Saturday, November 21, 2009

Rationale for New College of Education Building

Duncan Hall, which serves as the central facility for the Reich College of Education at Appalachian State University, was built in 1965. The 80,000 square foot building currently has approximately 65,000 square feet of usable space, the other footage being occupied by mechanicals and service functions. Over the last 40 years the building has gone through a variety of renovations to attempt to accommodate both the growth in student, faculty, and staff populations and also the specialized needs of programs. Each of the renovations has resulted in other complications such as disruption of appropriate heating and cooling, loss of classroom space, loss of student support space, increased handicap inaccessibility, etc. The building has also been subject to flooding at various times in its history. At the time of its construction, the facility was designed to house approximately 80 faculty and serve about 1,000 students as well as provide state-of-the-art technology facilities. Its space served not only the Department of Education but also six other academic departments. The original building had 45 classrooms and 5 lecture rooms. Currently Duncan Hall has 16 classrooms, 4 labs, 4 meeting rooms, limited clinical space, and serves over 200 personnel (faculty, staff, administrators) in an effort to serve over 2,400 students along with the additional clientele from off-campus that use the building for clinical and other program services.

A recent UNC mandate to increase teacher education enrollment and the number of teacher education graduates has led to a projection of over 2,500 students being involved in teacher education at ASU over the next five years. Duncan Hall, already inadequate for meeting the college's current needs, will be unable to absorb the projected increases in student population, corresponding increases in faculty and support staff, and specialized instructional, support, and service needs. Duncan Hall reflects the following shortcomings that would need to be addressed by a new facility:

  • Limited classroom design and space; the college has had to take three classrooms off-line in the past three years to convert to faculty office space, reducing further the flexibility for scheduling and removing valuable classroom space in the building; the building currently has only 16 classrooms and one seminar room. Classrooms are not conducive to the models of teaching the college employs nor is there a sufficient number and variety of classrooms to meet different program needs. Lighting, sound and HVAC issues also hamper instruction and learning. For example, the building has single pane windows throughout which compromises both heating and cooling. Instructional space will be insufficient to meet anticipated enrollment increases over the next 10-20 years.
  • Limited clinical space; the college has been cited repeatedly by major accreditation agencies for failures to provide appropriate clinical space to serve programs in counseling and communication disorders and to meet the needs of the outside clientele who provide the important client base with which prospective teachers, counselors, and clinicians need to work. The college is now on notice that it will lose these accreditations if space issues are not addressed immediately; loss of accreditation will severely compromise recruitment of high quality students and the maintenance and development of high quality preparation programs; future growth in existing clinical programs and the addition of others has been placed on hold.
  • Absence of space to provide appropriate advising and information for both undergraduate and graduate students; advising is done in a variety of locations, including faculty offices, departmental offices, and the dean’s office with corresponding problems in keeping track of and storing files and finding space for interviews as well as the difficulties of directing students to the appropriate locations. Department and college administrative offices are ill-designed to handle over 2,400 students seeking assistance;
  • Inadequate space to accommodate the needs of a student population that is almost triple what the current building was designed to handle; as a result, there is virtually no space where students can meet in small groups outside of classes to work on projects, use labs, or find space to study in-between classes; the facility is not student-friendly in its current configuration.
  • Limited space for technology use/support; three computer labs double often as teaching stations but can accommodate only about 75 students total at one time; there is also limited availability of space for technology support; currently, the college employs five technology support staff who have little or no space to carry out their duties, work on equipment, and conduct training for faculty, students, and staff; faculty have limited access to specialized instructional and research tools for professional development.
  • Absence of appropriate space to provide after-school programs/clinical assistance for public school students and others with special needs (i.e., reading, special education, ESL); these programs are a critical part of the preparation program for prospective teachers; for example, the reading clinic can operate only on a limited schedule because its space must also be used for classes as well as meetings; scheduling of after school programs must compete with regular class scheduling for space, especially in late afternoons and evenings when the college offers a wide array of classes to accommodate its graduate and non-traditional populations;
  • Absence of appropriate space for special groups within the college (i.e., Teaching Fellows program with 240 students and support staff of 6 including student assistants; Doctoral Program with 45 students and 3 staff including student assistants; 5th Dimension After School Program and Learning Partners that provide tutoring support to approximately 300 public school students involving 200-300 preservice students; Reading Clinic that doubles as a training site for undergraduate and graduate students and provides service to 75 children a year and has a waiting list; the ASU-Public School Partnership that provides staff development programs to 8 school districts and 115 schools; the National Center for Developmental Education with a staff of 7 that serves as a national clearinghouse for teaching and research and has trained over 1,000 developmental educators through its summer institutes; North Carolina Center for Training in Health Education with 4 staff who provide training materials and opportunities for over 1,000 teachers a year; the Adult Basic Skills Project with 5 staff that provide literacy training and support to the North Carolina Community College System. All of these programs and others suffer from a lack of adequate work, storage, staff, and meeting space; none is able to expand due to the lack of space and often personnel are scattered throughout the building. Additional programs and projects that reflect the college's commitment to providing service could be generated if sufficient and appropriate additional space was available. All of the current projects and centers must seek space elsewhere on campus for meetings, etc., and are forced to conduct almost all of their professional development efforts off-campus because of lack of appropriate space.
  • Limited handicap access; navigation to the building and within the building is extremely difficult for students, faculty and clients with special needs; a variety of other populations consistently experience access problems also in trying to reach the services and programs provided by the college or planned for future offering (many of the college’s service efforts could be enhanced if easier access could be made available to populations from off-campus); Duncan's parking access has been severely compromised by the loss of other parking on campus. Meetings and special events now must be scheduled for off-campus venues rather than bringing our school and agency partners into the heart of the college of education to interact with students and faculty; clinical services for the elderly and preschool clients have been restricted. The building overall is not well designed for handicapped access.
  • Inadequate office space for the current faculty of 120 and no office space for continued expansion of faculty numbers; often as many as 4 adjunct faculty at a time have to share the same office; many office spaces are not designed for appropriate privacy in regard to counseling/advising; most have limited space for student conferencing, little or no storage space for teaching/reference materials, and most offices have inadequate HVAC connections and monitoring; the latter often contribute to respiratory problems of the occupants. Because of the scarcity of offices, faculty often have to be housed at a considerable distance from department offices where their support staff are housed;
  • Inadequate office space for administrative and staff functions; administrative/staff support office space, storage, reception areas, copying/printing/filing functions, meeting rooms, confidentiality of record keeping, HIPAA compliance factors--all are severely limited; current support staff numbers approximately 30 with additional staff growth targeted over the next five years. Graduate assistants and work-study students can not be used effectively; as a result, overall staff effectiveness and efficiency are compromised by current space limitations;
  • Restricted space for grants, especially federal; the college cannot compete for many grants due to the lack of space to house grant activities and support staff; (i.e., the college currently has two major federal grants pending that would add approximately 10 support staff and require office and storage space if funded; neither is available); current grant funding levels (3-5 million dollars) could be at least doubled if appropriate space were available. These conditions also place limitations on current grants that seek to expand their services but have no space for support staff or for the storage/disbursement of grant produced training materials;

Further information on the facility needs of the Reich College of Education can be obtained by contacting Dr. Charles R. Duke (dukecr@appstate.edu), Dean of the Reich College of Education.