Capital planning is a career field that has many rewards, such as: seeing a campus grow, planning for the future, helping recruitment efforts, and beautifying the campus. It also comes with many struggles, such as: budgeting, lack of funding, difficult choices, and making decisions that can last for decades.
The rewards are all intrinsic to a capital planner. It is a job of pride in a job well done because they want to see the campus grow and succeed. They have an opportunity to create history within a college campus and to have an impact on the layout of campus that can stay for generations to come. These rewards are what helps capital planners go about their days in their career and motivate them to keep planning the campus’ future.
On the other end of the spectrum, capital planners must make difficult decisions. They have to decide whether to preserve history at a high cost or demolish history at a low cost. They have to decide how to properly spend their limited budget resources and what buildings are beyond the point of repair and remodeling. Capital planners have to make these difficult decisions in order to reap the benefits and rewards of being a capital planner. If they make the right decisions then their job is very rewarding. If they make the wrong decisions then their job can be a disaster that could have a long-term impact.
I think that BG’s capital planning is closely related to Akron University’s capital planning of a few years ago. I remember when I was doing a college visit over there 4 years ago they were building quite a few new buildings, including a new football facility. The tour guides said that a lot of the buildings were built in the past few years in order to beautify the campus and keep up with other university’s capital planning spending. The campus looked really nice and modern once it was completed and almost had me as a student. I see Bowling Green as being like Akron because of all the construction and new facilities on campus in order to better attract incoming freshman.