Purdue News
Purdue News
One way a university provides for student learning is to build buildings. Another is to continually retool the classrooms in those buildings to provide faculty and students the best surroundings for learning.
Purdue does both. The newest major classroom building on the West Lafayette Campus is the Liberal Arts and Education Building, put into use in fall 1993. The cost: $28 million.
You can't miss the building. Stately and sprawling, it is the largest classroom building on campus.
In the 1990s, roughly the same amount of money -- upward of $25 million -- has been spent for another kind of construction: the transformation of outdated classrooms and the remodeling of space for use as undergraduate computer laboratories.
The work involves literally every academic building on the West Lafayette Campus and takes two forms:
n Extensive remodeling of the 268 classrooms on campus. Of those, 46 now offer many mediums for teaching and learning -- from blackboard to video and computer projection.
n More than 50 new computer laboratories, ranging in size from 25 stations to 80 stations.
"We want to make sure we're giving students a quality education, and that means committing considerable resources to converting facilities for modern teaching," says Frederick Ford, executive vice president and treasurer. "And it means investing heavily in computer labs."
Paying for the vast array of technology-based improvements has been a challenge, with money coming from state funding, student fees, gifts and other sources.
Currently, Purdue has a request pending in the Indiana General Assembly for $14 million to be spent in the next four years at West Lafayette on undergraduate instructional computing and teaching laboratories, computer networking and access to electronic information, and instructional development.
"If the General Assembly approves our request, it will allow us to expand the installation of new workstations and increase the pace at which we replace outdated equipment," says Robert Ringel, executive vice president for academic affairs. "We are very much aware that the quality life span of high-technology equipment is only about four years."
On the West Lafayette Campus, Ringel and Ford rely on faculty, staff, deans and department heads to identify needs and priorities.
"We try to anticipate needs, so that when space begins to become outdated, we move to renovate and modernize," says Keith Murray, associate director for space management in the Office of Space Management and Academic Scheduling.
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu
