Constructing Communication and International Relationships: Future buildings bring together students and faculty from around campus and around the globe. By Jordan Chepke and Maggie Clark
By Jordan Chepke and Maggie Clark
As you walk through the sturdy steel gates, you are greeted by the old familiar faces of the original deep red facades of the buildings. Within every worn brick lies the story of students who have roamed the halls and gone on to achieve great success. As these buildings have generated vast amounts of promise in the years before, so will the future facilities to come. Within the hardened cement of every new brick laid, there lies the foundation for infinite possibilities and achievement.
At Ohio University, from Spring this year to Winter of 2014, students will be able to see the potential for these possibilities and achievements rise up in the form of two new facilities on campus: The Walter International Education Center and the Schoonover Center for Communication.
Walter International Education Center
“As far as the programs we offer, the sky is pretty much the limit; you can create your own opportunities,” Catherine Marshall says, who is the Director of the Office of Education Abroad.
Luckily the proportions of the office will be changing soon, and the department will be getting a space more appropriate in scale for their international endeavors. Located on Park Place next to Baker Center the new Office of Education Abroad (OEA) and International Student and Faculty Services (ISFS) building has come a long way from its days of fraternity folly. The fully remodeled building, tentatively dubbed “Walter International Education Center,” will be a “home” for students who have left the bricks of Athens to explore international grounds and also for students from countries afar whose destination for international study is Ohio University.
Staff members of the OEA are used to being able to talk to each other without even leaving their desks. However, in the new building, the staff of the OEA and the staff of the ISFS will be dispersed between four floors. The staff of both departments will be intermingled in their workspace, providing for an environment of collaboration and learning between both offices. The staff will not be the only people to reap the benefits of this change: Students will be interacting and sharing ideas through planned programming between offices and general day-to-day interaction in waiting rooms, sitting areas and meetings.
Catherine Marshall describes the intertwining of the two offices as a great opportunity for students to collaborate and educate each other in a natural setting. These two offices have never shared a work setting, but Marshall adds that by virtue it’s an interesting mix of students interacting. There is no doubt that combining these offices is both logical and natural. Krista McCallum-Beatty, Director of ISFS, agrees fully with the common bond of both offices.
“I always say, we (OEA and ISFS) are two opposite sides of the same coin,” McCallum-Beatty explains.
In separate interviews both Marshall and McCallum-Beatty described a hope and opportunity for synergy between the two offices: a clear indicator of their common goal and cause. One of the organized programs for the interacting of students that McCallum-Beatty hopes to develop is weekly coffee hours where student and faculty can drop in to sit and chat and for international and domestic people on this campus to really meet. She would also love to have visiting international researchers come to coffee hour to feel more connected with the university and staff and other faculty members.
“The staff and department work really well together. It will create a good vibe and I think it will make it a place where students want to come to,” McCallum-Beatty explains.
The location of office is quite a “store front property” and Marshall hopes this will draw in quite a crowd. Students of Ohio University have been trudging across these bricks and mud of Park Place between Baker Center and the President’s residence daily, in avoidance of the construction happening in preparation of the launch of the new office. But don’t worry about ruining another pair of shoes. By the time the Winter comes to an end, the street will be cleaned and the new building opened. The building is set to open at the beginning of Spring quarter. The work began in the spring and summer of 2010 and it has been a long but rewarding process.
The opening of the building also provides for a space to admire the campus. Windows showcase a breathtaking pond view and the walls of the building will be adorned in unique international artworks. Marshall is excited by the indoor and outdoor space of the building.
“We have visions about how cool it could be to someday have rocking chairs and things outside on the porch,” Marshall says.
Although the building is set to be a focal point on campus and a physical representation of the work of these offices, it is the people inside that will provide for the continued success and growth of these departments. In both the OEA and ISFS, there are numerous opportunities to make friends and expand ones cultural boundaries. It is a learning process that can be unmatched in any classroom. McCallum-Beatty believes in the power of interaction between international and domestic students.
“Because the number of people here is so large, some people never really get the opportunity to meet an international student. We want every student to have a global experience, whether they leave campus or not,” McCallum-Beatty says.
Schoonover Center for Communication, Future Home of Scripps
“My job is to make sure we have in the facility what each school needs and it’s constructed in the way we need it,” Daniels says. “I make sure we don’t ask for things we don’t need.”
Along with this aspect of the project, Daniels also works with and assists Mike West, who is one of several project managers in the Office of Design and Construction. West, who happens to be the project manager assigned to head this specific project for the university, coordinates everyone who has a stake in this endeavor.
Daniels was very open to discussing this project and was really excited to explain how the whole plan is finally coming into action. He has been around Ohio University working closely with the school of communications for many years.
20 years ago, when Daniels was in the position of associate dean of the College of Communications, is when he recalls the dean discussing the proposal of a new Communications building. It is apparent that the idea of this new building has been floating around for a while now, but could not be fully put into play without the very generous alumni donations and state funds that the university has just recently received. Steven Schoonover, an Ohio University alumnus, was the largest contributor, and therefore the new building will be named the Schoonover Center for Communication after him.
From 2006 until August of 2007 the Office of Design and Construction took the simple idea of creating this building and turned it into a solid plan and a complex building proposal. In the late Fall of 2009 the project continued to gain more momentum as the board began organizing the plan even further and scheduling each step of the building process. That is where they are right now in the development, waiting for the state legislature to come through with the Capital Bill in order to make even more advancements. The university is planning to have construction started by Fall of next year, with the overall goal of completing the project some time between December of 2013 and the beginning of 2014.
Although sophomore broadcast major Brooke Selis says she is disappointed that the building will not be up and running by time she has graduated, but still expresses her enthusiasm for the new building and the wide array of possibilities it will provide for future Scripps students.
“When I came my freshman year (2009-2010 school year) it was said that the building would be finished during my four years here at the journalism school,” Selis says. “However, now I will be graduated by the time the building is complete.”
This building will be the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified building here at Ohio University. This is a rating system developed by the United States Green Building Council in order to rank how environmentally friendly a building is. This means the Schoonover Center will be the first facility on campus going green, a new and exciting step into the future for the university.
Daniels relates that the designers will be going for the silver level of certification, which is above the certified line but below the gold and platinum levels. Each level is reached by obtaining a certain number of points. The point system designates a certain number of credits for different environmental aspects of the building, ranking the environmental performance of the facility. By making Schoonover a LEEDS certified building, the university will be saving money and energy and also providing students and faculty in the building with better indoor air quality. Though this is a monumental moment in the history of Ohio University and its efforts for going green, it is far from the only advancement being made to the new building of communications.
The new building will be connected to the Radio Television Center (RTVC), creating even more space. The two buildings will house a combination of nine different buildings on campus that hold communications classrooms, offices, studios, and even lecture halls. All communications will move into Schoonover and RTVC, meaning that there will be space made in RTVC, Scripps, Seigfred, Lasher, Lindley, Scott Quad, Central Classroom, Sing Tao Center, and the Research and Technology Center (RTEC). Having all the colleges together creates so many more possibilities and is so much more convenient, rather than walking across campus to get to different communications classes.
Other new unique facilities in the building will include a production studio, photo studio, a brand new high-end listening lab, and also an art gallery where students can spend their time enjoying the wonderful pieces of art put together by their fellow students. The new center will also hold many grad student offices, the Dean’s office suite, conference rooms, a few classrooms, an atrium, a 250-seat auditorium, Lasher Lab, a large lecture hall, and many class laboratories for students to spend their extra time and where they will have access to certain equipment. By moving some of these offices into Schoonover, this clears out room in RTVC for journalism classrooms, labs for journalism and visual communications, grad student offices, and a new production area for WOUB.
“One advantage I see with the new building and it being connected to RTVC is that it will allow journalism students to become more involved with the different options offered here such as WOUB,” Selis states. “Just by being more familiar with the environment and building will improve the number of students that become involved.”
Also, journalism will be moved out of Scripps and into Schoonover, making room for a grid lab from Scott Quad, grad student offices, and more room for trying out ideas in Scripps. This new facility will benefit the communications faculty and students in many ways and will grant them the opportunity to grow and advance in a new variety of directions. This building has opened the gates of opportunity for facilities the university never had a space for in previous years, such as public speaking labs, a communications study research lab, and a new high-end listening facility.
The combination of these colleges into one building will also create space for a wide range of opportunities never presented before. For instance, Journalism will be able to redevelop the area where Lasher lab now sits into anything they want or need it for, giving them the chance to experiment with new ideas. Visual Communications will finally have their own studios without having to share space with art. Information and Telecommunications (ITS) now has a limited amount of space and their offices were located all across campus, but because of the new communications center they can all be together in one place.
“Geographic consolidation will put us in a better position to do interdisciplinary programming,” Daniels says.
With the way the communication industry is moving and the speed at which technology is advancing, students will have to adapt to working together in different aspects of their major. For instance, with the online magazine and newspaper industry increasing, members of the visual communications college can begin to work with journalism majors in producing videos that reinforce and liven up their articles. This can all be done in one cooperative environment.
The Schoonover center presents students with the opportunity to work together in a community of students striving for a similar goal: to be successful in some aspect of the communications world.
“Communications is the most geographically dispersed college. Almost every college has it’s own facility except for ours; now we will,” Daniels says.
This gives students a wide abundance of possibilities and options to explore different types of communications and find their true passion. Ohio University has a motto, and that is “the path to promise.” By putting these schools together it makes it easier for students to find what they really enjoy doing, and working to make that promise, the promise of Ohio University, would be a wonderful goal to strive for.
“This building creates greater potential for things to happen because people are brought together in the same environment,” Daniels says. “The students will have a place as a college to call home rather than their particular schools.”
