 |
Testimony to the Maryland General Assembly
Capital Projects
Presented by
Dr. C. D. Mote, Jr.,
President
University of Maryland, College Park
March 2008
[PDF Version]
The University of Maryland has moved rapidly to a new level of distinction. To accommodate the research generated by our outstanding faculty and to guarantee the highest quality education for our undergraduate and graduate students, we must provide the physical facilities needed by a modern university.
Two critical funding requests this year include: the second and final phase of construction funds for the new Journalism Building, and equipment funds for the renovation of the Tawes Building.
New Journalism Building $6M request for construction,
total cost of $30M
We are very grateful for the Legislature's past support of this project and for allocating $10M in FY 2007 for design and a portion of construction. Design is completed and we are requesting an additional $6M to augment our private funds so that we can begin construction. We will provide $14M of the $30M cost of this project from private funds raised by the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. This almost dollar-for-dollar leveraging of State funds is a rare opportunity that will provide significant benefits to the State, University and College at a greatly reduced cost to the State.
The purpose of this project is to provide a new, state-of-the-art facility for the Philip Merrill College of Journalism that will elevate its existing academic, research, and public outreach programs and lift the College to be the nation's top Journalism program. This project is for the construction of a 53,412 GSF / 30,233 NASF office/classroom building located northwest of the Tawes Fine Arts Building. The new building will enable the College to vacate the undersized and aging Journalism Building and consolidate, from seven on- and off-campus buildings, its academic, administrative, research, professional outreach and support operations into a single building.
When Journalism's current home was built in 1957, it housed a 10-year-old, baccalaureate-only department that had about 100 majors and a faculty and staff of 10. Today's Merrill College of Journalism has about 545 undergraduate and 75 graduate (master's and doctoral) students, and 90 faculty and staff. The College is widely recognized as among the top five of the nation's more than 400 journalism schools. As the College has risen in stature, it has added professional centers, greatly expanded its broadcast news curriculum and added online/new media courses. The existing Journalism Building is inadequate for the school's operations and the College now occupies parts of six other buildings spread across and off-campus.
The new building will contain offices to house 100 faculty and staff, 12 PhD candidates, and 12 student interns/workers, as well as state-of-the-art teaching facilities, computer labs, a journalism library, suites for professional centers, and common support space. The new building will increase the space available to the Philip Merrill College of Journalism from 33,525 NASF to 39,771 NASF, an increase of about 19 percent. The project will add 8,235 NASF to the University's classroom inventory.
Facilities upgrades for the College include the modest renovation of the College's existing UMTV Cable Television Station and Eaton Broadcast Center, currently occupying 8,107 NASF in the basement of Tawes. With the completion of the Tawes renovation project, the assignment of space in Tawes to the College of Journalism will be reduced to 6,886 NASF. The project will reconfigure and better utilize the remaining space assigned to the College in Tawes. This work will be privately funded and will be implemented as part of the Tawes renovation project. The scope and budget for this work appear in the Tawes renovation project.
Construction of this project will address these significant problems:
- Lack of available space prevents the Philip Merrill College of Journalism from reaching its potential as a preeminent teaching and professional outreach institution.
The lack of space within the existing Journalism Building has meant that classrooms are configured in standard rows of desks inconsistent with current participatory pedagogical techniques. Computer labs are cramped with insufficient circulation space for instructors to guide students as they work at computers learning the techniques of editing and writing. Faculty and staff offices, as well as administrative support space, are small and cramped -- reducing the College's appeal to premiere faculty and students.
The project will increase the amount of assignable space by 6,246 NASF for the College so that its operations can be consolidated, creating opportunities for collaboration and interaction not currently possible, and providing improved teaching facilities. The building will add basic amenities, like a reading room and doctoral carrels, found at all of the College's peer institutions.
- The College's faculty, staff, classrooms, and professional centers are currently located in seven different buildings, three of which are leased buildings located off the main campus.
The space shortage has necessitated the removal of the College's professional centers to other buildings and reduced the number of courses taught within the existing Journalism Building. The project will bring almost all of the College's operations under one roof, building cohesion and strengthening interaction. The print, broadcast and online instruction will be in a single building and adjacent to the faculty, staff, and administration. The UMTV Cable Television Station and Eaton Broadcast Center will remain in their current Tawes location adjacent to the proposed new building.
Merrill College's six professional outreach centers will be grouped together in the Knight National Journalism Center, a discrete part of the proposed building and funded by a $5 million grant to the College's building campaign by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Consolidation of the centers will provide for more efficient operations and shared resources. The co-location of the undergraduate and graduate instructional programs with these professional centers will promote student interaction with hundreds of professional journalists who come to campus for training every year.
- The existing facilities are in poor condition, obsolete, and inadequate for the University to compete with premiere journalism schools around the country.
The existing Journalism Building is nearly half a century old and rapidly becoming a competitive and curricular liability in a technology-intensive field. Nearly all of the College's peer schools, and many other journalism schools of note, have moved into new or renovated facilities in recent years or have such facilities under construction. The last three accrediting teams to visit the Merrill College issued cautionary notes regarding the inadequacy of the existing space assigned to the College.
The new building will provide the space and infrastructure required to support the technological advances in the instruction and practice of journalism, lifting the College to the top of its peer group.
- Many of the College's undergraduate classes are offered in campus buildings remotely located from the Journalism Building with inadequate technology, resulting in lower teaching quality, missed opportunities for collaboration and operational inefficiencies.
Each semester almost a quarter of the College's course offerings are located in buildings other than the Journalism Building in classrooms that are not configured and equipped to support modern journalism teaching methods.
This project will provide an 80-seat Teaching Theater/Audio Broadcast Studio with TV production capability, four seminar rooms for 12- to 35-person journalism classes, four writing/editing labs with 18 computer workstations each, and a 20-seat computer teaching theater. Each classroom and teaching lab will be equipped with a full range of AV, computer, video and data projection, remote video display, and overhead projector providing the learning environment expected from a premiere journalism program. Faculty and staff offices will be located in the same building eliminating operational inefficiencies associated with course offerings spread across campus.
- There is a campus-wide shortage of instructional space.
Based on State space guidelines, the Fall 2006 shortfall of classrooms space is 57,867 NASF. This project will reduce that shortfall by 8,235 NASF.
Tawes Building Renovation $2.45M request for equipment, $35.8M total cost
The renovation of Tawes is the essence of facilities renewal. We are taking an obsolete, substandard building located in the heart of the campus and transforming it into a modern classroom and academic space appropriate for the 21st century.
We are grateful to the legislature for funding the design and construction of this very important project, and the renovation is well underway and on schedule. It is critical to provide the requested equipment funds so that the building can function as envisioned when it is completed. These funds are needed to furnish the offices and classrooms for the Department of English. While we will maximize re-use of existing furniture, we need new furniture to replace dilapidated and/or obsolete furniture and to furnish new or expanded functions. For example, the newly created classrooms in the building must be furnished in order to function. Also, writing lecturers and teaching assistants who are currently sharing desks due to lack of space will each have their own desk in Tawes. The Department of Budget and Management has approved our list of equipment needs and our request of $2.45M.
The renovation of the Tawes Building will enhance the ability of the Department of English to support 21st century English education for the 20,000 students they serve each year, provide them with the writing skills necessary to compete in today's workforce and prepare them to be productive citizens. In addition, it will provide urgently needed renewal to the Tawes Fine Arts Building which will be almost 50 years old when the renovations are completed, an age when building systems are well past their useful life. This project is a priority because it will enhance critical core mission educational services that impact every undergraduate student, and because it will provide appropriate accommodations for a department that will have been in cramped, temporary space for 19 years.
English is a core program of the University. The Department teaches 20,000 students per year, and the Department offers 52,000 of the 800,000 annual credit hours taught at the University of Maryland. We require every undergraduate student to take two courses in our nationally acclaimed writing program called the "Maryland Model" which gives them the skills they need to compete in today's workforce. Our nationally recognized Writing Center tutors 6,000 campus students annually. Both federal and private institutions have contracted with the Department to provide writing instruction for their employees.
The existing facility is a surge building the Department accepted in 1990 for an 18-24 month period. It does not allow the Department of English to provide the 21st century writing instruction expected of the State's Flagship University and recruit and retain top faculty. The graduate students are in former gym space in Preinkert Field House; the Writing Center is in Taliaferro Hall; and the faculty and administrators have been in the cramped surge building on the edge of campus. Nearly half of our distinguished faculty are doubled up in offices and, in many cases, three instructors share the same desk. Due to the temporary nature of the existing space, the classrooms and labs have not been equipped with modern teaching technology. This project will provide classrooms and labs equipped with modern teaching technology, unify the Department in a central and accessible location on campus and provide an adequate number of offices to properly house our faculty and instructors.
 |
