The Honors College will soon relocate to its new permanent home on the third floor of the Capen Undergraduate Library, formerly a silent study area. The ground floor will be upgraded in order to allow for a more spacious and modern silent study area and to accommodate space for the Honors College relocation.
This project is just a stepping-stone for the "Heart of the Campus" initiative, a plan for the university to create learning environments both in and out of lecture halls.
"[The decision to relocate the Honors College here] largely had to do with the location of the Capen library. The academies are all in Capen, so there's a kind of ‘heart' that's emerging there," said Robert G. Shibley, campus architect and future dean of the School of Architecture and Planning.
Over the next few years, students should expect to see many changes on both North and South Campus.
"The learning landscape calls for places to learn all over the campus, not just in classrooms," Shibley said. "One of the core elements in that is that every campus should have one or more hearts, which are places where a number of service delivery, academic support, and things like the Honors College or the Undergraduate Academy might reside."
The "Heart of the Campus" project aims to modernize and create high-tech study areas near places where students can grab a snack in between classes.
"If it seeks to help me improve my grade, I say go for it," said Joshua Nimblette, a junior undecided major. "The most important part of this project is they will be investing the students' money into the modernization of our school."
Ms. Rich's Corner Café in the Natural Sciences Complex has already undergone technological renovations.
"This area has been modified to support much more casual food service, for grab-and-go food service," Shibley said. "The same thing has happened in the lobby area in Knox Hall, where when you come out, you have a much more informal seating area with large screens that you can plug into with your laptop and do group work."
The convenience of snacking while studying is beneficial for students, providing an energizer to help them power through university-level coursework.
"The other idea is that the ‘Heart of the Campus' is really one part of the larger understanding of the learning landscape everywhere," Shibley said. "As we do our classroom transformations and bring more and better technology to those classrooms, we'll also be preparing better study spaces in and around and outside those classrooms."
Students hope that the renovations will lead to more mixed-use areas on campus, allowing them to study as well as converse with each other.
"I think we're missing more relaxing areas on campus where we can enjoy talking with our friends," said Christina Townsend, a junior psychology major. "It's good to have more places on campus where you can both study and talk to your friends at the same time."
The university strives to create a "learning landscape" environment alongside UB's master plan, where students can intellectually engage with each other by exchanging their ideas outside of their lecture rooms as well as inside of them.
"What we want to accomplish through the master plan is to create an environment where our learning communities are vital and intellectual activities," Shibley said. "[These] are small examples of what we hope to get increasingly better and better at – to turn the heart of the campus into a learning landscape on the campus."
Although the changes around campus are becoming apparent, the renovations are not going to be over soon.
"I think, overall, [the Capen renovation] project is due to be completed next June and is a small part in what we hope will be a larger heart of the campus in that area," Shibley said. "Overall, the ‘Heart of the Campus' is going to take a few years [to complete]."
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