With the first week of classes beginning, students are dealing with changes other than adding or dropping classes.
Knox 20, the largest lecture hall on all of UB’s campuses, which can hold 400 students, was renovated this past summer.
The outdated building codes, decrepit green chairs and uneven tables that were installed during the 1981 conception of Knox Hall are gone. In their wake are upholstered blue chairs, new tables, two large UB logos on the walls, a new podium, power surges under the tables and more.
Capital Planning Group (CPG) is the group in charge of how space is used at UB. CPG oversees centrally scheduled classrooms like Knox 20 or Cooke 127 and 127 A, which were also renovated this summer. UB spent $1.4 million on the three lecture hall renovations.
Cheryl A. Bailey, the associate director of CPG, said because Knox 20 is the largest lecture hall, it may be used for film productions, internally and externally, hence the reason for the large UB logos.
In addition, there are technological changes such as “sound clouds,” which help to project the microphone around the room. There are also digital visualizers, digital clocks, new projectors and digital controls that include course captions.
The renovation also provided cameras installed in the front and back of the classroom to help professors keep an eye on students, in the event that there’s cheating during an exam.
“[We] worked closely with Senior Vice Provost Scott Weber who [talked] to professors who taught in that room to try and incorporate their needs too,” Bailey said.
“There was nothing wrong with it before, but some of the chairs were broken,” said Erin Borovitcky, a sophomore exercise science major who had a class in Knox 20 before the renovations.
Other students agree the classroom is much nicer than before, but question if other classrooms that are in despair will be changed soon.
“I understand why Knox 20 was changed because it’s utilized so much,” said Sabrina Swenson, a sophomore biomedical science major. “But there are other [problems in different] rooms – like the half-desk in Cooke – that should be changed.”
CPG is a University facility group in charge of construction and renovations for the betterment of the campus. The company said it takes anywhere from six to 18 months to plan, design and develop a plan for renovation.
Bailey said renovations took the entire summer and were designed and constructed internally.
According to its website, the Capital Planning Group has two different types of planning programs: Small Scale Capital Projects (SSCP) and Capital (Bonded) Program. SSCP is for projects that are not expected to have a major impact on the campus as a whole and will cost up to $1 million or less. Capital (Bonded) Program is for projects that make a huge impact on the university like Greiner Hall, which was built in 2011, or Crossroads Culinary Center (C3), in 2012.
“We’re hoping that [UB] will continue financing this annually,” Bailey said. “CPG keeps an ongoing list of suggestions from faculty and students for rooms that may need upgrades.”
CPG plans on meeting with instructors who gave input at the beginning of the renovation process and professors who teach in Knox 20 to find out what renovations worked and which didn’t by the end of the semester. CPG will also include questions about the new renovations in student questionnaires, which will be distributed later on in the semester.
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