This October marks one year since the passing of Jeanne Narum: educator, convener, and champion of purposeful learning spaces. Her absence is deeply felt, but her influence is everywhere. Among her many gifts, the most powerful was the habit of asking deceptively simple yet transformative questions: What matters about learning spaces? Why does it matter? How do we know?
These questions became a compass for a generation of educators, planners, and designers working to reimagine the environments where learning happens. Her work through Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) and the Learning Spaces Collaboratory (LSC) was grounded in the belief that spaces are not neutral—they shape, and are shaped, by the experience of learners and educators.
Jeanne’s own path into this work grew from her time leading Project Kaleidoscope, where she championed reform in undergraduate STEM education. She recognized that curriculum and pedagogy were only part of the puzzle and that the learning spaces themselves either enabled or limited the learning that could happen. Out of this insight grew her lifelong mission: to treat the classroom, the lab, and the entire campus ecosystem as integral to the student learning experience. Later, through the Learning Spaces Collaboratory, she created a national forum where educators and designers could not only trade stories but also interrogate evidence, test ideas, and hold each other accountable. For Jeanne, this wasn’t about individual projects or buildings; it was about cultivating a culture of inquiry where asking better questions led to better learning experiences and student outcomes.
For Jeanne, the “what” was never simply the physical room; it was the intentional design of an environment where curiosity, collaboration, and discovery could thrive. The “why” was rooted in equity, opportunity, and the conviction that all students deserve spaces that invite them to fully participate. And the “how” was Jeanne’s hallmark: bringing people together to share stories, evidence, and insights in ways that turn colleagues into collaborators and collaborators into friends.
“Jeanne Narum believed, with every fiber of her being, that spaces shape experiences. She didn’t just design spaces—she designed experiences to dream farther and achieve more. She truly believed we could collectively elevate architectural practice to meet the everevolving needs of learners.” —Kristen Ambrose, AIA, EDAC, LEED AP BD+C Vice President, HKS
A Convener of People and Ideas
Jeanne was a facilitator in the truest sense of the word, creating communities where deep listening and collective dialogue took precedence over asserting one’s view.
If you looked up the word facilitator in a dictionary, there should be a photo of Jeanne. She had an extraordinary ability to draw people together, and amazingly, people were also drawn to her like a magnet. Everyone she touched willingly participated in PKAL and LSC because it was of value, and it was enjoyable. You always left inspired, and with new connections to people who care about learning. She asked great questions. And taught each of us the importance of this. —Meredith Botswick Director of Strategic Insights and Design Lab Crafters, Inc.
Jeanne’s method of convening was deceptively simple: ask the right questions, listen intently, and create space for others to imagine together. Those who sat at her roundtables remember leaving not only with new knowledge and new friends, but with new energy to act.
Anyone who attended a session with Jeanne remembers the experience as much as the content. She never lectured. Instead, she would arrange chairs in circles, cover tables with paper, scatter markers and sticky notes, and invite a mix of voices into the conversation. Everyone’s perspective was not only welcomed, but essential. By the end of a session, the walls would be covered in sketches and notes and the room would buzz with new energy. Jeanne understood that the process of co-creation was itself a form of learning, and she made sure people left not just with ideas to take back to campus, but with a renewed sense of possibility and determination.
The Long View
One of Jeanne’s hallmarks was her insistence on thinking beyond the immediate—planning for decades rather than semesters. She challenged faculty and designers alike to take the long view of change.
“As a young faculty member, I learned the power of thinking about the long game. Jeanne always helped us look over the next horizon in hopes of making the academy more successful and more inclusive. Later in my career (and hers!), I had the pleasure of collaborating with a group of academics and architects in the Learning Spaces Collaboratory. It started for many of us as a way to maintain our sanity during the pandemic, but it turned into important conversations about how and why space matters in learning. Jeanne’s indomitable yet kind spirit and broad vision continue to animate me in my work.” —Bob Kolvoord Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs James Madison University
Jeanne balanced urgency with patience, inspiring us to act now while also envisioning what could be possible long-term. That balance cultivated a culture of innovation that endures.
From Intuition to Evidence
Perhaps Jeanne’s most enduring challenge was the insistence that we move beyond intuition to evidence. She pressed designers and educators to dream boldly and measure impact. Jeanne often framed her work around four questions: What do we want our learners to become? What kind of experiences enable that becoming? What kind of spaces enable those experiences? How do we know?
“I remember thinking How DO we know how much design contributes? Jeanne challenged me to act. Jeanne’s challenge led me to partner with Morgan State University on an experimental research project. We found that minority students performed better in an active learning classroom than students in a traditional classroom. Later, we found students in a biophilic classroom were less stressed and learning outcomes were three times better. Jeanne was a spark that ignited not only a change in our practice, but new knowledge that informs learning space design around the world.” —Jim Determan, FAIA Principal/Architect, Craig Gaulden Davis
Jeanne’s influence extended well beyond individual projects. She was an early champion of SCALE-UP classrooms at North Carolina State University, which demonstrated that active learning could dramatically improve outcomes in large lecture settings. She encouraged institutions to treat these experimental spaces as living laboratories, gathering data on how different layouts, technologies, and teaching approaches affected student engagement and achievement. This insistence that designs be tested and refined with evidence helped move the field from relying on instinct to building a genuine body of research. Many of today’s common practices—group tables instead of rows, writable walls, and flexible furniture—gained traction because Jeanne pushed colleagues to prove that design fostered academic achievement.
Jeanne’s push for evidence-based design transformed individual projects into contributions to global knowledge, igniting a fire that ensured students far beyond any one campus would benefit from new research and ideas.
A Legacy That Endures
What made Jeanne so remarkable was not only her professional brilliance but her humanity. She celebrated the successes of others with genuine joy, saw potential where others saw barriers, and fostered collegiality and cheerleading over competition and secrecy. Her warmth created communities that endured long after projects formally ended—and her questions continue to echo.
They are an invitation and a challenge to see our work not as finished, but as part of an ongoing conversation about people, purpose, and possibility. Jeanne’s legacy is visible in flipped classrooms where noise signals engagement, in leadership cultures that empower experimentation, in roundtables where educators and designers come together to wrestle with big questions, and in countless moments where designers pause to ask not only what they are building, but how they know it will make a difference.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “To leave the world a bit better… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.” By that measure, Jeanne Narum succeeded profoundly. Her torch now passes to those she mentored, taught, and inspired. To honor her is to keep asking the questions she modeled so well and to design learning experiences that empower learners, uplift educators, and change lives.