Purdue News

When renovating, no detail too small for improvement

Instructors sometimes are drowned out by noisy ventilation equipment.

In rooms with desks that aren't bolted to the floor, the desks mar the wall.

Students lose interest in class as an instructor struggles to master the controls for the lighting system.

These are a few of the simple lessons learned from years of observing life in Purdue classrooms and talking with faculty and students.

The observer is Ron Baker, electronics designer in Facilities Planning at Purdue. He is project manager for renovation of instructional space.

Baker has come up with a set of design standards that are followed when classrooms are renovated on the West Lafayette Campus. Known as the Purdue Audiovisual & Electronic Standards, they ensure that renovated classroom space is uniform and uniformly suited for teaching.

Some of the standards are aesthetic, like one that calls for wall carpeting under chalkboards so the walls aren't marked by professors who lean against chalkboards and prop a foot against the wall. But most have to do with the learning environment -- including strict standards on noise, light, space for seating and an array of rules that help the guy in the last row see the image projected on the screen in the front of the room.

"Ron is one of those people at Purdue who students don't know about but who have done more to make their lives pleasant than you can imagine," says Keith Murray, associate director in the Office of Space Management and Academic Scheduling.

Baker learns lessons from the past that will make future classroom improvements easier. For instance, building designers in the past for the most part didn't anticipate the need for people to see projected images. Sure, the people in the front could see them fine, but the farther back in the room you sat, the more likely you were to see the backs of heads.

All classroom renovations now include raising the ceiling in front so that the students in back can see.

"To see an image from the back of a 40-foot room, the bottom of the screen has to be six feet off the floor," Baker says.

Also, heavy-duty steel struts are built into the raised ceiling so that computer-projection equipment can be installed when money becomes available.

Baker's experiences of seeing the walls in newly remodeled classrooms nicked up by desks led him to require that all renovated classrooms have a chair rail. This chair rail serves a purpose besides preventing nicked walls. The PAVES standards Baker devised call for a wide plastic raceway instead of a standard chair rail. In the future, computer network and electrical wiring can be run through the raceway when money becomes available and the need arises.

Most of the projects are funded by the state of Indiana through building repair and rehabilitation appropriations.

Each year, Purdue spends more than $1 million to renovate classrooms to equip them for educating students now and in the future.

Baker credits Frederick Ford, executive vice president and treasurer, with illuminating the path he and other Purdue planners and construction crews now are following.

"About 20 years ago, Fred Ford saw the need to upgrade classrooms in ways we had not done in the past," he says.

A new coat of paint might have done in the past, but Ford's vision was for a transformation of the classrooms.

Baker has taken that idea and developed it to an exact science. For instance: