Where are the Welch Hall suits or President Martin when you need them? Oh, my….
In my role as the English department alternate, I went to a meeting yesterday of the Pray-Harrold advisory committee, a meeting that reminded me a bit of one of those endurance tests on the TV show Survivor.. For those of you unfamiliar with the show: there are frequent “challenges” that involve something like standing on one leg or holding your arm up as long as you can, and the winner/last person left of these challenges receives some sort of reward– immunity from being voted off the island, a cheeseburger, whatever. I don’t know who was the last person standing at this particular meeting since I bowed out at hour three of the four hour marathon session.
Anyway, the last time I went to one of these meetings back in mid December, I came away cautiously optimistic about the budget being large enough to afford some modest building remodeling beyond the mechanical– the HVAC and the electrical systems. After Friday’s meeting, I am now decidedly pessimistic.
EMU and the state of Michigan is getting ready to spend $30+ million dollars and a couple years on renovations, and right now, I think the best case scenario for Pray-Harrold after construction is we will end up with a building not too far from the status quo. Sure, it will probably be modestly better in terms of comfort (air quality, temperature, some lighting, new paint, no plugs in the floors of offices, maybe a few new chairs and desks, etc.). But at best, Pray-Harrold will remain the same in terms of configuration (classrooms, offices, furnishings, etc.), it’s still not going to be possible for anyone with any sort of mobility disability to maneuver in the largely-outmoded lecture halls, and there still won’t be any meaningful “social spaces” for students and others hanging around.
The worst case scenario? Wow, the sky is the limit on that one. It’s easy to imagine a PR nightmare– $30 million dollars, and we still don’t have handicapped accessible rest rooms or lecture halls? It is easy to imagine a new HVAC system not making much difference in the overall comfort-level of the building– that is, you still end up with hot and cold spots because of the fatally flawed bones of the structure. And it is extremely easy to imagine the ripple-effect this project will have throughout the institution, impacting everything from credit hour production, class scheduling, and teaching loads. In short, a train wreck.
I guess what makes this all the more frustrating is the mind-numbing futility of the process here. As the advisory committee learned yesterday, to do the “bare bones” work that has to be done to Pray-Harrold — that is, before we talk at all about any meaningful renovations that might actually improve learning and working in the building and/or before we do anything that might require meaningful input– will completely tap-out the budget. So why, as more than one person at this meeting asked yesterday, are we holding these meetings at all? Why did the project architects go around to various departments in Pray-Harrold soliciting for input from folks that will be largely ignored? Why is this being sold to us as a “renovation” when it is more like a “large maintenance” project?
The answer to these questions is becoming clear: CYA. These marathon, mind-numbing, soul-sucking meetings and “input opportunities” are clearly just the administration making sure that they solicited “faculty input,” even though they know this input will largely be irrelevant or ignored.
And by “administration,” I am not exactly sure who I mean. The administration’s point person on this seems to be CAS Associate Dean Wade Tornquist, but he isn’t empowered to make any of the hard decisions. In fact, Wade began Friday’s meeting by reporting that the provost’s office said that the idea that some entity should move out of Pray-Harrold permanently to free up space was off the table. In other words, Wade took input from the last advisory committee meeting up the hill to Welch, the folks there said “no,” and that was that.
For me as a faculty member, this begs the question “why doesn’t someone from Welch come to these meetings?” President Susan Martin has been out quite visibly in response to armed robberies in the dorms, as well she should. But shouldn’t she or someone else in Welch be showing up to meetings about one of the largest building renovation projects in the history of the institution?
Also, while I personally don’t have a lot of knowledge about major, multimillion dollar renovation projects like this one, I have kind of a gut feeling that all the of the point people involved here– including the contractor– are in a bit over their heads. I have yet to hear from anyone at any of these meetings how this whole thing is going to “work,” and the last time I heard anyone talk this vaguely and optimistically about the logistics of an operation was the Bush administration at the beginning of the Iraq war.
Hey, I could be completely wrong here. Any renovation is better than none (probably), and perhaps EMU will actually connect with this proposal to get more money from the Federal government as part of the “stimulus spending” legislation working its way through congress. But after Friday, I for one am bracing myself for the worse.
Thanks for the post, Steve. I was at this meeting myself as my dept’s second alternate. I attended the early meetings of this “Advisory COmmittee,” which started meeting sometime after Thanksgiving 2008, although the committee members were elected at the Dept. level about a year ago. Everyone knew that there’d be lots of planning decisions to make, but the powers that be — the Provost office — declined to start the planning process (or at least that part of the planning that includes faculty members) in a timely way. The project has been sold as “instructional” but a large part of it, as it turns out, only indirectly supports improving the instructional space in the building.
So there is a real feeling of distrust about the whole process. Some members of the advisory committee are boycotting it as useless, and other PH faculty are talking informally about raising motions of “censure” or “concern” in the standing faculty input bodies. I’ve not given up hope that the process will produce some good, but i understand why so many have.
But I’m a bit more optimistic than you, Sitedad, that the changes now deemed within budget will matter. It will bring the building’s standard size classrooms up to circa mid 1990s standards, but it will remain extremely crowded. I have no confidence, myself, that the air circulation issues will be adequately addressed, but I am hope to be pleasantly surprised.
And get this, Steve: The actual budget is $42 million. The $30 million you mention is basically just for the “hard” costs, but there’s another necessary $10 million or so for related costs.
I am not sure that having the President attend these four meetings would be a good use of her valuable time. But I do agree that someone with real authority needs to be in the room, and nobody was. The fact that the Provost’s office has not yet been able to get its mind around the need to move some department or office out of the building is an astonishing sign of how ineptly the Division of Academic Affairs is run. We have empty office space on campus, but no current occupant of PH can be assigned that office space, despite the incredible crowding of this building. One of the many costs of the lateness in starting this planning process is that so few users of the building have a common, factually based understanding of what the potential is for improvements given the budget.
The channels of communication are clogged: Questions and agenda items for the Advisory Committee submitted to the Associate Dean, who chairs the Advisory Committee, go unaddressed, and yet to not pose questions to him and instead to go to other officials is to go out of channels, which the Advisory Committee members were told not to do at our first meeting. Getting unofficial answers from outside of official channels is informative (and yes, I do that from time to time), but information that is put before the entire body is information that can be acted on. If a topic – like adding solar power collectors – that you want on the agenda is not added by the Chair, your idea is never discussed. And so much valuable input is lost, and the scope of discussion limited to what the Associate Dean and the outside experts want discussed. None of them have ever had a faculty office in PH, or regularly taught classes there.
Among the missing info, info necessary for planning the future of PH, is comprehensive classroom usage patterns and the impact of fire code enforcement on renovated classrooms. The building, once renovated, will be unable to “seat” as many students as it can now — but the Divisoin of Academic Affairs has it seems not come to terms with that nor seriously begun planning for that huge impact. To his credit, our new dean of Arts and Sciences, Tom Venner, while new to the job and the building, seems to me to be a strong advocate for fixing the building and pained by how limited the current funding is relative to actual needs. As one colleague said, “it’s a coat of paint and nothing much more” that will make a visible difference to building users.
Personally, I am very impressed with the skill and dedication of the EMU facilities staff that are involved in this project. Not so much impressed with the firm hired to do the job (but I did favor hiring it, on the limited data we had). But to be fair, their work is being done in a huge rush. And Academic Affairs has been AWOL on this.
However much good the now being designed renovations may end up producing, this is the sad fact: Not one of these changes address a need that has not been known and well documented for decades; none of these needs would have been as expensive to address in the past as they will be now; all of these needs are ones that a well run administration would have addressed effectively over time, if EMU had ever had capable management. We built a president’s house instead of fixing PH’s heating and cooling. We build a grand student center instead of upgrading PH classrooms; the modest expense of removing those “stages” from floors 3-5 could have been undertake years ago. We as a university have always devalued the actual center of EMU’s education – the classroom buildings. I am glad that PH now has some serious funding, and I thank Pres. Martin and Freman Hendrix for doing so much to secure the funds. But nobody should exaggerate the coming improvements, nor underestimate the extent to which they address self inflicted problems. Indeed, even today, the Provost office and ICT are incapable of getting on board and tackling the space assignment issues necessary to ensure that our students get the best possible renovations of PH. Why isn’t McKinney Union on the table as a building for classroom and academic uses? One reason only that I can see: The old habits of the upper administration die hard, and they are clung to by the old guard even as the new order is being birthed.
All things considered pray-harrold is an eyesore on campus and should probably be demolished by now. As a fairly new student i am surprised that this building hasnt had any major renovations since it was built in 1969, and for a building as promanent as pray-h is, that is truly a shame.
Jackie,
Emotionally, I quite agree that the building would be better demolished than renovated. Thing is, to demolish it would cost far, far more than merely renovating it. This renovation that’s being planned now is just a remedy for 40 years of close to non-existent maintenance for the largest classroom building on campus. 10,000 plus students a day use the building, and a lot of good education goes on there, despite the building’s limitations.
What do you expect, the State never provides money for maintenance. The concept of maintaining buildings went out the window 30 years ago.
Mark: It appears to me that most of the money will be spent on HVAC and IT issues. There is only about $6,000,000 left for cosmetics. The State is really to blame for a lot of this mess since the original budget was for over $50,000,000 and included an addition to PH. In my opinion EMU is lucky to be getting the $30,000,000, plus the 25% that the University is required to kick in. All of the capital outlays were reduced due to economic conditions. The real issue is how the State, over the last 50 years has reduced its involvement in modernizing and maintaining college/university buildings.
I think it is insane that EMU is spending tons of money on building renovations, when they can not spend the money or take the time to properly salt the grounds. I have taken several falls due to salty sidwalks and the adminstration does not give a darn….
First off, by “$29 million,” I mean the amount of money we can spend. As Alum points out, we’ve got to hold back quite a bit for overruns and to pay for stuff like moving people in and out of the building. So I’m talking here about the actual money to be spent.
Second, we assumethat replacing the HVAC system and upgrading the electrical will make a significant improvement to the environment of the building. It probably will, but there is clearly no guarantee that this is the case. I’ve been in PLENTY of newly constructed buildings where the hot and cold areas were all screwed up, and I can easily imagine the problems of retrofitting an ancient building like Pray-Harrold might mean there are still going to be a lot of uncomfortable spaces in there.
Third, while we have (or are on the verge) of securing a big chunk of money, it really just isn’t enough to do much beyond a significant mechanical repair. And I guess I have to wonder if it’s worth it– a couple people brought this up during this meeting. I mean, it’s a little bit like that classic dilemma with the quasi-junker car: the mechanic tells you that you’ve got to spend $1000 on a new transmission, but the car itself is only worth $3K or $4K, and it has plenty of other problems. On the one hand, $1000 is a lot cheaper than a new car; on the other hand, you’re potentially throwing good money after bad.
Finally, let me just repeat what Mark said about classroom use. I predict this will be an ENORMOUS problem that will come back to bite faculty very very hard if we don’t do something to address the problem now. IMO, that “something” starts with a serious discussion with reps from the Provost’s office about the need to get some space in the building by moving some units out.
What I find striking in this regard is the complete lack of creativity and imagination. I mean, Jones-Goddard is sitting across the street from PH nearly empty. Dorm rooms seem like something that could be converted into office spaces pretty easily, and if we converted that space into offices and PH into almost entirely classrooms, then it seems to me we’d get a hell of a lot of space and actually make use of building resources that are being wasted right now.
I don’t think there is much anyone can do about how the money is going to be spent. The U must present plans to the Joint Subcommittee – you can’t due structural renovations w/o affecting HVAC and the U can’t afford to do both – there is not enough money. And how do you know that Jones – Goddard are not closed for good reasons. My daughter lived in Jones 10 years ago and it was in pretty bad shape.
Maybe we can have a new contest: Twisted Poetry: the Pray-Harrold Renovation.
“A pail of paint, a jug of Febreze, and thou…”
“I grow old, I grow old, all my tables are now bowed…”
“At EMU did Kubla Khan a stately practice dome decree…”
Nice, George, humor always helps ease the pain!
And Alum: I agree with what you said about the state’s budgeting process, but I disagree that none of this is the fault of EMU’s management over the years. They choose to neglect PH and to instead build many new non academic buildings, or to renovate them, and all that cost $ up front and more $ in maintenance. Boone, for example, not that many years ago had nearly as much custodial staffing as all of PH! There is no sugar coating the fact that EMU’s management has been off the charts inept, incompetent, and dishonest. The present is the product of past experiences, and the past is always relevant to what is possible in the future.
Back to work now.
In all of the rumblings that have been posted here, can anybody see that those “suits” in Welch are actually working to make things better? The situation(s) on campus have not occurred overnight, they will not dissipate overnight. Be patient and play nice together.