Lack of classroom space is becoming an issue for the University of Idaho.
During Tuesday’s Faculty Senate meeting, director of General Education Kenton Bird proposed a resolution to the senators addressing the space situation.
“(Bird) raised with senate leadership a question about classroom space and some of what’s going on in terms of being able to schedule classrooms,” Faculty Senate Chair Liz Brandt said.
Bird said the concern arose at the beginning of the spring semester. In his role as director of General Education, Bird said he worked with faculty all across the university in scheduling ISEM 301 classes.
ISEM 301s are one-credit courses that, in come cases, only meet for part of the semester, Bird said. While trying to work with faculty to provide courses at a time that worked with an instructor schedules, he said he heard voices of concern about classroom space.
“In my back and forth with the very talented and helpful scheduling team at the registrar’s office, I kept getting messages back … ‘Well, you know we have a classroom shortage,’ ‘We’re having difficulty accommodating this request,’” Bird said.
Members at the Office of the Registrar provided a spreadsheet which showed the documented lost classrooms since 2008.
“I was astounded at the bottom line,” Bird said. “That we have lost 46 classrooms and even allowing for the new general-use classrooms that have come on board in the College of Education Building, our net loss is 1,416 seats.”
Bird said this is a large number of classrooms across campus.
The document, provided by the Office of the Registrar, showed that some of the classrooms were converted to administrative offices or departmental-controlled spaces like classrooms, advising or department seminar rooms, Bird said.
“I don’t think anyone outside the registrar’s office was really aware of the extent of the problem,” Bird said. “As we look forward to growing our enrollment, we are going to need additional classroom spaces.”
Bird said the first step toward alleviating the problem is to stop diminishing the current inventory of classrooms at the university.
Recognizing there is a problem is another important aspect, which is the reason behind the resolution, Bird said. The resolution proposes two actions.
The first action asks the Provost and the Vice President for Infrastructure to essentially put a freeze, or impose a moratorium, before any classroom is taken offline, Bird said. This can’t be done until the seats are replaced elsewhere.
The second action requests Faculty Senate to empower an existing standing committee, the Facility Scheduling Policy Committee, to take on the issue and to act as the advocates in terms of speaking up for retaining existing classroom spaces, Bird said.
“As I look at the list of the classrooms that have gone offline, all of the justification seems legitimate,” Bird said. “The departments need space for advising or seminars, we have created some new administrative offices, but just in nine years it to me seems like death by a thousand cuts.”
Bird said no single change was responsible for the problem, however the cumulative affect cut into the inventory.
“I think in our discussion, part of the reason for proposing this is just to have a pause,” Brandt said. “So that hopefully the Facilities Scheduling Committee can look at the situation and have a better process so that we’re not having death by a thousand cuts.”
Savannah Cardon can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @savannahlcardon