The University of Idaho had a busy summer of construction and renovation, with many projects being completed by the time school starts.
The Wallace Residence Center has 10 floors being given a new look. The construction on Integrated Research and Innovation Center will be finished and ready for classes spring 2017. The College of Education renovation has been completed and will be ready for classes this fall semester.
The Wallace refresh
The Wallace Residence Center was built
Carly Scott | Argonaut
The Integrated Research and Innovation Center (IRIC) first underwent construction two years ago. It’s slated to be completed November of this year, in accordance with the two-year time span alotted for construction.
in 1963, and nearly all of the building has been updated since then. This summer, 10 floors consisting of 280 rooms are undergoing some improvements.
Courtney Hatton, recruitment coordinator for Housing and Residence Life, called the improvement a cosmetic ‘refresh.’
Refreshed rooms have new carpets, new wood doors and locks, new sinks, faucets, vanities and GFCI outlets. The countertops are Corian, which Hatton said is more sanitary and more durable than the previous surfaces. The desks have outlets with USB functionality and the windows have new blackout curtains.
Hatton said rooms have new LED lights, which in addition to being brighter and using less energy than other lights, also emit no heat, keeping the room cooler.
“If you’ve been in the residence halls over the summer, you don’t want any additional heat going on,” Hatton said.
Hatton said the bathrooms received a spray-on refinishing on the floor and in the shower. She said it’s non-slip, and looks better.
The refreshed hallways have new paint and Hatton said the carpets were replaced recently.
Hatton said nearly every student will stay in a residence hall and a great number will stay in Wallace. She said refreshing the rooms means students have a better time.
“It made sense to start there to invest in making the student experience the best it can be,” Hatton said.
Once the renovations are complete, the second and third floor of the Stevenson wing will be the only rooms untouched by a recent update.
“They’re what we call vintage Wallace,” Hatton said. “We do not have plans to have students living on these floors.”
Director of Architectural and Engineering Services, Ray Pankopf, said the Wallace renovation is a completely schedule-driven project. He said two shifts of contractors have kept the work going on in Wallace from 6:30 a.m. to nearly 1 a.m. the next morning every single day since May 15, even on Independence Day.
“There is no wasted time in that project at all,” Pankopf said.
Pankopf said the courtyard on the south side of Wallace is being redone as well. He said broken and settled asphalt and shrubs are being replaced. While the work was being done, he said facilities removed a dilapidated water tank from under the courtyard.
IRIC nears completion
The Integrated Research and Innovation Center (IRIC) is slated for substantial completion in November, at which final checks will be made of the building and its systems before moving equipment and faculty in. It is on schedule to hold classes in January.
Pankopf said the IRIC is designed to be a flexible and robust space for science and research. He said it supports collaborative efforts and is different from any other science or research facility on campus. What makes this center unique is that it was not constructed with specific sciences or researchers in mind, as most facilities are. Pankopf said any lab space in the facility needs to be able to support almost any sort of science.
“It’s not tailored to any one department,” Pankopf said. “We can’t go through and say ‘it’s a chem lab, it needs this, this and this.’”
He said this flexibility required a robust facility with potential redundancy, which leads to some of the complexity and cost associated with the project. He said some sciences need a ‘wet lab,’ which the IRIC does not provide. He said he is pleased with the progress and the process of construction.
“IRIC has been almost scary in terms of how smooth it has been,” Pankopf said.
He attributed that success to adequate funding. He said there often aren’t enough funds to meet the desired scope of a project. He also said using a process called ‘Construction Manager At Risk’ helped substantially.
CMAR works well for projects in the center of campus because the contractors and the university work much more closely together, which Pankopf said makes for a smoother process on a project that impacts students’ daily lives. He said CMAR gives a greater understanding of each parties’ needs. It reduces conflict and allows a project to be completed faster and for less money.
College of Education opens its doors
Since closing its doors two years ago to begin renovation, the College of Education was stripped nearly to the bones. Now it is the most advanced building on campus.
Jim Gregson, acting Dean of Education, said the old building had major problems. He said it was dark, it leaked, pests entered it at will and asbestos was laced throughout the building. He said the building didn’t feel good.
“A lot of people would enter the building, do what had to be done inside the building and exit as soon as possible,” Gregson said. “It wasn’t a place people wanted to hang out and have conversations you want to have at a university.”
Gregson said education in America has been under the microscope recently. He said parents are concerned if their child wants to pursue a career in education because of news of low pay, tough working conditions and teachers who spend their own money for school supplies then get harshly critiqued. The old building only increased their concern.
“New students and parents would enter the building and go ‘huh, I guess education must not be valued,” Gregson said. “This helped contribute to that stigma.”
Gregson said he believes the new building symbolizes the university’s and the state’s commitment to trying to change that dynamic. He said the building won’t be the silver bullet for education, but he said there is now a deeper understanding of how education prepares K-12 educators, who impacts the students who go and pursue a post-secondary education.
“We want to leverage this building to address those problems,” Gregson said.
The idea of a ‘learning community’ runs through the whole building. Gregson said it was designed to be a space where students can engage with others easily. The hallways don’t just facilitate movement from place to place, but they are spaces for students and faculty to spend time in as well.
Gregson said he worked previously in corrections education.
“The stairwells in prison are scary, horrific,” Gregson said. “Ours in the past were comparable to those.”
The main stairs in the renovated building have floor to ceiling windows and no doors, which Gregson hopes will encourage people to use the stairs more than the elevator. In fact, the whole building has floor to ceiling windows in nearly every exterior wall and many interior walls. Most offices are located on the inside of the building and have window-walls that look directly to the outside windows. There are so many interior walls made of floor-to-ceiling windows, some have had opaque designs added to prevent people walking into them.
“We wanted to democratize that natural light,” Gregson said.
Around half of the classrooms in the building are registrar classrooms, meaning they are used for courses across all colleges, not just Education. There are also team rooms that can be checked out for use by any student and their group.
The building boasts the most high-tech classrooms currently on campus. Two Technology Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL) rooms have several monitors for use by students or faculty. The Doceo Center moved into the building’s third floor and has completely new technology, such as split-screen monitors and panoramic cameras to make online teaching better.
One of the largest additions is a health clinic and exercise room on the first floor. Gregson said they wanted to increase the connection between the College of Education and it’s neighbor building, the Physical Education Building. More than half of the education students are not involved in teacher preparation, but rather exercise science and athletic training. Gregson said it’s been like that for decades and he hopes this addition will make that connection more visible.
The clinic is free for any student, faculty or community member who wants to use the service. The building was designed to promote a healthy lifestyle, inside and out.
“We’re interested in the whole person,” Gregson said. “It used to be probably stereotyped as a granola thing or something, ‘mind, body, spirit’, but you know, I think we are developing a deeper understanding of these relationships.”
A moment for Targhee
Targhee Hall served as a residence for students studying liberal arts for years, but was repurposed two years ago. Education faculty and staff needed somewhere to stay while their building was being renovated.
Pankopf said the timing was perfect that Housing and Residence Life expressed a desire to move students out of Targhee at that time, at least temporarily. This allowed Education members to use Targhee as office space for the last two years.
Pankopf said Housing wanted to consolidate the residence halls into the neighborhood near the LLCs and Wallace. He said there are no plans to move students back into Targhee, and that as for the building’s future, all options are on the table.
Lecture hall improvements
Jansen 104, a large capacity classroom, is being renovated during the fall semester. Pankopf said it is part of a longer-term project to renovate one or two old large capacity rooms every year.
Because nearly every student will take a course in a large capacity classroom, Pankopf said renovating them will impact the lives of a vast majority of students for a relatively low cost. He said the greatest example of which was Ag Science 106, which hadn’t received any renovation since it was built in 1951.
Jack Olson
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