would say is the preponderance of the response really feels safe at Lee College. In terms of just the perception of safety, you can see that approximately 89 percent of the respondents say they feel safe here.

So when responding to the survey, we do not in this survey have a neutral stance. You have to make a choice. It's either you strongly agree or agree, or you disagree or strongly disagree.

That, we think, gives us a more honest response where people have to decide as opposed to neutral. So we eliminate that neutral because neutral really doesn't inform us of much. We really want to understand.

And as you can see, some of the things that people are least satisfied with is predominantly the signage and the wayfinding of the exterior buildings. But generally, you'll see that there's quite a bit of consensus on the positive so far in the surveys. The other thing that we afford them is an opportunity to make comments and references directly.

So I'm happy to say that in many cases, most do. So you'll see that we had 80 people mention the sense of community and people. And we even pulled some example quotes directly from the survey so that you can get a sense of what people are saying in their survey.

Some of the other things that were strengths through the survey were
the trees and the greenery, the historical heritage, and the fountain and gathering spaces. So those are all real positive feedbacks that people took the time in this survey to state that specifically. Some of the concerns, there were 22 respondents that specifically named Moeller Hall.

Also with Huddle, there's 21. So we started to analyze that, and you can see that some of the responses were what we would call easier fixes or low-hanging fruit, things like your signage and your sidewalks, whereas some would require quite a bit of resources, particularly capital resources. So replacing or renovating Moeller Hall, for example, would be capital intense.

So that just gives you a sense of what they're saying specifically. In terms of leveraging, this is a four-square diagram. So the upper right corner are the things that you should protect, that you should continue to leverage.

The bottom right corner are easy, what we deem as relatively low-cost opportunities for you to leverage. The upper left corner are basically ones that, through the survey and the number of times they're being mentioned, are probably ones that you want to address sooner rather than later. And then ones to kind of keep a watch out for, the lower left corner.

Those are being mentioned, but maybe not the same veracity as the upper left. With me today online, I have Terry Phillips. So Terry is part of Facilities Programming.

We enjoy a wonderful working relationship with Facilities Programming. Now, they're the ones that conducted the utilization analysis. So by no means am I the expert.

So if you want to delve into particular questions that you may have after, Terry's available online to maybe get a little bit deeper into answering some of those questions, where think of me as just more of a generalist, so to speak. So I'll do my best, but I have reinforcements. So what Terry and his group looked at is they have a full report, so that's been provided to Lee College.

So the nuts and bolts of it is there if you want to delve into it. But this is more of a high-level summary. So Facilities Programming looked at both your classroom utilization and your lab utilization.

So it's those two spaces. So this particular utilization includes all of your spaces that you have, all the inventory. And you have 17 unassigned rooms.

So it obviously skews the results when you are factoring in 17 classrooms that are unassigned. So in doing so, and if you benchmark
that against the metrics established by the state of Texas, in terms of your fill rate for classrooms on average across the entire campus, your fill rate is approximately 50.2%. Your target wants to be 65%. So and the average hours per week wants to be 38, and you're currently at 7.5. And if you look at the bottom left graph, you'll see that John Britt is meeting those standards, while the others are falling short to various degrees. And then some of the key takeaways is obviously John Britt. There's seven buildings that are below 50%, and your hours scheduled is a big gap. So that's what this one says in a snapshot.

Now if we were to look at it from removing the unassigned classrooms, we have that analysis too. So let's suppose for a moment that those unassigned classrooms are not considered in the utilization. Let's just look at how we're utilizing the classrooms we do use.

So if we look at that, obviously it gets better, which is something we would expect to see. You can see now that you are on an average for the campus at 66.5%, which is at the target just above. So you have that.

However, your hours, although improved, are still not where they need to be. And you can see that a good portion of the buildings are getting the fill, but they just aren't getting the hours. Now if we look at the labs, it's a similar picture.

So with the labs, there's one building that's, I would say, overleveraged, which no longer is with us. So keep in mind that this utilization analysis was done last year. So that's why it's showing TV8, although I know that's no longer online and been demolished since.

But with that, you were at 56.9% fill, where your target was 75%. Your target hours is 11.5%, where you're wanting 25%. If we were to take the 10 unassigned labs off and not consider it in the utilization, your lab fill would still be below average, but obviously improved to 65%.

And likewise with the hours per week. So ultimately, what we're saying is, from a utilization point of view, you're not quite where you want to be in an ideal situation. So effectively, you have a lot of inventory of classroom spaces, and you're not able to use it.

And what it's saying is, you have a lot of smaller classrooms that are on the smaller side that don't have the capacity, really. And so that's why you have a large number of them that just aren't being used at the moment. Ideally, what you would like to have is probably a few more larger classrooms, so to speak, where you could really leverage it more on an efficiency point of view.

So that can be achieved a multitude of ways. But this is where I'm
probably getting a lot of expertise to speak to. But it does afford you a lot of different opportunities to look at, basically.

So it's not the end of the world. It just tells you where you are right today. And it allows you to make some informed decisions.

I wanted to also say that we had Alpha Solutions, which is one of our consultants, came here back in May and did a facility assessment. So they worked with John and Phil and Mark and the rest of the team, first looking at what's already been previously documented. We understood that you had a little bit of a misstep previously.

And so we had to go back to one that was done in 2019. We looked at that. We looked at the work that has been done since 2019 assessment.

So we discounted that. And so some of the buildings, we started as if they never had an assessment done. Some of the buildings were, after looking at what was said in the assessment of 2019 versus what's been done, we looked at certain systems, like your HVAC, your roof, but didn't necessarily look at your interiors as hard.

We just took what was there available from the previous assessment and rolled that in. And then there's certain ones that were already deemed and understood that those were going to be taken offline. So we didn't feel it was justified to use the college's money to repeat an assessment where it's already been documented that those buildings were meant to be demolished.

So that was kind of the scale and kind of the gradient in which we conducted the assessment. So in doing that, we also looked at the age of the building. We looked at the year that each system was put into place.

And so those systems can be the HVAC, it could be the electrical, it could be plumbing, it could be the building envelope, so on and so forth. And we benchmarked that against the 20-year life cycle and look at where it is in their 20-year life cycle so that at the end of it, we would develop a one-year FCI score, meaning in one year's time, if we wanted to bring all of your facilities up to just standard, meaning all of the maintenance has been addressed to just what the building is today, not necessarily what you aspire the use of the building to be, just simply we just want the building to be exactly as it is functionally, but all of the maintenance is complete. So that's the one, we look at that from a one-year perspective and we look at that from a five-year perspective.

And in addition, we also outlay a 20-year capital improvement plan for all your systems for all of the buildings. So we have submitted that report, so that also is a report that's available to the college. Some of the other highlights, just so you kind of get a sense.
And these were really kind of the high-level highlights, just so you can get a snapshot. And again, like all things, some buildings need more love and some are very well-loved. So you can see that McNulty Haddock pretty much is a low priority, didn't have a lot to say, whereas your Muller Hall is critical.

It has several issues, including foundation and potentially structural issues, the exit doors are compromised. So it would require greater study just to understand the full ramification of what that means for that particular asset. Whereas, you know, everything else is kind of somewhere in between all of that, where John Britt has moderate priorities, where Huddle has several high priorities.

So these are just kind of the high-level takeaways. Then as you recall, this is the one-year FCI score. So if you look at it from a color code, you'll see that there's quite a few that are in good condition, and there's a few that are in fair condition.

So don't let the verbiage necessarily get you down, it's just a score. But what I would say, poor and critical are definitely ones that you're going to want to address. And so that's just to bring it up to current maintenance standards.

It's not to say that if you addressed it, that suddenly Muller can be a great classroom building. It may not. It may not be suited for that purpose.

It wasn't built for that purpose. So if you wanted to be transformed into a different purpose, that's not considered in this FCI. So that would be, in addition, we would then figure out what is it that you want it to be, and we would then say, that's fine, we would establish the cost on a dollar per square foot basis to transform that building into something else and add it in.

And then the general rule thumb, when you take all that into consideration, and that cost meets or exceeds 50% of the replacement value of the entire asset, then it's probably in your better interest to actually take it offline and build a new, because you're going to get exactly what you want, and there won't be a compromise, because you'll never get exactly what you want, because you're dealing with something that's existing, and you'll always have to make compromises.

Now, when it comes to just a pure FCI score on this metrics, if it's critical, that's scoring 30% of the value of the building, just so you have a kind of understanding when it says critical. So if you're just bringing something that was critical, that was 30%, and it takes more than 20% to do the renovation to make the building fit for purpose, then that's probably where you want to rethink whether or not it's a building worth keeping. And then poor is generally between 15 and 29%
generally for this, for their particular rating system

And again, if it's on the higher side of poor, and you have to renovate, and it starts to meet 50% or more replacement value, then you probably want to really think about it hard. So that's all that means. If you look at it from five years out, if you do nothing, you kind of let the five years keep going, then obviously there'll be more maintenance issues.

And you can see that at that point, you have two buildings, your north central utility plant and Mueller go critical on you anyways, just for the amount of maintenance that you're going to want. And several buildings start to score poor. So obviously, that's not something you want to do.

You don't want to let this linger out for five years. In terms of next steps, what we've done is we've had the ideation kickoff. And so, ideation is basically taking all the top priorities that have been identified to date through the discovery session and working through them.

And so, because it's a fairly comprehensive set of priorities, we don't generally, it'll take many, many workshops. And we tend to focus on bits, you know, very strategic parts of the priorities. And we say, okay, today we're going to talk about parking.

And we're going to present a series of things to consider. Eventually, it all kind of comes together. So, ideation is really an exercise of going through various scenarios of what-ifs in order to address all the priorities and all the challenges and issues that you wish to be addressed through this particular master plan.

So, we also have a working group coming up next week, I believe. Or is it tomorrow, I believe? It is tomorrow.

I'm falling behind. We are also going to start to conduct another set of focus groups. So, some of the focus groups, although I didn't list it, is really about the student experience and student services.

Some of it is about programming. We understand that there's the potential and discussions in the past about maybe adding a few programs, whether that be petrochemical or augmenting them. So, we'll have discussions around that.

And then, of course, the steering committee, always trying to keep them abreast. So, the cadence of our meetings are generally working groups are every two weeks, and the steering committee is every month. So, with that, I would love to answer any questions. I know I probably missed quite a bit, and you probably have a fair
amount of questions. I'll do my best to respond and give you more information.

[Speaker 4] (27:45 - 27:53) Yes. Oh, sorry. So, it looks like, just a question, a quick observation.

It looks like our We had the same question.

[Speaker 1] (27:54 - 28:48) If you're saying, why does it look good in 2026, and suddenly in five years from now, it's gone critical. Great question. I asked that very question of my team, and we looked at the report, and it simply said, this year, we'd really have to go back to alpha and ask why.

I can only surmise that, and this is me opining at the moment, but what I'd say is somehow, some of the critical systems are still under their normal life cycle, and then in five years from now, they've gone past their life cycle, and it's probably they can't just simply fix it or patch it, that it's like a full exchange of a system altogether. So, I can only imagine that it's because of the nature of it being a central utility plant, it could be a fairly big replacement of a system.

[Speaker 4] (28:49 - 28:49) It's all equipment, right?

[Speaker 1] (28:50 - 28:55) Yes. So, that's what I'm assuming. There's something that just has to be, it's, you just can't.

[Speaker 4] (28:55 - 28:57) Right on the edge right now, and Right.

[Speaker 1] (28:57 - 29:27) But you'll get five years out of it, and then that fifth year, it's just a full replacement. Right. So, the current replacement value of the North Cup is somewhere in the 2.9 million range. So, that's just raw, hard material costs. That doesn't include any of the soft costs, when I say that number.

[Speaker 4] (29:28 - 29:29) I'm not picking on that one.

[Speaker 1] (29:30 - 29:40) No, but it's a great point. I'm happy that you saw that. That means that you're sharp, and you're looking at everything.

So, I feel good that the effort that we've done, that somebody's looking at it.
[Speaker 4] (29:45 - 29:47) It is a little hard to see the difference between poor and critical.

[Speaker 1] (29:48 - 29:51) Yes. At first, I was like, yeah.

[Speaker 4] (29:52 - 29:56) So, they look like all fair and critical to me.

[Speaker 1] (29:57 - 30:00) Again, fair is still a good score.

[Speaker 4] (30:00 - 30:05) It's still. So, 2026. Apparently, nothing's critical.

[Speaker 1] (30:06 - 30:07) No, nothing is critical.

[Speaker 4] (30:07 - 30:10) Okay. Well, till you look at the next one, you see it. The next one is, yes.

[Speaker 1] (30:11 - 30:19) But that's making a presumption that you would be negligent as custodians, and not implement any kind of regular routine deferred maintenance.

[Speaker 4] (30:20 - 30:33) We're nothing critical right now. I'll let in one of my questions. But these, see all these right here?

None of them are critical. But you don't know that looking at, till you look at that one. Yep.

[Speaker 1] (30:34 - 30:54) But also, understand that the categories have a wide range of ratings. So, as I said, poor can range from 15 to 29%. So, that's a 14% swing.

So, Mueller may still be showing us as poor in 2026, but it's at the higher end of a poor.

[Speaker 7] (30:58 - 31:00) So, you said you have a report?

[Speaker 1] (31:00 - 31:03) We do. And so, yes, we shared that report with John and his team.

[Speaker 7] (31:03 - 31:04) When might we see that?
[Speaker 1] (31:04 - 31:05) I'm sorry?

[Speaker 7] (31:05 - 31:06) When might we see that?

[Speaker 1] (31:07 - 31:10) As I understand it, it's really at the discretion.

[Speaker 4] (31:14 - 31:15) Complete?

[Speaker 11] (31:16 - 31:20) Yes. Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (31:20 - 31:24) So, you finalize. Yes.

[Speaker 1] (31:25 - 31:30) To be fair, it was received at the end of May. So, it's only been about a week or so.

[Speaker 4] (31:33 - 31:45) We were used to, you know, the last facility condition report, the assessment report, we had copies of. You know, you could look building by building, and you could see everything that was needed, you know, that was immediate.

[Speaker 1] (31:46 - 32:43) It will have that along with pictures. So, they'll have photographic backup to the assessment. So, there's a summary, which is about a 50page, and it's broken into four different categories, academic, admin, so on and so forth.

And then each of those categories has the collection of buildings and where they belong within those headers. And so, then there's four subreports, and each one of those contain building by building, depending on which one they belong to. And in that, you'll see a cover sheet for that building.

It'll have a picture. It'll have the year it was built, so it's salient information. It'll have the current replacement value of that building.

It'll have, really, the high-level summary. And then it'll have the data to back it up, starting with photos and a narration of what they saw. And then it'll get into a spreadsheet type of representation of costs.
[Speaker 4] (32:45 - 32:47) And all that costs is 2026 numbers?

[Speaker 1] (32:47 - 33:15) It is, yes, and it only is the hard costs. So, it doesn't include things like labor. It won't include inflation, because that's the only way you can have an apples-to-apples comparison.

So, the current replacement is based on hard cost, and the actual cost to keep up with the particular system is hard cost only. Because it depends on when you decide to implement, that cost can go up based on the soft cost alone.

[Speaker 6] (33:20 - 33:25) On the classroom utilization overview slide.

[Speaker 1] (33:27 - 33:31) Would you like to go to the one that has the 17 unassigned?

[Speaker 6] (33:31 - 33:44) Yeah. So, what that 50%, that means that when we use the classroom, we're using it 52% capacity. Is that right?

[Speaker 1] (33:45 - 33:55) So, when you take a total of all your classrooms, 62 in total available, um, that counts against your average, because 17 of them you're actually not using.

[Speaker 6] (33:56 - 33:56) Right.

[Speaker 1] (33:57 - 34:00) But yes, it's saying that 50% of them are filled.

[Speaker 6] (34:01 - 34:16) And so, the hours, so, when we use it, we're pretty close to filling it. But the problem is, we're not using it. We use it seven and a half hours per week, and the target ought to be 38 hours per week.

[Speaker 1] (34:16 - 34:16) Correct.

[Speaker 6] (34:17 - 34:19) So, we're filling it.

[Speaker 12] (34:20 - 34:23) We're just not using them enough. Yes.

[Speaker 8] (34:29 - 34:43) Do we know why the TV, like, four and TV one and TV five, why it's got
such low utilization? Are the rooms just not usable because of the shape and age? Or is it programming?

[Speaker 1] (34:43 - 34:51) I can't speak to the why. This is kind of just cold facts. So, I don' really, can't, can't really opine on that one.

[Speaker 8] (34:51 - 34:52) You answer that one?

[Speaker 12] (34:57 - 34:58) I can opine.

[Speaker 8] (34:58 - 35:03) Okay, that's fine. I will take it.

[Speaker 12] (35:03 - 35:03) I can't, too.

[Speaker 2] (35:05 - 37:33) So, when we look at how many classrooms we have available, right, the more desirable classrooms are going to get scheduled first, and the least desirable classrooms are going to be scheduled less. And when you have so much capacity, right, 38 hours per week is our target. We're averaging 7.5 hours or 10 hours a week in each classroom. The classrooms in the old TV buildings that are the least desirable space on campus are the ones that are going to get scheduled the least often, which is why those numbers are so low. If you go to the next page that takes out the vacant, there, that's where this really becomes reflected. You can see the buildings that are more popular in the way that the classrooms are scheduled than the buildings that hav the least desirable space.

This is a, it's a significant opportunity, but it's an issue that we have to consider. With 10 or 12 hours per week on average in each classroom, it means that even with our popular classrooms, we have tremendous capacity to use those at a much higher rate. Schedule more classes at different times during the day and different times during the week in order to utilize that same space.

The fact that the classrooms are mostly full is good. That speaks to our efficiency in the use of faculty and actually teaching our students. The hours per week speaks to our efficiency of actually utilizing the space.

And so one comment that I think is worth noting in the report, we don't offer very many classes from one till five, right? We're busy i the morning and we're busy in the evening, but from one to five, we don't have hardly any courses scheduled. But we can almost double our capacity by just scheduling during those four hours during the day in
terms of the total number of classes that we offer

So we have tremendous flexibility to shift space, to reutilize or repurpose space on campus and not have a significant negative impact on our course offerings here on main campus.

[Speaker 9] (37:33 - 37:43) Is it also safe to assume that when Barber's Hill comes online, these utilization rates on main campus will probably go even lower?

[Speaker 2] (37:44 - 37:57) If we don't pick up any new enrollments because of that, then the 500 Barber Hill students, we presume many of them would stay in Barber's Hill and attend school there and that would drive the utilization down.

[Speaker 4] (37:58 - 38:05) That would be based on what they're trying to achieve. They're only offering so many programs there.

[Speaker 9] (38:05 - 38:13) But if you're just going as to get the basics out of the way and you can get the basics out of the way there, then.

[Speaker 2] (38:13 - 38:26) It's simple mathematics, right? We're adding 60,000 square feet of space. If our enrollments do not go up, then our utilization will go down because the denominator is going to go up.

[Speaker 9] (38:26 - 39:05) So the other thing, okay, so we're at record enrollment, but the way we teach has evolved, okay? So this same enrollment, if it were in the 90s, okay, or even the 80s, then that same enrollment, you'd have a higher classroom utilization because of the way the classes are taught. Almost double.

Right. Yes. So technology is part of why our utilization rate, because teaching has changed.

[Speaker 2] (39:06 - 39:08) That is an accurate statement. Yes

[Speaker 7] (39:08 - 39:42) We also talked about in the building committee meeting about the size of our classrooms and how small they are and that if we had larger classrooms, we could put more students in there, which is a better utilization perhaps for the faculty member. It may or may not be good for the student. Maybe the smaller classrooms are better for them, or maybe it doesn't matter to them.
It depends on the student, right? But you might could get, but you wouldn't use as many classrooms. If you could make them larger, combine two classrooms, for example, you could get more students in there, less faculty members involved.

[Speaker 2] (39:44 - 40:58) That's true, and that is really a reflection of the teaching strategy that has been developed through the construction of these facilities over time, right? The number of smaller classrooms that we have indicate that at least when those facilities were constructed, the strategy was keep the class size small, keep the interaction between student and faculty member as high as possible. And so that was intentional and a part of our ongoing strategy.

Now, as an institution, I don't think any of us want to become, you know, U of H where we've got a 500 seat arena and one professor, right? But finding the correct balance for the way that we like to teach now is part of the hopeful outcome of this process. If all of our unassigned classrooms are on the very small side, well, then that's an indication that our teaching strategy has maybe gone away from the very small courses to more of a moderate, mid-sized classroom, right?

And that should be taken into consideration as we look at how we shape and develop our spaces in the future.

[Speaker 4] (40:59 - 41:20) The other opportunities we have without looking at the specific buildings, we may have critical buildings and we can tear them down and we don't need to replace them. But we don't need to replace space that we're not using. We could just have some shift.

Yeah, I mean, more parking instead of more buildings aren't being used.

[Speaker 7] (41:20 - 41:21) Or green space for the students.

[Speaker 4] (41:21 - 41:36) More outdoor learning spaces. Kind of shift the culture of the campus. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I haven't looked at the exact buildings, but if we have some critical buildings that are not being utilized, then why are we replacing them?

[Speaker 2] (41:36 - 42:20) And I think it's fair to say, Chris, that will be a big part of the discussion from this point going forward. Yes, as a matter of fact. This is not an evaluation or a suggestion of how we should use the space.
No, this is just data. But just data. But to your point, one option would be to potentially take buildings offline without replacing them

Now, if we take Muller Hall offline, for example, it has a kitchen an some specialized space that we don't have anywhere else. So we could take it offline, but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have to remodel something else in order to replace it. And so it's not.

This is one aspect of what we're trying to do, but we can't make all of our decisions based exclusively off of utilizing.

[Speaker 7] (42:21 - 42:25) Chris, would Terry want to weigh in on this? You said this was the part that he kind of worked on.

[Speaker 1] (42:26 - 42:41) Yes, this is Terry's work product. So Terry, I don't know if you can hear us, but if there's anything that I failed to point out that it's important or you just want to say hello, we'd be interested to hear from you.

[Speaker 3] (42:43 - 44:21) Well, I appreciate the opportunity I am. I'm on vacation this week, but I've enjoyed the conversation. I think the general tenor of the conversation is accurate.

Your campus was designed for a period of time that doesn't exist anymore. That after COVID, you trained your students to take courses online. A lot of the teaching method has changed dramatically.

I don't view this as a negative. I actually view what this data says as a positive. You can make thoughtful choices about which buildings you keep, which buildings you choose to no longer maintain or potentially demolish.

And you can look carefully at teaching method, whether you want to change section size, whether you want to move classrooms to an active learning environment to create a greater contrast with what's being provided online. I think there's a lot of opportunity in these number to make your campus better and more engaging. And so if I could just preach for a moment, what I would say is look at this and say, we hav a great chance here to be more efficient.

And we have a wonderful opportunity to look at our classrooms and our teaching environments and say, what do we want to make them in terms of how we address our teaching method? Can we combine spaces? Can we make them a different furniture package, technology package?

And I think it shows you, you don't need more, you need different and
better. And this is a great opportunity for you to do that.

[Speaker 11] (44:22 - 44:24) Thank you. Well said.

[Speaker 8] (44:31 - 44:47) Just back to the unused hours or below hours. Is that an opportunity  to go out for new programs to utilize the hours in those buildings? Are there things we could offer?

[Speaker 3] (44:47 - 46:34) I don't want to get too deep in the weeds. 38 hours is the state's

goal. I would suggest that it may not be always appropriate for community colleges.

It was developed years ago in an environment of four-year schools where students lived in dormitories. It's not necessarily the use pattern that most of your students have, which is to attend in the morning, attend in the evening, and not necessarily take classes during the afternoon. Whether that pattern can be changed or not, I think you have to be a little bit careful about because of work patterns for folks that often shapes when they choose to go to school if they are working and going to school, which I think a lot of your students are.

38 hours is probably a lot more than you should target because you teach largely on a four-day schedule. That metric was on a five-day schedule. There's a lot of nuance in that number.

I think a number more in the 20s would be appropriate for a school like yourself. But that's something you can work through as you decid how many classrooms you ultimately want to offer. Then as you begin t try to draw people back to the college and if you successfully implement your strategic plan, which calls for growing 3% in terms of face-to-face, that will drive additional classroom need.

[Speaker 2] (46:37 - 47:12) I would also like to add that just because a room is empty doesn't mean that it's appropriate for instructing in a new program. We already have our general education courses that we offer. The new programming that we've considered offering requires specialty lab space or specialty teaching space.

So while there's capacity, raw capacity, it's not built to purpose. And so adding those new programs almost always require modification of existing space.

[Speaker 8] (47:13 - 47:44) And I wasn't necessarily meaning just plug it into those, but as we look at tearing down and rebuilding, could we capture some of that
time period in a different facility made specifically for new programs? I'm not talking about just trying to fit around, you know, a piece into a square hole. I'm talking about the whole plan.

Could you, would it be work for a newer facility to put a new program? You know, I'm not talking about just filling space for the sake of filling space.

[Speaker 6] (47:46 - 48:07) So back on that screen, when you talk about the hours per week, those are clock hours, right? I assume. So when it says two hours per week, that is, that will be the equivalent of maybe two or one class that meets one hour twice a week.

Is that how you would look at that?

[Speaker 11] (48:08 - 48:10) Oh, that is our bottom one.

[Speaker 6] (48:10 - 48:25) TV five is two hours per week. So I'm assuming that is one hour on Monday, one hour on Wednesday, and that will be it. Or is it, it's not course hours, right?

We're not talking about that. No, I don't. It's not course hours.

[Speaker 3] (48:27 - 48:42) It's hours of average hours of instruction that TV five has only one room. And it's hard for me to tell who is speaking, but someone noted that people vote with their feet.

[Speaker 12] (48:46 - 48:48) And I think that's probably one class.

[Speaker 6] (48:49 - 48:50) Okay.

[Speaker 2] (48:52 - 49:03) You're correct, Mark. This isn't credit hours. These are literal hours that the building is being used.

[Speaker 6] (49:04 - 49:19) So, and I'm not sure, maybe we need to do an alignment of what each, what's being taught in these classes, but I thought TV two, one, five, and four, that was like process technology, electrical and instrumentation and all that. Is that what's over there?

[Speaker 1] (49:19 - 49:22) So in the deeper report, it does have all of that.
[Speaker 6] (49:22 - 49:24) Yeah, those guys behind you are shaking their head.

[Speaker 1] (49:24 - 49:31) Yes, so that is available in a chart in the bigger report. Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (49:31 - 49:38) So that is a lot lower than I would have expected for all those programs that we offer.

[Speaker 7] (49:39 - 49:44) Well, the configuration of that particular classroom and what it can be used for.

[Speaker 6] (49:44 - 49:52) Well, it's being used 7% or 23% or 17%. That's how full it is, right?

[Speaker 2] (49:54 - 49:58) Again, that's an average for the building in those classrooms, yes.

[Speaker 6] (49:59 - 50:13) Yeah, but there's only two or three classrooms. So is there a way that we could line this up with just say the TV buildings to see how many classes or what's being taught in there?

[Speaker 1] (50:13 - 50:43) Well, as far as what's being taught in terms of the program, if in Terry's report, the greater report, it does have a chart that will say on the one side, on the left side, it'll have the buildings and on the top going across, it'll have the different programs and then it'll have a dot that correlate the program to the building. So to answer your question, I'm sorry, we don't have that in the executive summary. I apologize for that, but it is available and we can certainly provide that.

[Speaker 6] (50:44 - 50:45) I think he had a comment behind you or not.

[Speaker 10] (50:46 - 51:23) Yeah. Well, currently in TV-5, mainly what we have is Petrochem, the tank farm. We used to have another program in there that was actually moved over to ATC Logistics and there was another one also that was taught by Professor Saunders.

Another one that was actually moved over to ATC as well. So as of right now in TV-5 alone, there's only one classroom going on and that is the Petrochemical Tank Farm and TV-4 is mainly housing the instructors and a one small class that is actually individualized for P-TECH learning.
[Speaker 6] (51:29 - 51:37) Yeah, maybe we just need to understand, you know, what programs are there. Yeah, we don't have McNair on here, right? No.

Other campus?

[Speaker 1] (51:38 - 51:39) You have McNair.

[Speaker 6] (51:40 - 51:43) I'm not sure. What's DOH? I can't remember what that is.

[Speaker 11] (51:49 - 51:52) That. Yeah, that's Huddle.

[Speaker 1] (51:55 - 52:01) So McNair is mostly labs. Do you want, Neil?

[Speaker 4] (52:03 - 52:06) McNair, I think, shows up on the lab page.

[Speaker 1] (52:07 - 52:08) So it'll be more on the lab side.

[Speaker 3] (52:10 - 52:14) Yeah, there's a separate analysis for each campus.

[Speaker 12] (52:19 - 52:21) Okay, apologies. This is.

[Speaker 4] (52:22 - 52:32) Yeah, I would expect all the folks working through these details would be looking at exactly what we're asking. And I mean, that's their role. That's their job.

[Speaker 6] (52:40 - 52:47) Yeah. Okay. So under the lab field, which one is McNair, the MHCE?

[Speaker 1] (52:50 - 52:50) Yes.

[Speaker 10] (52:51 - 52:54) That's McNulty-Haddock East and McNulty-Haddock West.

[Speaker 1] (52:55 - 52:58) Yeah, I remember. So McNair is not in this chart. Okay, it's not anywhere.

Okay.
[Speaker 4] (52:59 - 53:00) I thought we saw it.

[Speaker 3] (53:01 - 53:06) No, there's a separate analysis for each of the campuses. This is specific to the main campus.

[Speaker 4] (53:07 - 53:10) I thought we saw McNair in our building committee meeting.

[Speaker 12] (53:12 - 53:12) Tom?

[Speaker 1] (53:13 - 53:14) No.

[Speaker 5] (53:14 - 54:21) I'm just waiting for Regent Hemsel to jump in. Oh, okay. I decided to write them down before I forgot them.

I like to pick on you when I can. Gentlemen, I can't read the name up there because of my terror. You seem to be indicating that there is a debate, ongoing debate, of the viability or a comparison of online learning versus moving back to a classroom.

What is the current state? Because for so long or the last few years it's been, you know, online, online, online, particularly because of COVID and now. I'm detecting that maybe there is a reversal of that, which would impact the space that we would need.

That's my first question. If whomever can address that. I know that's not necessarily buildings, but he was alluding to that.

[Speaker 1] (54:23 - 54:26) No, Terry would be the right person to comment on that.

[Speaker 3] (54:30 - 54:37) Yeah, I think what you're asking is what are the trends in higher education? Was that the heart of the question?

[Speaker 5] (54:37 - 54:39) That's correct. A trend is a good word.

[Speaker 3] (54:42 - 57:38) Yeah, it's interesting. We work at almost every major college system in the state of Texas. And I will tell you, this is my personal opinion.

You're getting me unfiltered. When you think about an instructional space, you have to differentiate first between classrooms and labs.
Classrooms are general purpose.

They're interchangeable. Laboratories are discipline specific. And so as you think about your campus, all your laboratories should be customized around the discipline they're teaching and specific to that discipline.

So those are all going to be designed. And the cohort size and so on will be determined according to how do you want to teach and what are you teaching. Averages are almost useless when it comes to laboratories because by definition, they're not interchangeable.

So the real heart of a utilization study when you're looking at capacity is more in the general purpose classrooms. And I think the way you should think about this is probably around that, as I said earlier, the instructional method and how do you create an environment where you're adding value to the teaching experience so that you give something that is valued versus what can be obtained online. And so like I said, this is my personal opinion.

But if your classroom is static and someone is standing up there and delivering a lecture with no interaction with the students, then I'm not necessarily sure there's significant value added beyond what they can obtain online. And so the more you think about your classrooms as an engaging environment and as an environment where you're interacting with your students and encouraging them to interact with one another, I think the stronger your ability to attract students to the face-toface instruction. So that's my preaching for tonight.

Did that answer your question? What we're seeing is we're not building static lectures at most of the major universities in Texas. We're building much more interactive.

And even you talked about the very large spaces. We did the 21st century classroom building at Texas A&M and they teach in cohorts of 600 for their entry-level courses. And yet they asked us, how would you design a classroom that's interactive for 600?

It's not an easy task, but it speaks to what they're emphasizing in their instruction.

[Speaker 5] (57:39 - 58:09) My second question is on some of these highly technical courses, are we seeing low utilization rates because of lack of student interest or do we have some issues of staffing as far as finding qualified instructional personnel that have the experience to teach these courses? We're talking about the use of the building or the use of the classroom, but when it's being used, are they packed full?

[Speaker 2] (58:11 - 59:43)
So every program is a little bit different, but let me give you an anecdotal example so that you can kind of understand how there are different pressures that impact different programs separately. So in nursing, while we technically have lab and lecture space available to increase the size of our nursing cohorts, our limiting factor is our ability to find clinicals for all of our students as part of their education. If our students can't find clinicals, then they can't test and they ultimately can't be successful.

And so it's not necessarily because we don't have interest from students, you know, we had over 200 applicants, we can accept about 60. We're going to turn a lot of students away. It's because there are other limiting factors.

In some programs, we have capacity and we could certainly hire more faculty. We don't have enough students that are signed up for the program. And so we're meeting the demand by the students and, you know, that's the limiting factor.

And so the answer is a little different for each program. On some of our technical programs like welding, our technical education, we just need more space. We have maxed it out.

We have more demand coming from the high schools. We could teach more if we had more space. And so each program needs to be addressed specifically and differently than every other program based on what the limiting factor is.

[Speaker 11] (59:46 - 59:51) Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (1:00:21 - 1:02:57) So not that this is a nursing specific presentation and my nursing experts are not in the room, but here's what I know. In the short term, our ability to acquire clinicals is based on our relationships with the local hospitals and clinics. And we're not the only ones that are competing for those clinicals.

In some cases, hospitals require that a student have a BSN before they were offered a clinical. We don't offer a BSN. And so, you know, in the short term, we're trying to find partners that will provide our students specifically with opportunity.

And those are limited in the community. So a long-term solution would be, you know, potentially to offer a BSN and provide more education for our students to get them better prepared for their clinicals as part of a four-year program as opposed to a two-year program. So we're looking at solutions like that.

Part of what we need to do is continue to work to strengthen our
relationships with the medical industry in our region to negotiate and to build those relationships so that we get more dedicated spots to our program. If we make a mistake in acquiring clinicals, it doesn't just hurt the class in that period, but that has rippling effects, right? So it takes years of really solid performance with our medical partners to maintain these clinicals.

I would like to compliment our nursing program. They work very, very hard on this. And we have many individuals that are dedicated to this.

We realize that the demand is much higher and that's where the rubber hits the road for us. Some of these solutions are long-term, right? I mean, it'll take us multiple years to get certified to teach a bachelor's program and then to get our students through it.

But like, you know, we wouldn't have a BSN graduate for a year's minimum. In that particular example. And so long-term solutions versus short-term solutions, it's a challenge that we face.

And that's not unique to Lee College. All nursing programs have that issue because it is a fundamental issue that is outside of our control ultimately as an institution.

[Speaker 6] (1:02:58 - 1:03:51) Yeah, we can do some kind of a follow-up later. I mean, never before we had so many 24-hour hospitals and clinics pop up all over town. You would think we'd have more opportunities to put people in these clinics and hospitals and that are everywhere.

So maybe we need to learn more about that so we can explain when we're asked, you know, what's going on. But to find a spot for 60 people in this large community area, we ought to, I mean, I don't understand it. So maybe we can follow up if you could on that.

We can better understand, you know, what's required of a clinical and what's lacking, what we're missing and, you know, how we're going about doing it. To me, do we have people out there working this every day? Because it's a big deal.

[Speaker 2] (1:03:52 - 1:04:05) And the answer to that question is yes. We have people who work this constantly. But I can get you some more detailed information on what we have with clinicals for our students.

[Speaker 11] (1:04:17 - 1:04:28) Potentially. Any other questions? Oh, sorry.

[Speaker 4] (1:04:30 - 1:04:33) I was just sitting here just enjoying this. I forgot.
[Speaker 5] (1:04:34 - 1:05:21) Can I just, just so that I understand, because this is my first shot at looking at all this. So the challenge from here moving forward, we have our utilizations, you know, data and we have square footage and all that kind of thing. Now it's marrying the two that I presume that's what's going to be the next step.

It's marrying the amount of space that we have and with our faculty and administrators and to cut back on the space that we is no longer usable or desirable at all and enhance space that where we have shortages. And that, of course, we can't do that from this room. My understanding, the next phase of the process.

[Speaker 1] (1:05:23 - 1:08:37) So yeah, I'll give a attempt to try to answer that with a little bit more clarity. So during this whole discovery phase, there was a collection of many different data points. All those data points will contribute to how to go about addressing the opportunities that we see here, the challenges, and also the priorities.

So to say that just looking at the utilization alone, as I think somebody had mentioned before, in isolation is not necessarily what we'll do. That's just one data point. The next data point is the conditions of the facilities themselves.

And then the survey, what is the sentiment of people? Then finally, the suit for purpose of a particular building. So we try to look at all four of those data points that we've collected here and develop different scenarios of what-ifs that will attempt to marry all these data points into a rational decision.

So we're just in the beginning of that. And so it'll take a fair amount of time to kind of weigh all the options and then weigh how to go about achieving the priorities. And so it'll take, like I said, several workshops where, and that's why we do it in a more systematic approach.

And we try to tackle different subjects individually first to try to get a game plan. And then slowly bring them all together to marry into a cohesive master plan that would then be the next stage, which is implementation. So implementation is taking all of these individual competing efforts and marry it into one concise game plan that can be, and think of it as a living framework, meaning it's our best understanding of how to go about addressing the priorities and the issues over the next 10 years.

But it has to be flexible enough to adjust itself as the situation happens, because obviously a lot can happen over 10 years. So it's just a roadmap to suggest this is the way forward. Generally, you try to tackle what you identify as your top most priorities in the first
three years

You say, okay, first three years, we want to accomplish this because that's immediate. It's understood. What helps you organize what goes into those first three years is really capital.

Just the amount of resources it takes to get that done and what you think you have available and what's the appetite of the community to do so. So those are some of the things that will weigh into it. It's not for us to decide alone.

It's for us to present to you all of your options, what it means, and really come into a phasing strategy on how to implement over the course of 10 years. So it's not to say that everything's going to get done all in one fell swoop. It's to say that we'll have a responsible game plan that has a framework to work against that we'll implement over time and as necessary.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:38 - 1:09:13) Mark, you recall eight years ago we did a facilities, we called a facilities master plan, right? All it was was the condition of our buildings, right? Remember, we were always waiting for the instructional master plan and to marry with the facilities plan.

And I think that's kind of a summary of what's going on here. We've got the condition of buildings and now we need to figure out what program needs are, programs drive facility needs. And eight years ago,  it was different than it is today.

I mean, you're talking 10 year period and we're almost 10 years from the last time we even started talking about it.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:13 - 1:09:42) Well, COVID and online learning alone, that component is a radical shift. And so if there's a swing back, I'm wondering where does that discussion exactly take place? I'm assuming our faculty and all, but, you know, is it a parameter or are we setting a goal of saying, hey, we want to bring as many students back on campus?

I think Terry has indicated that that's a function of what is happening in the classroom and the programs.

[Speaker 11] (1:09:52 - 1:09:53) It's a guess, yeah.

[Speaker 4] (1:09:54 - 1:10:04) I think so what we do is where we have the opportunity is we look at flexible spaces and adapt to whatever teaching styles change.

[Speaker 5] (1:10:05 - 1:10:10)
So Terry, I'm going to put you on the hot seat again. Do you see a trend going one direction or another?

[Speaker 3] (1:10:12 - 1:11:01) Well, one of you said flexibility. I've been programming and planning higher education buildings for about three decades. I am less confident that I know what instruction is going to look like in 10 years than I've ever been.

Is he an attorney? No, I'm serious. Could not be more serious.

I just don't have any idea what classroom necessarily is going to look like in the age of AI and the different virtual reality. We're starting to build virtual reality instructional labs on some schools. I think your classrooms need to be as flexible as you can possibly make them.

And that comes with real estate and technology.

[Speaker 4] (1:11:02 - 1:13:56) I think a lot of our shift in what we see students doing is I think they're factors. They all know the factors are the workforce that we're training. You know, they have different schedules available for classes.

There's some labs you can't weld online. You know, you can't you can't do it online, right? So you got those those are some programs that, you know, that they're online that doesn't do anything for.

I think we're also going to see a trend back towards, you know, we we we had gotten our hands around the whole student when they were here. Right, Kelly? I mean, we we we had faculty members who could identify students that were struggling, may have had issues at home, they were trained to identify, you know, look for those signs that to intervene before a student just drops out because they've got issues at home or transportation or whatever.

And I think, you know, the more students that are offline or off campus, the less we are able to help those students. And so I think some of it's going to be a cultural shift back and just the need to be in person, I think. Yeah, we don't know.

There you go. I just we don't know. Got to do our best to look at what's happening and plan for the short term future.

Yeah, flexible. You know, you used to could build a school for 30 years and nothing changed, right? ISDs just taught school in the same class for 30 years and nothing ever changed.

But it's not that way anymore. So I think I think flexible spaces is
what we really need to focus on. Any other any other comments or questions?

This was all good. I'm glad the whole board got a chance to to hear this. And, you know, what's been going on?

We got a little taste of it at the building committee. And I think we mentioned that at our last board meeting, he was going to give us a little update. We're like at a board meeting.

We would have been we would have been there this long on this one item. So we were wanted to have this setting for everyone to just focus on this and get caught up. And I think that's the main thing for our board is to understand the process and where we are in the process.

We we we like to solve problems, too. And sometimes we you know, we want to solve it now. But this is a process.

You guys are the experts. We count on you and our our team here to to look at all the questions and, you know, figure out how we can meet the needs of our students today and in the future and have the facilities to do it. That's in the end.

That's what we have to sell to our community that in order to do this, this is the support we're going to need from the community. That there's probably not much we're going to do without at this capacity without going out to the community. So.

[Speaker 7] (1:13:56 - 1:14:10) So, Chris, I was just going to say this is very gratifying. We told you that at the building committee meeting, but I know that everybody agrees. Thank you so much for the data that you've gathered so so far and what you're going to do in the future for us.

We look forward to all of that.

[Speaker 1] (1:14:10 - 1:14:22) Very much appreciate your efforts also in being a partner with us and in allowing us to and trusting us to to help you in this journey. It's very gratifying for us as well.

[Speaker 4] (1:14:22 - 1:14:30) You have a great team. I like Terry. I like you, man.

Mr. Chairman, I just a ringer. I told Pam when he started talking. I like this guy.

[Speaker 5] (1:14:31 - 1:14:46) I have to. I just appreciate the whole presentation. It's very
impressive for somebody that's seeing it for the first time.

And I appreciate the effort and the knowledge that comes. I mean, it's obvious there's a lot of experience here. Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:14:46 - 1:15:05) Thank you. Any other comments or questions for this evening? Hearing none.

Well, all right. We're we'll move on to the next item. Looks like matters of concern for future agendas.

Anything this meeting needs to talk about later? All right. Well, hearing none, we're adjourned.

END DOCUMENT.