Vol. 24, No. 15	February 16, 1999

Classrooms Will Receive $8.75M Renovation, Following Recommendations by Joint Faculty and Administrative Committee

BY HANNAH FAIRFIELD

The University Trustees have approved a five-year $8.75 million program to upgrade classrooms on the Morningside Heights campus and improve their availability, following up on a classroom conditions report developed by a joint committee of faculty and administrators.

The renovation initiative will include upgrading furniture, blackboards, floors and other elements in the effort to improve the physical teaching environment. Most of the funds-$6.25 million-are designated for renovations, such as the overhaul of Altschul Auditorium in the International Affairs Building into a state-of-the-art lecture hall with video screens and Internet connectivity. The other $2.5 million will be put into annual maintenance programs. In addition, funds on top of the $8.75 million will be provided for improvements to infrastructure, including heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, electrical systems, windows and acoustics.

Vice President of Arts and Sciences David Cohen said, "The Morningside Classroom Committee, under Professor Robert Krauss' leadership, has produced a most thoughtful, creative, and comprehensive report that addresses a number of exceedingly important and complex issues. The report is an outstanding example of the value of joint efforts of faculty and administrators to solve problems. The recommendations are already leading to significant actions."

In recommending the program, President George Rupp said that "this series of actions reflects the increasingly higher priority that the University will be assigning to the improvements of support for teaching and learning."

The Morningside Classroom Committee report assessed survey data on classroom conditions, usage, scheduling demands and also reviewed the "ownership" of each space-whether the University Registrar or individual departments were responsible for each. Out of 69 seminar rooms, 103 classrooms (for 74 students or less) and 26 lecture halls, 57 percent are controlled by the Registrar and 43 percent are under individual departmental control. In the report, the committee made recommendations on areas that needed attention, such as maintenance and scheduling of under-used departmental classrooms.

"I share the committee's optimism for the prospect of sustained, incremental improvements, accompanied by on-going evaluation," said Emily Lloyd, executive vice-president of administration. "I am encouraged by their conclusion that we can make progress through a series of relatively small changes made by departments, faculty and students-and that no one group will face an especially onerous burden as we work together to improve the stock, condition and scheduling of our classrooms."

Robert Krauss, professor of psychology and chair of the Morningside Classroom Committee, said that working in the committee was an incredibly positive experience. "It was great to bring faculty and administration together to work on it, to see that some items, like minor physical improvements, can happen quickly, while others, such as improving more serious problems in classrooms, like acoustics or electrical work, would take longer," he said. "We all saw that any charge toward a simple, quick solution would not adequately meet such a complicated problem as that of classrooms."

The Offices of the Provost and the University Registrar have begun to implement the committee's recommendation to include questions about classroom conditions with student course evaluations and faculty grade rosters. Facilities Management will use the feedback to assign priorities for annual classroom refurbishment.

Since September, Fred Small, who is the classroom coordinator for Facilities Management, has received 223 work orders for Registrar-controlled rooms, and 61 percent of those were completed within 15 calendar days of the request. The incomplete requests include long-term planned work such as radiator maintenance and installation of new air conditioners. Small can be contacted at classrooms@columbia.edu, an e-mail address posted in every classroom. The Morningside Classroom Committee's report may be found on the Web at: http://www.columbia.edu/~rmk7/MCC/.