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UD recognized for campus upkeep in Chronicle of Higher Education

10:20 a.m., Oct. 8, 2003--The University of Delaware is singled out as an institution dedicated to maintaining and preserving its campus, in an article in the Oct. 10 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The article by Audrey Williams June appears with another article about the national problem of deteriorating facilities on campuses across the nation. With tight budgets, higher education administrators have often deferred maintenance of their campuses. The article quotes a 1995 survey that estimated it would take $26 billion to erase the maintenance backlog in higher education. A new survey due out next year is expected to show that figure is now at least 25 percent higher, the Chronicle reports.

In contrast, the article about UD notes that in 1990, when David Roselle became UD’s president, he set new goals for the institution that included making campus upkeep a priority.

At that time, the article says, Roselle thought that the problems of deferred maintenance could be addressed “if we were very systematic and if we treated is like a bill that you pay each and every year.”

“[Roselle] met with trustees, administrators and faculty members to create a set of goals for the University that included a plan to put the institution’s maintenance issues behind it,” the article says. “They calculated the replacement cost for the entire campus—about $1 billion—and earmarked 2.5 percent of that amount, the industry standard, to spend every year on repairs and renovations.”

The article quotes Roselle, “We have converted from doing deferred maintenance to doing maintenance on a scheduled basis. Scheduled maintenance is a lot less expensive.”

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