Project · 2026 · University of the Pacific
Space
Utilization
Evaluation.
A graduate program-evaluation project examining whether University of the Pacific could launch a new medical school using its existing campus capacity, without building a single new classroom.
At a glance
- What
- A graduate program evaluation of campus space capacity
- My role
- Data & analysis
- Data
- Six semesters · three buildings · 73 rooms
- Course
- LEAD 215 · University of the Pacific
Sheet 01 / 06The Brief
"Can we launch a medical school without building one?"
In early 2026, University of the Pacific was actively scoping the launch of a new medical school. The strategic question was not whether the program had demand. It was whether the existing campus footprint could absorb it.
Our three-person graduate team took the question on as a course evaluation project. University Facilities was our point of contact; the Office of the President was the ultimate stakeholder for the decision. The brief was specific: stop guessing from anecdote, start measuring from data, and answer a single question with rigor. Could the existing Classroom Building, Chemistry Building, and Olson Hall hold a medical school program without new construction?
The cost difference between "yes" and "no" was eight figures.
Sheet 02 / 06Methodology
Cross-Reference Analysis.
We layered scheduling data over physical asset data across six semesters, then built a composite Efficiency Score that combines seat-fill utilization (65% weight) and scheduled intensity (35% weight), normalized within space type so labs are compared to labs and lecture rooms to lecture rooms.
Registrar / EMS feeds: room assignments, scheduled days and times, enrollment counts. Used to derive peak occupancy and seat-fill rates.
Registrar + Academic Affairs: lab vs. lecture vs. office vs. research designations. Distinguishes specialized from general-purpose inventory.
Dean's Office + Department Chairs: faculty and staff room assignments. Assesses office density and the administrative footprint of each building.
The evaluation followed Patton's utilization-focused model (Patton, 1997). Every methodological choice was anchored to the specific decision the University faced: build, retrofit, or reschedule. Our reporting structure drew from Russ-Eft & Preskill's Chapter 14 and 16 communication frameworks, replacing slide-deck handoffs with two facilitated working sessions. Data compilation and analysis were assisted by AI tooling (Julius.AI), and the report was drafted with AI support and reviewed by the team.
Sheet 03 / 06The Centerpiece
The floor plan,
color-coded by truth.
We annotated every room across three buildings by function (lecture, lab, office, research) and overlaid its efficiency score. The pattern surfaced immediately. The campus was not full. It was scheduled into a narrow corridor of rooms.
Sheet 04 / 06Findings
Three findings that
reframed the question.
The capacity is already there.
Of 0 classrooms in the Classroom Building, only 0 were scheduled in Spring 2026. Building-level efficiency clocked at 4.35%. Olson Hall ran at 3.55%, Chemistry at 6.67%. The space exists. It just isn't being used.
The medical school did not require new construction. It required a different allocation of the space the university already had.
Peak load lives in a narrow window.
Day-of-week by hour heatmaps revealed that instruction concentrates on Monday through Thursday, 10 AM to 2 PM. Outside that window, even the workhorse rooms sit largely empty. The med school could occupy the off-peak hours without displacing a single existing class.
Any swing-space plan needed to absorb the peak window specifically, not just match total weekly hours in aggregate.
Power Rooms and Ghost Rooms,
in the same building.
Olson Hall 120 ran at 48.7% efficiency, hosting 25.75 hours of weekly instruction. Olson Hall 100, the same building, same square footage, ran at 2.8%. One meeting. A 0.15 seat-fill. The difference is not architecture. It's scheduling decisions.
Empty rooms are a leadership problem, not a real estate problem.
Sheet 05 / 06The Analytical Journey
From spreadsheet
to story.
Three semesters of registrar data. Tens of thousands of section records. The path from a raw export to a finding the President's office could act on ran through three stages.
14,000+ section records across six semesters, joined to physical asset data by room code and building.
Composite Efficiency Score per room (65% seat-fill + 35% scheduled intensity), normalized within space type.
Three findings, three actions, one institutional decision: the medical school can launch using existing space.
Sheet 06 / 06My Role
What I owned.
This was a three-person graduate project. My piece was the analytical engine: the floor plan analysis, the room-by-room data joins, and the recommendations modeling that the findings and the final briefing were built on.
OutcomeThe Decision
And then,
they moved forward.
Months later, University of the Pacific announced it would move forward with the medical school. This was a graduate course evaluation, not the board's own analysis, so I won't claim it drove the decision. What I can say is that it modeled the exact question the decision turned on: whether existing campus space could absorb the program without new construction.
ReflectionWhat this taught me
Evaluation as a leadership skill.
I came into this project thinking of evaluation as an analytical discipline. I left thinking of it as a leadership one. The hardest part of the engagement was not running the numbers. It was designing the conversations around them.
Patton's utilization principle kept us honest the whole way. Every methodological choice we made was tested against the same question: will this help the President decide, or is it just rigor for rigor's sake? Most analyses I had done before this one failed that test silently. This one couldn't.
The other thing I learned, and the thing I will carry into the rest of my career, is that data only matters when the people who own the decision feel like they discovered it themselves. Russ-Eft & Preskill's chapters on facilitated reporting (rather than slide-deck handoffs) were the difference between findings that sat in a binder and findings that funded a medical school.
Pacific Medical School Space Utilization Evaluation · LEAD 215 · University of the Pacific · 2026. A graduate course project conducted under the supervision of the LEAD 215 instructional team, using scheduling and space data provided by University Facilities and Academic Affairs. Data compilation and report formatting were assisted by AI tools, including Julius.AI.
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Graduate Evaluation Project · LEAD 215 · 2026