By MARTY LEVINE
In the large, new, tiered classroom in Langley Hall, Sanela Schnitgen shows off five rows of lounge-style seating – lines of padded chairs connected with arms from which tablets swing in either direction.
“You probably have seen this seating at the airport,” Schnitgen says. “Students learn best when they are comfortable.”
There are also five rows of movable seats at tables just behind each lounge-type array. “There simply isn’t a classroom that looks like this” elsewhere in the building, says Joshua Kaufer.
The new classroom, created from two adjacent spaces, was completed in June and holds 145 to create an active learning space — with white boards in back and front and speakers in the ceiling, allowing the instructor to teach from both ends of the room and small groups to assemble in separate work areas during class. There are spots to power up laptops and other devices at every chair.
Schnitgen is a design project manager in the Office of Planning, Design and Construction, which oversees campus development, architectural design, space planning and construction management in the Office of Business and Operations (for which Kaufer is a spokesperson). For the Langley Hall project, Schnitgen worked with the Learning Spaces Management Committee of the provost’s office, which is responsible for the maintenance, renovation and development of learning spaces and adjacent group-study spaces at Pitt.
The original twin rooms in this space had been built in 1961 and replaced once before in 1982, but just before the pandemic they were deemed ripe for better use, with plain gray folding chairs in one room and blue in another, some of them not even usable. The rear of each space was blocked off by projection rooms. Now each has exterior windows for natural light.
Langley, used for neuroscience and bioscience classes, will really benefit from the new space, Schitgen says: “Today’s teaching environment is not standing in front of the board,” but rather creating “a warm and inviting environment.”
“It’s a dynamic space,” Kaufer adds, with all the technology behind ceiling panels to give maximum visibility to all sides of the classroom. In the very front are several pairs of companion seats for ADA-accessibility. A niche next to one entrance holds the trash and recycling cans out of the way of the main door, where a ramp leads inside, and waiting spaces — comfortable benches, with more power outlets — sit outside both entrances.
The lounge-chair rows are outlined in light-stained wood, matching the wooden stairways to the top of the room, which is otherwise carpeted. The whole space, fitted with acoustic panels of multiple types, feels human-sized, even though in another lifetime it might be deemed a small auditorium.
The room had just emptied of 140 students in a genetics course on this second day of fall classes. Schnitgen brushes something from a lounge seat and wipes a water-bottle moisture ring from the wooden end of a lounge row.
The design staff will work with professors to see how students are using the space, Kaufer says.
And, adds Schnitgen: “We are eager to learn what our students have to say about this.”
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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