About Rickes Associates

Firm Profile

Rickes Associates is a data-driven and solution-oriented higher education space planning and programming firm.

Nationally recognized, we are higher education planners, committed to ensuring that institutional space resources are effectively and efficiently allocated. With our focused expertise and deep experience, we have served as a trusted adviser and change agent for more than 250 institutions throughout 30 states and abroad. Given our many repeat clients, we have successfully completed almost 500 planning projects.

Each individual project is infused with an institution’s mission, organizational structure, and culture. Translating and distilling data from a variety of sources into viable space options is key to obtaining stakeholder agreement and advancing solutions. At Rickes Associates, we have been doing exactly that for three decades - quantifying and qualifying space needs within an institution’s strategic context by aligning space with current and proposed enrollment, staffing, and programs. Our use of credible and transparent metrics help guide institutional expectations, always with an eye toward optimizing space use.

As higher education futurists, we are steeped in the dynamic forces shaping institutional spaces. Our portfolio of projects reflects the diverse nature of higher education today, including research universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, state colleges, MSIs, women’s colleges, and faith-based institutions, among others. We are also proven higher education strategists, offering thoughtful and implementable recommendations about how institutions can leverage existing resources to become more future-resilient.