Riverside Campus Plan - Office of Facilities Coordination - Texas ...

EXPERIENCES AT THE RIVERSIDE CAMPUSIV. EXPERIENCES AT THE RIVERSIDE CAMPUS 2020 AND BEYOND25Communicating a vision for the future marks thecritical step between data gathering about the pastand present condition and recommendations onprocedures that might assist in the implementationof a future state. Where the subject is a campus withmultiple users, and open-ended opportunities forgrowth in programs and activities, the ‘vision’ mustexcite the reader with words that imagine a futurestate.This section of the Riverside Campus Plan describesthree ‘stories’ of life at Riverside in 2020,based on existing and rapidly-developing situationsthat will require significant investment at Riversideif it is to achieve its potential to serve the multiplemissions of the university and the system of whichNATIONAL DELEGATION VISITS JOINTRESEARCH TEAMThe morning of 20 April 2020 dawned clear andbright. The Dean and several of her faculty andresearch staff check last-minute communicationsand head to the Riverside Campus. It is tenmiles down the road from the historic campus ofthe A&M College of Texas that opened in 1876,but light years away from the institution that existedthen. Texas A&M University now has over50,000 students from diverse and internationalbackgrounds, there are ten colleges doing fundamentaland applied research that attracts worldwideattention, and changes the lives of people ofTexas, the nation and around the globe.The Riverside Campus has been a critical partof the teaching, research and service mission forover fifty years, but its physical resurgence sincethe adoption of a Campus Plan in 2012 has resultedin a new sense of community and increased therange and quantity of cross-disciplinary research.Turning off Highway 47 at the well-marked entryroad to Riverside the first stop is the EntranceGate where a wave of a security pass allows authorizedmembers of the university to pass underthe long canopy with the “Texas A&M UniversityRiverside Campus” signage standing proudly asthe 1943 “Bryan Air Base” sign did so long ago.The entry road sweeps past cattle grazing on theVet School’s pasture and ends at the junction ofFIGURE 1Facing page: Conceptual FutureRiverside Campus.it is a part. The following section, V. Componentsof the Campus Plan, suggests specific approachesto physical change in support of the transformationof the Riverside Campus. Section VI. Policy, Operationsand Design Control, proposes managementand operational policies, and design guidelines forexisting and new buildings and the landscape atRiverside Campus that will ensure that the physicalnature of the campus reflects the quality of thepeople and programs that are housed there.The journey from the center of the historic campuspasses leading research and teaching facilitiesthat stretch along University Drive, goes underthe Wellborn Road and the railroad tracks to awide thoroughfare with the West Campus on thesouth, passing the extensive research and teachingcampus of the College of Veterinary Medicine andBiological Sciences to the north, skirts past the researchand biological manufacturing complex ofthe regional Bio-Corridor, and heads north-west5th Street and Bryan Road, where the RiversideCenter, now five years old, is the hub of activityon campus.The Center is at the east end of the Military HeritageDistrict and occupies the site of the HeadquartersWing Offices constructed in 1952. TheCenter houses the administrative offices thatcoordinate activities, the University Police Departmentoffice, a cafeteria, and meeting roomssupported by a business center and IT facilitiesSo, follow possible headlines from the future, andon Highway 47, past the Texas A&M Health Sci-capable of teleconferencing around the globe. The‘imagine’ the new Riverside Campus.ence Center complex.parking to the west serves the Center and the 1943