With the groundbreaking ceremony for the new academic building last Friday there’s been a lot more talk about what specific new features will be included in this highly anticipated new addition to campus. Many of the new features and additions are meant to enhance the educational opportunities Gustavus provides for its students.
The most obvious addition is that this academic building will give several of the departments on campus more space. “The improvements are mostly about quality,” Warren Wunderlich, director of the Physical Plant, said. “The new ‘traditional’ classrooms and seminar rooms will be more generous in terms of both space per student and in technology… Finally, the faculty offices and department support areas will be considerabley more generous than those currently occupied by the five departments who will move in 2011, especially the four coming out of Anderson Social Science Center.”
The four departments currently housed in SSC are Psychology, History, Sociology/Anthropology and Economics and Management. The Social Science Center is currently one of the highest occupancy buildings on campus which can make it more difficult for students and professors to engage in active learning and teaching. With the completion of the new academic building, in addition to being more spacious, it will also include “a number of specialized classrooms, tiered lecture halls and tiered computer classrooms,“ Wunderlich said. He also stated the building will have, “more specialized spaces including teaching and research spaces for the Neuroscience Program and a digital arts lab.” Psychology will have more generous research space for a number of disciplines, and communications studies will have lab and studio space, including dedicated space for forensics and KSGM.
Although the building is technically a new academic building, “informal student spaces are included in a number of locations [including] student interaction rooms and breakout areas,” Wunderlich said. “The atrium will also be utilized for informal learning, as well as programmed events.”
Although the main purpose of the building is to foster engaged learning across several academic departments, it will also serve the Gustavus community for other purposes, such as Gustavus’ commitment to being a “green” campus. The new academic building exceeds LEED requirements and is expected to have solar panels.
“The president [Jack Ohle] announced at the groundbreaking ceremony that a donor has funded solar collectors for the roof, making the project a bit greener yet,” Wunderlich said.
“In the past four years … Gustavus has shown great dedication on campus towards environmental issues,” Senior Environmental Studies and English Major Haven Davis said. “This building is an exciting because is shows [the College’s] initiative at all levels, from students to professors to faculty to administrators.”
The completion of this building is anticipated for the fall of 2011 and until it has been dedicated it will be referred to as the “New Academic Building.”