Students often joke about “living” in the building that houses their respective departments. With the upcoming renovations to the Grant Center for international education, the people heading up the project believe that students involved with the international program can feel a similar sense of home when walking into the facility.
“The renovations will occur this summer, and be finished when school starts back,” said Ian Cosh, vice president for community and international engagement. “What’s important about it is that, for the first time, we’re going to have a space completely dedicated to the needs of the international program.”
The new space will be much larger than what is in use currently, and will be updated with new technology to help the program accomplish what it needs to get done.
“We’ll have that whole wing where you come in through the bottom door of Lile,” Cosh said. “We’ll have everything all the way to the conference rooms. We’ll have a classroom, a conference room and a seminar room, one of which will be equipped with distance learning equipment.”
The international program sometimes needs to communicate face to face with people who are not readily available. The “distance learning equipment” as Cosh describes it, will make that a possibility.
“This equipment will give us teleconferencing abilities,” Cosh said. “What we want to try to do, in a fairly modest way, is have the kind of equipment to at first have distance meetings with our colleagues involved in the study abroad program. Whether it’s a meeting or some kind of special teaching, we just want to have enough equipment in the room to give good visual and vocal communication.”
Part of the overall goal of the renovations is to make the facility stand out. Cosh believes that with the upcoming work, the center will be more recognizable.
“Everything we do in international communications right now, we can now do over [at the Grant Center],” Cosh said. “It’ll house the training, as well as the teaching under one roof, which will give us one place where we can gather with larger groups. It’ll also give it a sense of geographic identity, one of our main goals.”
The renovations will, as stated above, provide more space. But specifically, several areas will be moved around and enlarged to provide a better home for the international program.
“We want to give them a home that fits the center,” said Brett Powell, vice president for administrative services. “We’re going to be moving the walls around, enlarging the reception area, repurposing a few of the classrooms, and doing a few general renovations such as new carpet, new lights and new furniture.”
Overall, the renovations will provide a more modern and useful space to a program that the people involved with the renovations feel are well deserving of the effort.
“The University values the international program,” said Powell. “We have donors and friends of the Grant Center who want to see it grow and improve. It’s an investment to see that that happens, and make sure that it grows into what it can be.”
