Community Colleges Step It Up

With major architecture firms getting involved, these formerly neglected institutions are having a design renaissance— and showing us how design could transform the American education system.

- Vanessa Quirk

The architect and the college president were observing their brand-new facilities coming alive. It was the early autumn of 2016 and students were filing into the spacious day-lit atrium for the first time. The pair watched as a mother crossed the threshold, looked around, and started dancing. “This is the place where my baby will go!” she exclaimed.

“We live for those kinds of moments,” confides Charles Smith, the architect from Cannon Design who, with project director Jim Jankowski, helped shape Chicago’s Malcolm X College into the jig-inducing, awe-inspiring campus it is today.

Malcolm X is a community college geared to aspiring health-care professionals—and it has some remarkable statistics attached to its name. According to its interim president, David Sanders, about 92 percent of its nursing students pass their licensure exam on the first try. The college led its district in enrollment gains last year. Its graduation rates have doubled since 2015. And last year, it opened a state-of-the-art campus (designed by Cannon Design and Moody Nolan), complete with ambulatory and surgical simulation centers, mixed-use study spaces, cafés, and computer stations.