In 2004, as Florida prepared for Hurricane Frances, Walmart conducted a forecasting study to identify the three most commonly purchased items in Florida. The three items were batteries, beer, and strawberry Pop-Tarts. For Arci Fleet, space manager at the University of Texas at El Paso, this information was her “hallelujah moment.” She concluded that these three items can be seen as a metaphor for how a person makes sense of a crisis situation: Batteries make logical sense; beer makes social sense; and strawberry Pop-Tarts? They make no sense.
This metaphor applies to issues related to space. Fleet realized that Pop-Tarts represent that one “random unknown” that can be found in almost any forecasting or prediction model. The question was: What were the “Pop-Tarts” of instructional space?
Through their investigations at the University of Texas at El Paso, Fleet and Amanda Vásquez, then associate registrar, discovered that they needed to physically visit each classroom to assess its capacity and technologies and to make sure that they were actually being used as a classroom and not been stealthily transformed into an office or study space. While doing this, they also considered what would make this room attractive or unattractive to faculty. They came away with not only substantive data, but the “Pop-Tarts”: proximity of the classrooms to the professors’ offices.
For more on increasing efficiency of space use, pick up a copy of Managing Academic Space: A Guide for Higher Education Institutions.