The campus is investing up to $550,000 to ready borrowed campus spaces for general assignment classrooms as it prepares for an entering class of nearly 9,360 freshman and transfers — about 960 more than last fall.
Spaces in the Welcome Center, Wright Hall, Olson Hall and the Music Building are being adapted for part-time use as general assignment classrooms. A classroom in the new Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, set to open Nov. 13, will be used part-time for classes beginning with the winter quarter.
The use of the departmental classrooms and other spaces will add seven general assignment classrooms with a total of nearly 1,000 seats.
"Everybody on campus knows we're in a space crunch," said Matt Traxler, associate vice provost for academic planning in Undergraduate Education. "The campus has been open minded and worked with us so we can make these classes work for everyone."
The campus is expecting about 5,740 new freshmen and 3,620 transfer students for a total of about 9,360. Undergraduate enrollment is estimated to be about 28,000 over the three-quarter average for 2016-17.
In addition, summer is being used to do full renovations of eight classrooms and make full technology upgrades to an additional 10 so the spaces will be available during the regular academic year. And Student Housing is also adding beds to accommodate more new freshmen and transfer students.
Projects already underway
Ken Burtis, acting provost and executive vice chancellor, said the large entering class comes as the campus had been on track to add a net 2,000 classroom seats to accommodate the planned growth of 5,000 undergraduates that began in 2011 under the 2020 Initiative.
Projects in planning or construction — to maintain the campus ratio of seats to students that existed prior to the initiative-related growth — include the new Ann E. Pitzer Center (scheduled to open in fall 2016) and the 580-seat large lecture hall on California Avenue (winter 2018), as well as renovations to Cruess Hall (fall 2018), Walker Hall (spring 2019), and Haring Hall Phase 1 (winter 2020) with Phases 2 and 3 to follow.
With Freeborn Hall closed since 2014, the campus had already been creative in using Jackson Hall in the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, a room in the Activities and Recreation Center, an auditorium in Student Housing and spaces at the Graduate School of Management and the School of Education.
But after the Legislature allocated an additional $25 million to 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ to increase the number of in-state undergraduates systemwide by 5,000 no later than 2016-17, 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ President Janet Napolitano asked the campuses to enroll more — the Davis share being 1,000 additional California residents. That meant the campus had to find more instructional space.
To adapt the borrowed spaces, Traxler's office has made arrangements for extra furniture and equipment as well as acoustical improvements. "We want to make the best use of the space," he said. "We want our students to have the best learning environment possible given our constraints."
Traxler said the campus is taking steps to safeguard the performance spaces from the regular wear and tear that classrooms experience. For example, daily janitorial service added for Jackson Hall helped maintain that space, and the Mondavi Center reported that students have been respectful of the hall.
Budget and Institutional Analysis, the Office of the Registrar and associate deans from the undergraduate colleges are using space assignments from last year with estimates of the incoming class to see if better use can be made of instructional space.
Renovations in Hart and Storer halls
Some $2.6 million is being spent to do floor-to-ceiling renovations with full technology replacements in eight classrooms in Hart Hall (Rms. 1116, 1120, 1128, 1130 and 1150) and Storer Hall (Rms. 1322, 1342 and 1344).
Features of the new classrooms include:
- new instructors' desks and new seating where needed
- new whiteboards and chalkboards where needed
- new ceilings and lighting
- new rubber floors, which offer the same acoustical properties of carpet but are easier to maintain
- new clocks on the walls
- additional electrical outlets on the walls
- spaces for wheelchairs and handrails for tiered classrooms to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Technology installations
David Levin, director of Academic Technology Services, said the totally new technology installations in nine Wellman Hall classrooms (Rms. 202, 212, 216, 226, 229, 230, 233, 234 and 235) and Medical Sciences Building IC Rm. 180 will bring everything up to a "good digital standard" to provide ease of use for instructors and a good experience for students.
The suite of of technology includes:
- an instructor's desk that adjusts to a sitting or standing position
- a programmable touch-screen control panel for technology
- wired and wireless internet connections from the podium
- a computer projector and screen or large monitors (depending on classroom shape)
- a document camera
- podcasting and audio recording
- lecture capture for audio and PowerPoint
- amplifiers for playing audio and DVDs
The new control switcher, or brain of the system, Levin said, will allow a technician to provide remote assistance in response to an instructor's call for help and make future upgrades easier.
Student Housing
The campus has also been adding beds so it can continue its commitment to guarantee the availability of student housing to new freshmen and transfer students. Emily Galindo, executive director of Student Housing and associate vide chancellor for Student Affairs, said 100 more residence hall rooms will be converted from doubles to triples.
The availability of residential dining space limits the number of existing rooms that can be tripled, so a lounge adjacent to the Tercero Dining Commons is being converted to dining space with about 180 seats. It increases residential dining space by more than 9 percent.
For transfer students, Student Housing is master leasing about 250 more beds, for a total of 1,200 from on-campus private housing facilities (including The Colleges, Primero Grove and West Village) and apartments in the city.
Next fall, the 266-bed Webster Hall will be closed and demolished to make way for a new 366-bed residence to open for fall 2019. The Tercero 4 residential complex for 506 students opens next fall, and a 500-seat dining hall is being planned for a site west of Giedt Hall for fall 2019.