By SUSAN JONES
The Jan. 17 meeting of the Senate Campus Utilization, Planning and Public Safety (CUPS) committee started with a very specific request from the physics department.
Melanie Good, a teaching associate professor and co-director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Physics & Astronomy, said she and her colleagues were “confused and dismayed” to find out earlier this month that the current proposed plan to renovate 343 Alumni Hall “represents a large departure from earlier discussions.”
In November 2023, Good said, a design was proposed that incorporated acoustical features and retained demonstration space and seating capacity. “At the conclusion of this meeting, it appeared that a plan was agreed upon — one which would make the space better for students and retain and expand our active learning capabilities.”
Good pointed out that introductory physics classes serve thousands of students across many majors and schools, and many of the large classes take place in 343 Alumni Hall. Her research also has found that active learning demonstrations are some of the most beneficial for student success.
She said the proposed design severely reduces the demonstration space, curtails seating capacity, reintroduces long tables that make it difficult for instructors to interact with students and produces problematically oblique lines of site.
“It’s important to note that the reduction of seating capacity would not actually change the character of the class to a small enrollment experience, but instead would simply lead to an imbalance between demand for enrollment and seats available,” Good said. “This would necessarily lead to either scheduling more sections of our courses and requiring resources and support to do so, or turning away hundreds of students each year.
“But perhaps even more important than this is the impact on our demonstrations. The new design reduces available space to conduct demos in the classroom to the point that some demos would not have the footprint needed to be carried out. In addition, the proposed demo and storage and staging area represents a loss of two thirds of our current space, meaning that many experiments would not be available for storage or staging.”
This, she said, would reduce experiential learning. “We hope that in renovation planning, such as the proposed renovation of 343 Alumni Hall, faculty and staff can be involved in the planning process, so that what emerges for our students is a welcoming space that sparks curiosity and enhances their learning experience,” she concluded.
Cressida Magaro, senior leader of learning environments in the Teaching Center who also is on the Learning Space Management Team, said the team has met with the previous and current chairs of the physics department about this space, and she was at the CUPS meeting to listen and take concerns back to the team.
“Because, as you all know, the need on campus is great and the money is small, so we have to make a lot of difficult decisions a lot of the time about where we’re going to direct our efforts,” she said.
Magaro said they’ve been trying to arrive at a design for the room for over a year and still have not finalized one. She said they don’t want to reduce seating so much that it impacts how many students can attend, but they also want to make it more friendly to active learning and give students and instructor more space.
Gina Bleck, vice chancellor for planning, design and construction, said her office was not aware of the concerns about 343 Alumni Hall until a few days ago. She said they were early in the design process for the room, and “we have heard the message loud and clear that physics and astronomy, the preferred department for the registrar classroom, is not happy with with the design.”
She said while they can’t change the building’s footprint, “we can look to work with you more closely on ensuring that the storage areas, display and and setups can be managed and done in a way that you continue the high caliber of teaching necessary for physics in the room.”
Public safety update
Scott Argiro, assistant vice chancellor in the Office of Public Safety and Emergency Management, gave an update on some of the safety efforts Pitt began after the two hoax shooting events at Hillman Library and Central Catholic High School in spring 2023.
By August 2023, electronic locks, which can be controlled from the Public Safety Communication Center, had been installed on 335 of 580 classrooms. Argiro said that work is now nearly complete, with 534 classroom locks installed. There are 36 more that are still being worked on, and 10 where electronic locks can’t be used.
He said this work was a “Herculean task” for the Integrated Security technicians staff of eight people.
The office also has increased the number of panic buttons on campus from roughly 450 to now more than 1,000.
“And with that, I honestly feel like we are in the best security position we could be in on the University,” Argiro said. “It gives people a sense of security that you are behind a locked door. There are now lockdown demonstration videos on safety.pit.edu. I hope you’ve been able to familiarize yourselves with that.”
Argiro said he’s also met with 150 Allied guards who guard doors and perimeters at several sites on campus. There are more than 200 guards, and he said he wanted to make sure they knew “that what they do here is critical to our mission at Pitt — the protection of students, staff, faculty, visitors and to deter, detect any type of criminal activity or dangers or critical incidents.”
He also mentioned several upcoming safety events including a pedestrian safety blitz on Feb. 4 and the Spring Safety Fair on Feb. 25.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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