The Campus Master Planning Project is the new guiding paradigm for the improvement of the campus infrastructure. It is the first such plan to be formulated at Brandeis since 1952. The project proposes a sweeping revision of campus facilities and provides a coherent set of guidelines for future development. "No plan of this sort has ever been done at the University, certainly not within the last 20 or 30 years," President Jehuda Reinharz, who initiated the project, said. "I felt that the time has come to do this according to some comprehensive plan, which involves the students, faculty, staff, administrators, and of course the planners.

"Most of all what the plan is supposed to do is clarify what it is that we want to do," Reinharz explained.

The project is the first coherent plan since 1952 geared toward bringing "order and logic into the entire infrastructure of the university," Reinharz said, "so that in the future, presidents of the university - myself included - will not simply build wherever we think is interesting to build."

In the last three to four years, the university has spent approximately $70 million on campus improvements that were constructed under the guidance of the Master Planning Project, according to an estimate by Reinharz.

Thus, the Carl & Ruth Shapiro Campus Center was completed in 2002 in accordance with the guidelines set by the master plan. "It is because of (this plan) that we built the student center where we did and that we now have a lawn in front of it instead of a parking lot," Reinharz said.

The new Village dormitory was built along the same guidelines, as was the expansion to the Lemberg Children's Center. In the near future, the Heller School will also receive major additions as a result of a $17 million donation from a Brandeis alumnus.

A major restructuring envisioned by the Master Planning Project is to dismantle the peripheral road, thus creating "a vehicular circulation that makes sense," Reinharz said. "(We need) to remove as many of the cars as we possible can, improve the landscape and create more open spaces. We want this to be as much as possible a pedestrian campus."

"I am very interested in the aesthetics of everything we build," Reinharz continued. "Whether it's the Shapiro Center or the new residence hall, I think they're both state-of-the-art. That's very, very important, because the University has now reached maturity. The time has come to do things the best possible way we know how to do them."

In terms of campus life, Reinharz wants to "make this a real campus ... with a center, a physical middle in the larger sense of having a place that students will feel is one where they like to congregate." Prior to these efforts, there was not one logical center, but rather several centers spread out throughout the campus - "we did not have a Harvard Yard."

Truthfully, Brandeis has yet to consolidate its campus centers, as the Usdan-Shapiro dichotomy persists. But administrators are hopeful that the Shapiro Campus Center will gradually become the leading logical center of the campus.

"The objectives are also academic excellence," Reinharz said. "The renovation of all the academic facilities, the provision of technology in the classrooms, the assignment of teaching spaces according to some sort of a logic, and the provision of space support for the faculty" are key priorities of the plan.

In 2000, Reinharz established a steering committee consisting of an eclectic set of people representing the campus body. Steven Burg (POL), for example, who is a professor and Chair of the Politics Department, is part of this committee, as are Mandy Smith, a graduate student, and Daniel Feldman of the Office of the Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer.

Additionally, there are five consulting companies, based in Boston, Cambridge and Watertown, that will help guide new construction projects. Back in 2000, they were chosen "through a very careful process that included a selection committee with students, faculty, administrators, etc." After reviewing "probably 20 to 25" proposals, these companies were chosen "by process of elimination."

As a further measure of input, the president "invited 12 or 15 graduates of Brandeis, all architects and planners, and asked them to spend a weekend here and then sort of think, 'How would we create an ideal campus?'"

The current economic outlook has apparently done little to diminish the objectives of the Master Planning Project. "Even though these have been difficult economic times these past few years, we've actually done pretty well," Reinharz said. "As you can see, we've done quite a bit of building.