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Extreme makeover, Norwich edition

Renovations are being planned for Ainsworth, Dewey and Webb

By Stephen Mikolaitis

On November 19, 2011

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An on campus building committee has been working in conjunction with outside consultants on schematics for a major renovation of Dewey, Ainsworth, as well as an extension to Webb Hall, according to Norwich University's Chief Administrative Officer.

"During this past April's trustee meeting, the trustees authorized and asked us to start schematic design work," said David Magida, chief administrative officer. The detailed plans on the project will be brought up to the board of trustees this January for further evaluation.

The initial designs were presented to the board of trustees during their last visit on campus this fall, he said.

The board instructed administrators to start design work on what will be the cornerstone to the next big capital campaign, explained Magida.

A capital campaign is a fund raising campaign for major construction and renovation projects on campus. Capital campaigns were used to raise money for facilities such as the Wise Campus Center and the math and science building.

"We know that Webb, Dewey, and Ainsworth are in desperate need of upgrade and renovation. So we wrapped that altogether as one big project," Magida said.

Webb, however, will be receiving attention in the form of a large addition as well as a renovation.

"A major addition will be built to Webb, it will effectively double the size of Webb," Magida said

The addition will be built onto the back of Webb where the Crawford parking lot currently exists, filling in the empty portion of the L-shaped exterior between Dole and Webb, explains Magida.

The aim of this additional space is to create more classrooms, and study areas for students and faculty alike. "We will have larger lecture halls, and some K-study rooms," Magida said.

"It will introduce a whole new family of class rooms to campus called K-study rooms," he said. "We have a shortage of class rooms in the 25 to 55 occupancy number."

According to Magida, the K-study rooms are a new type of classroom that will provide a unique environment for faculty and students to work in. The K-study rooms have a different seating and furniture arrangement, allowing "students to be more interactive with the professor and each other."

There will also be greater occupancy levels in many of these new lecture and K-study rooms, according to Frank Vanecek, dean of the school of business and management, vice president of technologies, and a member of the building committee for the renovation project.

The building committee is a committee formed to advise the consultants and architects working on the renovation plans on the needs of the school, according to Stewart Robertson, chairman of the department of modern languages, professor of Spanish, and member of the building committee for the renovation project.

"All of the members of the committee are representatives of the larger university committee," Robertson said. "Or more specifically, representatives from the three areas most affected by the renovations. That is the school of business, school of humanities, and school of social sciences."

"I think that two rooms will hold 50 students, one or two will hold 65 to 70 students, and one room that holds 100 students," Vanecek said.

This increase in occupancy will enable professors to design new methods to teach their classes, according to Vanecek. "In the introduction to business class, rather than having three or four sections with 20 students each, we would rather have one lecture hall with 80 kids in there for one day a week for the lecture," he said.

"Then there are other days of the week we would break that meeting into smaller lab type sections," he said, "so having more of these larger classrooms are going to allow us to arrange our classes and our teaching styles in different formats."

There will also be an increase in the number of general class rooms. Although the number is not finalized, there may be as many as 23 new classrooms, according to Vanecek.

"It is going to make scheduling significantly easier for the registrar's office; there will be more classrooms open during peak times of the day, such as on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 9 a.m., 10 a.m., and 11 a.m." Vanecek said.

In addition to the lecture halls, classrooms, and K-study rooms, there will be an increase in the number and type of study lounges available to students.

"We have a variety of study rooms, small study rooms. Students like that. They like small cozy spaces where two or three, or half-a-dozen of them can hang out comfortably," Magida said, "they're scattered all over (the addition)."

The renovation of Webb will also include a renovation for Dole Auditorium, including an increase in occupancy, according to Robertson.

"There is going to be a balcony added to (Dole auditorium), and the roof will be raised with access to the balcony from the second level," Robertson said. "I think the stage area and the back stage area are going to be improved and made a little bigger then they currently are."

Improvements on Dole are intended to render benefits for the entire university, by making the campus more appealing to outside speakers and guests, explained Andrew Knauf, acting dean of the school of humanities, and a member of the building committee for the renovation project.

"We want to have people in from the outside, who we feel good about coming to speak and perform in Dole auditorium," Knauf said, "and I don't think we can right now, so Dole auditorium is something that badly needs renovation."

Dewey and Ainsworth will also be receiving extensive renovations; however, the renovations for Dewey and Ainsworth will focus more on providing offices for faculty, Magida explained.

"Ainsworth and Dewey are going to have more offices than classrooms. There will be some class rooms in Dewey," Magida said. "The way the buildings are being constructed it made more sense to have most of the class rooms in Webb."

"That's just the way it worked more efficiently," Magida said. "It's a much smarter use of our money to do it that way, then it is to try and create classrooms in places which structurally in existing buildings would be very difficult to do."

As a result of this change the school of business will no longer be residing in Dewey, it will relocate to the new addition to Webb, according to Vanecek.

"The building is going to house the administration offices for social science and humanities," Vanecek said. It will also house the "full time faculty for social sciences and humanities, adjunct faculty for social sciences and humanities, plus the new psychology labs will be in this building."

The labs in Ainsworth were determined to be inadequate, and too small. As a result they will be removed from Ainsworth and placed in Dewey, according to Vanecek.

Dewey's south face will be receiving an extension that will replace the stair tower. The extension will extend the building all the way to the pedestrian road that leads from the upper parade ground to the White Chapel, according to Magida.

"It goes for this ugly thing that looks like it was never looked properly finished, to all of a sudden to something become much more consistence with the rest of the UP," Magida said.

The extension will also bring Dewey up to legal standards, which are currently out of date. "The elevator needs to be replaced, we have to improve fire egress, and the stair tower does not meet code," Magida said. "So all of this needs to be upgraded, or we would not be able to do this project."

Norwich University is also committed to repair the pedestrian road leading from the upper parade ground to the White Chapel, as well as to renovate the memorial wall in front of White Chapel and Webb explains Magida.

"This is something we have committed to ourselves to as part of our active duty permit for the campus center. To make it accessible for people under the Americans with Disabilities act, the ADA standards," Magida said. It is "for somebody to get from the UP to the campus center."

Although bringing the codes up to standard is an important issue for Norwich, it is not the primary concern for University officials, explains Magida.

"What is driving it is more the need to provide our students and faculty with the academic facilities they need to do their jobs to current expectations," Magida said. "As part of that we are addressing code issues, but that is not the driving force here."

"The driving force is that our students and faculty deserve modern, beautiful, and functional buildings with the facility related tools to teach in this 21st century," Magida said.

To raise support for this project the office of Alumni & Development Relations plans to advertise some of the projects they wish pursue to alumni and other benefactors, according to David Whaley, vice president of alumni and development relations.

"We look at it as how are we going to tell the Norwich story through this building and excite people to say ‘we are willing to make an investment back into Norwich,'" Whaley said.

To understand who would be interested in investing in the renovation project, Norwich University would hire outside consultants to conduct a feasibility study to potential investors. These investors would include alumni and organizations that have been generous to Norwich University in the past, according to Whaley.

"These are guys who have given us anywhere from half-a-million to millions of dollars," Whaley explained. "Whatever number we come up with in that study will give us a pretty good idea of how much we will raise over the next five to six years."

It also important to understand how much the board of trustees is willing to provide to for the renovations. "The board is our greatest benefactors," Whaley said. "There are 28 trustees right now; there are probably another 30 to 40 former trustees."

"That group combined, we would look to provide roughly a third of whatever we set as a goal," he said, "So if we set a goal of $60 million, we would expect to come up with $20 million from that group of people."

The total price for the renovation project, when adjusted for inflation, is around $42 million, according to Magida.