Rethinking Post Occupancy Evaluations in Higher Ed: Insights with Shannon Dowling

Video recorded on December 2, 2025

Understanding how students actually experience campus spaces is becoming essential for institutions navigating new learning behaviors, shifting demographics, and rising expectations. In this Bow Tie Tuesday conversation, Shannon Dowling, Learning Environments Planner at Ayers Saint Gross and 2020–2021 SCUP Fellow, joins Alyson Goff, Senior Director of Insights and Strategy at CampusIQ, to rethink what higher ed truly needs from post occupancy evaluations.

Shannon challenges long-standing assumptions, including why traditional space metrics can miss critical behavioral cues, and why the biggest opportunities in campus planning today are cultural rather than technical.

About the Speakers

Shannon Dowling, MArch, AIA, LEED AP
Learning Environments Planner, Ayers Saint Gross
2020–2021 SCUP Fellow
Nationally known for her research on inclusive and welcoming campus spaces, Shannon partners with institutions to align physical environments with student success, belonging, and well-being.

Alyson Goff
Senior Director of Insights and Strategy, CampusIQ
Alyson helps institutions interpret space insights with clarity, guiding campus leaders toward more confident, data-informed decisions about planning, investment, and the future of learning environments.

This conversation references Shannon’s SCUP Fellow Research Project:

The Planning and Design of Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Campus Environments (2022)
This study gathered evidence from more than two dozen institutions and over 200 students to understand what creates welcoming, supportive physical environments for diverse campus communities. The resulting playbook offers strategies and potential metrics institutions can use when planning, designing, and evaluating spaces through the lens of DEI.

Institutions referenced:
Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Union University, University of Richmond

This report encourages planners and designers to consider space not as neutral, but as a lived experience shaped by identity, background, and access — and to embed these insights into future planning and design decisions.

What You’ll Learn

✨ How belonging, comfort, and social cues shape space use
✨ Why “perfect utilization” doesn’t always mean a space is successful
✨ Why students increasingly expect agency, choice, and autonomy
✨ What a next-generation post occupancy evaluation should measure
✨ How design and analytics teams can collaborate more meaningfully
✨ Why cultural openness may be the biggest opportunity in campus planning
✨ How small environmental changes can have big psychological impact

🕒 Key Timestamps

00:00 – Introduction
00:23 – Why space analytics must go beyond efficiency and cost
00:49 – The overlooked purpose of space insights: belonging & student success
01:09 – Measuring how often students return to a space
02:04 – When utilization metrics say one thing, but behavior says another
03:00 – Why students follow comfort, safety, and social cues
04:00 – What incoming generations expect from campus environments
04:40 – Why students overwhelmingly choose flexibility and choice
05:00 – The impact of de-densifying and micro-adjusting spaces
05:42 – Creating quiet and low-stimulus environments
06:12 – Rethinking post occupancy evaluations from the ground up
07:00 – Why we need multi-method, longitudinal POEs
09:22 – The biggest opportunity: cultural collaboration
10:12 – Removing secrecy between design, analytics, and institutions
10:56 – Closing reflections


📘 Interested in the research guiding this conversation?
Read the SCUP report The Planning and Design of Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Campus Environments to explore strategies and metrics for designing more supportive, inclusive campus spaces.

https://tinyurl.com/yuns4vju