Chicken manure is "hot", so you can't put it directly in your garden, like you can cow manure. Because it is hot it decomposes quickly. They didn't have chickens at the university, but they could easily get cow manure.
Years ago, when my father-in-law taught at Central Michigan U, he had the students' project be composting. The quickest compost was made of cow manure, sawdust, and a little water. It was done in a large barrel with a small engine that turned it about every minute and a half. 72 hours to be...