Five Senses of the Newly-Improved Alumni Hall

In this Issue: come with me as I share my impressions of Alumni Hall

This past Friday, I had the good fortune to get access to Alumni Hall, which has had an extensive renovation so it could become the new home for the Entrepreneurship Program and the Departments of Computer Science, Education, and Philosophy. I had worked in Alumni Hall for probably 10 years in the 2010s, so I know the building well.

No pictures today, other than these two exterior shots (note to students: alumni would tell you not to step on the seal). Some of my other talented colleagues in communications are working on coverage of Alumni Hall; I’ll share it when it is ready.

Here’s your Five Senses (well, four: I did not taste anything) of the newly-improved Alumni Hall.

I see…

• A nice lobby with high tables and comfortable seating when you first walk in the front door.
• A classroom that seats around 20-22 people, with shades on the windows along an all-glass wall.
• Beautiful colors: light green walls on the first floor.
• What looks like a K-12 library: the Education department has a library that’s set up for teaching. It looks just like school libraries I had as a kid (minus no card catalogue cabinets!)
• Faculty offices with a big pane of frosted glass near the doors, allowing the office to benefit from the light within the building, yet still have privacy when meeting with students.
• A really nice waiting area in the hallway between classrooms. It’s got beautiful light colored wood, making the ambiance feel cozy.
• A lot of single use restrooms with updated fixtures. Everyone will like those.
• A big classroom that looks like it could seat about 50 students.
• High tables and high chairs at the top of the stairway to the second floor, right beneath a window that brings in a lot of sun. You can get a beautiful look onto the trees and sky.
• A navy blue accent wall on the second floor, near the classrooms and offices for the Philosophy department.
• The Philosophy Library on the 2nd floor, and it is amazing. It’s a big room that has a lot of groupings of really comfy chairs and tables, some in almost a booth-like arrangement.
• A striking dark and light blue patterned rug in the Philosophy Library. This would be a stellar place to study.
• A section of the second floor about halfway back through the building that is bathed in sunlight; there are a bunch of skylights above.
• The color scheme move from a beautiful denim blue to a light green and then a pastel green.
• Faculty colleagues talking in the hallway. They’re dressed casually, the way you do when you are moving in to a new space.
• A unique feature of the building: the second floor has a High-Performance Computing lab, with glass garage doors that can be raised or lowered as needed – presumably if they needed to shut out the sound of any conversation in the lounge the room opens up into.
• A wide variety of classrooms: most have moveable tables and chairs with wheels. Nearly all have a lot of whiteboards in them for student work. Some of the rooms are big – I think the biggest capacity I saw was maybe 50 people? – others had 32 seats, 20 seats.
• The color scheme shift more towards gold as you head toward the back of the building on the second floor.
• An inviting lounge near the elevators, with seating that almost looks like a sectional sofa, plus some tables, as well as a high table with four chairs. The windows look out directly at the law school.
• A section of the second floor with a deep royal blue wall with fabric covering it, so it has a lot of texture (almost like very wide wale corduroy). It is near a Research and Collaboration Lab that looks like they have both individual office spaces as well as some open workstations.

I hear…

• Talking amongst faculty. Departments have been moving in this week, and folks are settling in to their workspaces.
• Facilities workers talking as they walk around and check the progress of the move-in. Everyone is very nice and says hi to me as we pass in the corridors.
• The sounds of people in offices moving boxes and unpacking.
• A man sneezing somewhere down the hall.
• The ding! of the elevator when it reaches the second floor.

I smell…

• The smell of plastic – like when you have unwrapped the plastic covering on new furniture and the smell hasn’t fully dissipated.
• Clean air. This place is so new, there is no dust or dirt.
• New carpet smell. Not a bad smell – it just smells clean and new.

I feel…

• Astonished at how realistic the Education library is. I felt like I was in 6th grade again.
• Calm. The color scheme on the first floor has a lot of light wood tones and light- to mossy greens.
• A little envious, if I am honest. This building is filled with lots of little nooks and crannies, public spaces and lounges where people can sit, study, work. Many of the sitting areas have both high tables and lower tables (think dining room table level), so you can take your pick.
• Satisfied. I tried sitting at one of the high tables on the 2nd floor. The chairs feel very nice. They have a little bit of give to allow you to lean back. I could sit here for a good long while.
• Like I have found the holy grail of public seating: towards the back of the building, there’s a lounge area under the skylights. I am sitting in a big comfy chair that doesn’t have normal legs, but has a rocking chair bottom. So if you’re somebody that likes to fidget as you sit (like me!) these are the chairs for you. If I worked in this building, I would be camped out in these rockers All. The. Time.
• Cool. The AC in this building is spectacular.
• Again, some envy at all the moveable tables and chairs in the classrooms. In the classes I teach, I like to break students into groups during class to do group work. Not all of the rooms I have taught in have that ability. All of the Alumni Hall classrooms seem to.
• The mesh back of a classroom rolling chair. It is a comfortable seat for sure.
• The smooth top of the new tables in the classroom. They are all made of light-colored material that has a wood grain look; very attractive.
• Happy to revisit my old building, and proud that it is being given new life for our faculty, staff, and students. I hope they will be as happy there as I was.
• Eager for our students to discover Alumni Hall once the semester begins. Students reading this: take advantage of the wonderful spaces for studying, group work, etc. because the renovation is really is stunning.

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My hat is off to the campus partners who worked to make the new Alumni Hall a reality. All of the design elements were purposeful and carefully chosen, using evidence-based design standards to create compelling teaching and learning spaces. Y’all rocked it.

Hope you felt like you were there with me as I wandered through my old stomping grounds 🙂