Business-Communications
A Campus Technology Center Rises

Construction for the new building is ongoing between Weber Chapel and Fisher Science Hall.

Funded through the ongoing Susquehanna 2000: The Next Challenge capital campaign, the $7 million building project is designed to support digital-age information technology - enhancing collaboration among students and faculty and enlarging access to a global classroom.

But a flexible, high technology infrastructure is only part of the building's promise. The structure itself has been designed to promote faculty-student interaction and team-based learning - two valuable ways to help students develop knowledge and skills they will need for success in the workplaces of the 21st century.

Construction began in May at the site on University Avenue between Fisher Science Hall and Weber Chapel Auditorium. Though home base for the business and communications programs, the building will serve as an advanced technology center for the entire University. It will also support several key goals in Susquehanna's current strategic plan. Additional classroom space will be essential to meet the plan's call for gradual growth to 1,800 students by the year 2004. The technological resources are crucial to achieving the plan's goals to assure information literacy for current students and to attract increasingly talented students.

Converging Skills and Experience
Though more than one-third of Susquehanna's students major in business or communications, both

Small group activities, such as in this class taught by Associate Professor of Communications Beverly Romberger, lead to valuable team-based learning skills.

programs lack adequate space and equipment. The Sigmund Weis School of Business currently shares Seibert Hall with mathematics, computer sciences, student residences and the Center for Computing Services. Business classes are scattered in four different buildings.

The Department of Communications is crowded in the basement of the Degenstein Campus Center and suffers from severely limited facilities and equipment to teach journalism, graphics and public presentation skills. The WQSU radio station is one of the program's few dedicated spaces. A modest television studio located across campus in the Blough-Weis Library doubles as the University's video distance-learning classroom.

The project will provide high quality, centralized space for business and communications and will bring together two programs that increasingly converge in the skills and experience they must provide students for professional competence. Individual courses in management and communications skills are also increasingly in demand from students majoring in other fields throughout the University.

A Collaborative Design
The design of the 31,000-square foot structure reflects broad-based input from throughout the University,

The building's high-technology presentation classroom will be used by departments from throughout the campus.

as well as from architects and consultants. Details and plans were developed by a working group that included University Treasurer Donald Aungst, Dean of the Sigmund Weis School of Business James Brock, Assistant Professor of Communications Joseph Burns, former Dean of Fine Arts and Communications Henry Diers, Academic Vice President Warren Funk, Professor of Management and Mathematical Sciences Wallace Growney, Associate Professor of Accounting Jerrold Habegger, Assistant Professor of Communications Catherine Hastings, Assistant Professor of Management and Mathematical Sciences Degenstein Professor of Communications James Sodt and Computing Center Director Greg Sprague.

In addition to offices for communications and business faculty, the facility will include a presentation classroom, four multimedia classrooms, two video studios, video and audio editing rooms, a publications and graphics suite, conference and seminar rooms with an observation area, student team/study rooms, workrooms and prep rooms.

Team study rooms on each floor will promote small group learning.

An Exciting Array of Resources
The layout has been designed to encourage interaction among students, and between students and faculty. "We know that collaboration and informal conversations contribute greatly to student learning beyond what takes place in the classroom," says Vice President Funk.

"Even the size and shape of faculty offices are configured to allow faculty and students to work together," says Hastings. Team study rooms adjacent to faculty offices for small group projects and lounges on each floor received similar attention. An outside plaza facing the campus center will provide a new informal gathering area.

The entire structure will be wired for the latest in information access with data jacks available at every planned seating area. "The building will support an exciting array of resources not to be found, at least not together, in most of our classrooms today," says Funk. "Ports to the Internet, networked computers, electronic whiteboards, high resolution projectors, document cameras, and other multimedia devices will be the teaching and learning tools that replace chalkboards, slide projectors, and, in some cases, even textbooks."

Active Learning
"It really is a building designed to take full advantage of information technology and a flexible, team-based approach both to education and the practice of management," says James Brock, dean of the Sigmund Weis School of Business. The School recently quadrupled the number of computer-related courses required to graduate with a Susquehanna business degree. "Information technology is revolutionizing the way we shop, the way we go to the library, the way we conduct business and the way we teach," says Brock. "That's the environment that our graduates will be thrust into on day one."

"One of the reasons employers hire our graduates is our students' ability to relate all of the concepts to the bottom line. They have to know, for instance what happens when you raise prices by 5 percent or volume by 5 percent," says Associate Professor of Management Paul Dion, who is currently developing an Internet-based marketing course. Computer resources and Internet access will transform such exercises into active learning, he says. "Instead of me demonstrating it up front, they're going to do it."

Faculty Access: Up Close and Online

Assistant Professor of Communications Joe Burns directs broadcasting classes in the University's television studio and editing facilities.

The building will offer students easier access to faculty both through high-tech electronic means and closer physical proximity. It will mean, for example, that Assistant Professor of Communications Joe Burns will only be a few steps away instead of across campus when students need assistance with video editing projects. "In order to teach television you have to teach it all - you've got to teach in front of the camera and you've got to teach editing. And in this field there's nothing more difficult and more time consuming than editing videotape."

Facilities will include an observation room for focus group research and use in decision theory and negotiation theory courses. Seminar and conference rooms will also offer corporate-like settings for student projects formerly presented in regular classrooms. "It will make a real difference in terms of learning how to make professional presentations," says Degenstein Professor of Communications James Sodt.

The link with the business school is a natural fit, says Hastings, who points out that communications students majoring in journalism, broadcasting or public relations frequently assume positions requiring business-related skills. "It can be a pretty steep learning curve from reporting news to managing human beings," she explains.

The University's new emphasis in corporate communications, though based in the communications department, takes advantage of the resources of both programs. Sharing the new building will provide "a chance to open up terrific dialogue with our new neighbors in the business school," adds Sodt.

"I very much believe in the business school as part of the broader educational community," says Brock. "There is a tremendous synergy that happens when people from different disciplines bump into each other at the water cooler."

Associate Professor of Accounting Jerrell Habegger and other faculty will find space designed to encourage informal interaction with students.

Flexibility and the Future
Flexibility is also one of the chief design goals of the new structure. Susquehanna's first entirely new academic building in 40 years will need to keep pace with new teaching methods far into the future. Planners have devoted special attention to developing a structure and an infrastructure that can easily adapt to opportunities presented by rapidly changing technology.

The planning group has resumed meeting this fall to plan for equipment, technology and a smooth transition in time for the opening of classes in September of 1999. Decisions on some key components have been deliberately left until the last possible moment to take advantage of breaking technology and cost-effective purchasing.

Today, after more than five years in the planning, construction of the exterior shell is underway. "The excitement is, it's happening as we speak," says Brock. "What had been a dream and a commitment, something that was somewhere in the future, is now unfolding right before our eyes."