|
||
|
Alumni Review
Features
Departments
eNews Extra
Contact Information
Hamilton Alumni Review
315-859-4648 (fax) |
|
|
|
But, as always, the first consideration in re-imagining KJ was the student-teacher relationship. Planners held focus groups with students and talked at length with faculty members. They also visited other colleges to see what worked and what didn't. "We were looking for improved technology, we were looking for places where we could meet with students outside the classroom, we were looking for students to have their own meeting spaces" for collaborative projects, Hagstrom says. "We were looking to put in anything that would improve the quality of our teaching and the education of our students." As a result, tiered and horseshoe-shaped classrooms now let teachers move easily among students and foster exchanges between classmates because they're facing one another. Computer terminals at every seat allow collaboration and sharing of data. A digital control unit at the teacher's podium is automated to perform such functions as lowering a screen and controlling room light levels. Planners also took an important lesson from the original KJ in using space wisely. "We discovered in the old building that if you had a classroom that held 30 people and one person was using that room, nobody else would enter," Hagstrom says. So the redesign provided smaller spaces for collaborative work — so-called "team rooms" — that afford a degree of privacy but also feature glass walls looking out on corridors. "If you come by in the evening," he says, "you'll find the team rooms are filled with student groups doing their own projects." George Baker '74, who teaches and has an office in KJ as distinguished lecturer in government, thinks of the new building — the design for which received an Award of Merit from the American Institute of Architects — as a counterpart to the Science Center as an icon of contemporary Hamilton. "The KJ renovation is an enormous success pedagogically and architecturally in every regard," he says. Jeff Little '71 P'04, who chaired the recently concluded Excelsior campaign of which the Kirner-Johnson renovations are a key element, agrees. "It makes for a happier learning environment," he says. "We like to think that the KJ Building does away with the whole idea of the 'dark side.'" Page 1 2
|
     View more photos of KJ |
|
|
||
