Ecosystem design is first and foremost a design science. Campus design is the engineering arm of campus ecology. It is concerned with the intentional design of campus environments that facilitate student development. The campus environment consists of all the stimuli that impinge upon the students' sensory modalities and includes physical, chemical, biological, and social stimuli. A transactional relationship exists between college students and their campus environment, i.e., the students shape the environment and are shaped by it.
Every student possesses capacity for a wide spectrum of possible behaviors.
A given campus environment may facilitate or inhibit any one or more of these behaviors. The campus should be intentionally designed to offer opportunities, incentives, and reinforcements for growth and development. Students will atempt to cope with any educational environment in which they are placed. If the environment is not compatible with the students, the students may react negatively or fail to develop desireable qualities. Because of the wide range of individual differences among students, fitting the campus environment to the students requires the creation of a variety of campus subenvironments.