Author: William Stupp
Students arriving at Occidental College this fall return to a campus slightly altered. The sounds and sights of construction that persisted through much of the previous academic year have faded away and the renovated Johnson Hall is open for class and business. The renovated academic building is home to the International Program Office (IPO) and to the politics, world languages and Diplomacy and World Affairs (DWA) departments. Construction was completed on schedule late this Summer. The $19 million renovation project was funded by a combination of bond money and private donations.
Though the exterior looks much the same, the classrooms and common spaces of Johnson Hall bear little resemblance to its past. Indeed, the modern furniture, sleek polished walls and seamlessly integrated technology make Johnson Hall stand out from any other academic building on campus. The building has 11 new classrooms which were designed with essential and decisive input from Occidental Faculty. One of the new classrooms include the college’s largest classroom, the 174 seat Choi Auditorium. Named for the Choi family, the lecture hall is also expected to host speakers and events.
Central to the renovation is the Global Forum, a wall of illuminated glass panels with a half dozen computer screens integrated seamlessly into the picture.
Visual Information Specialist in Instructional Design Christopher Gilman was hired by the Center for Digital Learning and Research (CDLR) last fall to facilitate and manage the Global Forum. He highlighted integration and openness as guiding themes behind both the new layout of Johnson and the Global Crossroads software around which the Global Forum media wall is based.
“We want to have the space to be open,” Gilman said. This theme of institutional transparency is reflected in the building’s layout. The atrium which holds the Global Forum is connected to adjacent classrooms and the Varelas Innovation Lab (a new computer lab and digital workspace) by “folding nano walls,” translucent barriers which can be moved aside to open up a space. The Global Forum itself is intended to be similarly open.
By the time the software is finished and the application launched, which is expected to be sometime in October or November, anyone with an Occidental account can access the Global Forum application and submit their own content. The content displayed on the physical wall can also be viewed from the Global Crossroads web application. Gilman and CDLR Director Daniel Chamberlain see the Global Forum as an open space with great potential and few constraints.
“[The forum is] not just a place for formal display of final products, but, if you will, a space for writing on the wall,” Gilman said, envisioning the outcome of the feature.
Gilman compares the media wall to the walls which line the hallways of the building itself. Reflective and glossy, like giant dry-erase boards on dorm room doors, the walls themselves strewn with text from erasable markers.
The application will also feature other networking aspects and spaces for collaboration and discussion. Chamberlain ultimately plans to have the wall and its technology take on an important role in the school both educationally and socially.
The construction on Johnson may be finished with sleek new classrooms and communal areas to show for it, but Chamberlain insists that the Global Forum is still in a beta period, and that its innovating role on campus will expand in the years to come.
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