Dave Amundson knows firsthand how dated some schools are. As a student, he attended schools that were built in the 1970s “and saw how bad a condition they were” in. Now, as a project executive at Pasadena-based builder C.W. Driver Cos., he works on updating and building California campuses.

“As a company, we’re building better communities and lives together,” Amundson said, adding that he finds his work to be personally gratifying. “I’m watching things change.”

C.W. Driver – which provides general contracting, construction management and design-to-build services – has 79 projects currently underway, all in Southern California, with educational institutions making up 60% of the company’s portfolio.

The firm has worked on over $3.88 billion worth of education facilities in the past 10 years, ranging from K-12 to higher education projects, and has worked on 34 California State University projects alone.

“If you look back historically, there’s a lot of shift,” James Birkey, a senior vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., said. “If we’re talking about what’s different, now versus 50-to-100 years ago, higher education in times past tended to serve students of a particular social and economic class. That’s not really how they work anymore, so there’s forced to be an evolution in terms of their role within the student educational experience.”

Birkey leads JLL’s dedicated government, education and nonprofit practice group in the Western U.S., which provides strategic real estate and development advisory for public institutions and higher education.

While diversity and inclusion have changed how school systems operate, there have also been some tangible shifts – rooted mainly from heightened threats to security and changing work patterns.

Safety as a top priority

One of the biggest changes to school buildings themselves has risen from the enhanced need for security on campus, in response to hazards such as protests and the rising threat of active shooters on campus, which is particularly worrisome to the K-12 school system.

“With some of the climate out there where you’re seeing school shootings and things like that, that is definitely a key factor in design is how do we design and build spaces that have the ability to lockdown (as well as) places for kids and teachers to be able to hide where there’s space and can’t be seen,” Amundson said. “That’s definitely something we didn’t deal with 30 years ago.”

Amundson said schools are now considering adding forced-entry resistant glazing to windows – despite averaging three times the cost of regular glass – as a safety measure. At least one of C.W. Driver’s current projects, Malibu High School – a $102 million redevelopment project set to unwrap next year – thinks it’s worth it.

Although C.W. Driver is a general contractor, it does have its hands in design work, with nearly 90% of education project contracts including preconstruction services. Amundson says things like non-breakable glass, privacy walls and areas of refuge are all elements he is now recommending to school clients as a safety precaution.

“Campuses in the past wanted to be integrated with the fabric of the city or the community that they live in,” Sonnet Hui, general manager and vice president at Project Management Advisors Inc., said. “For a long time, a lot of the campuses were completely open. Anyone could walk in, walk out and you see that with some of the private institutions, they’re starting to create barriers – fences and gates – trying to limit access and be able to shut down. I think a lot of the buildings are becoming more secure.”

In addition to external barriers, Hui added that there’s been an increase in things like cameras, campus police, security protocols and card access readers. However, at the same time, experts fear the juxtaposition of closing campuses off may have negative effects on students’ wellbeing.

“I think the emphasis is that we don’t want to be designing buildings that look like jail cells because that’s what oftentimes people think of as being safe,” Nathan Kim, studio designer and principal at Gensler specializing in education, said. “We really try to focus that on ‘how do you provide engagement? How do you provide visibility so that there are connections being made on campus that allow students to feel a sense of safety?’”

Adaptive learning

And within changes to the curriculum, there has also been a shift towards more hands-on, experiential learning with an emphasis on critical thinking and problem-solving skills. As the boundaries of education continue to evolve, the role of open learning has become key and has only intensified since the onset of Covid-19.

“(Schools) have changed the way that they think about outdoor space recently,” said David McCullough, founder and principal of San Diego-based McCullough Landscape Architecture Inc., who has worked on a number of school campuses, including some with C.W. Driver. “If you look around at campuses that have been built prior to 20 years ago, you see large, essentially in most cases, masonry and concrete blocks that very seldomly even had windows that engaged the outdoor space. There’s a new way of looking at it that has become popular in the past 10-to-20 years and that is ‘let’s flip the educational experience inside out.’”

Now, schools are looking for creative ways to keep students engaged and connected on campus – such as flexible workspaces and outdoor learning. And according to Gensler’s Kim, the pandemic really affirmed the beneficiaries of this model.

“There’s a book called ‘No Child Left Inside’ and it started a whole series of studies and research into the benefits of being connected to outdoors in nature,” McCullough said. “They found that it increases inspiration and the ability for kids to learn goes up dramatically. As a result of that, that’s been a standard in the way that we think of campuses nowadays and I think it’s really healthy.”

More campuses are incorporating glass facades and large operable openings to nurture that connection. McCullough added that he’s even designing a few outdoor classrooms and outdoor exhibit spaces to allow education to, as he calls it, “spill out.”

According to multiple experts, outdoor learning and campus gathering spots allow for increased collaboration and limit the feeling of isolation. And in terms of student housing, experts say development is becoming more advanced to make students feel at home, as well as retain them.

“I think especially in the student housing world, where a lot of student housing are private developers, they’re looking at really highly amenitized student housing projects,” Hui said. “It’s getting incredibly creative. They are looking more and more like hospitality (products) with nice lobbies and student lounges and pools and recreational spaces.”

But perhaps what’s changed most of all about educational institutions boils down to numbers.

“I think that we were living in a world at least in the last several years of hyperinflation in the construction market,” Amundson said. “Hyperinflation everywhere, but especially in the construction market. That at least has gotten to a point where I feel like it’s calmed down.”

While some campuses may want to incorporate some of these new safety measures or evolving elements onto outdated campuses, many schools are opting for redevelopment projects rather than new construction.

But despite a market slowdown, C.W. Driver is staying busy. The company has 10 education facility projects underway within Los Angeles County, including the Malibu High School campus.

Other projects include Jordan High School in Long Beach, Long Beach Polytechnic High School, Rio San Gabriel Elementary School in Downey, Roosevelt Elementary School in Santa Monica, the modernization of a science building at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, two student housing buildings at CSU Northridge, and multiple buildings on the CSU Dominguez Hills campus.