Monday, July 26, 2010
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
13
NORTH QUAD
From Page 1
well as wireless Internet access.
At the top of the residential build-
ing, the "Tower Room" will feature
community programs and activities, as
well as a kitchen designated for special
dinners for residents.
University Housing Spokesman
Peter Logan said he thinks residents
living in North Quad will have a dif-
ferent experience from those living in
other dorms.
"Living in North Quad is going to
be unique in that it will be a residential
facility co-located with academic pro-
grams and offices with an overarching
focus on an awareness of international
issues and cultures in an effort to bring
about stronger competency as global
citizens," Logan said.
The dormitory will house resi-
dents in the Global Scholars Program,
a living-learning community formerly
based in East Quadrangle, on the
fourth floor and the Max Kade com-
munity - previously in the Vera Baits
houses - on half of the fifth floor.
Logan added that the dormitory,
as well as some of the collaborative
spaces between the residence hall and
the academic building, will host inter-
national programming, which could
include community programs about
a specific country, art exhibitions,
opportunities to work with different
academic units and video conferencing
with other parts of the world.
Logan said he feels that this pro-
gramming as well as the residents'
interactions with the academic units in
the building will generate a vital edu-
cational experience.
"It's going to be really exciting
that this building, more than any-
where else, articulates (University
President Mary Sue Coleman's) vision
that we need to strengthen that con-
nection between living and learning,"
he said.
North Quad will also hold a caf-
eteria, which Logan said will feature
international cuisine, as well as tradi-
tional American food. Logan said he
believes dorm residents, faculty and
staff, will want to eat at the cafeteria
as well as students from across cam-
pus.
In an e-mail to the Daily, Logan
wrote that the dorm will also be energy
efficient with occupancy sensor lights
in the residential hallways, bathrooms
and classrooms, water conservation
methods in the plumbing and controls
to turn-off air flow in unoccupied con-
ference rooms.
Though some collaborative spaces
between the academic and residential
sides of the building and other areas
of the academic building will still be
under construction in the fall, Logan
said the dormitory will be completed
for student move-in.
"We're confident that the resi-
dent hall is going to be set and ready
to go when the students start moving
in," he said.
Because North Quad encompasses
both academic spaces and a dormitory,
Jamie Lausch, the North Quad Pro-
gram Coordinator, said she was hired
to facilitate the interactions between
the different programs in the common
spaces of the building.
During the exclusive tour of North
Quad, Lausch said one of those spaces
- the Media Gateway - will include
a lounge with television sets display-
ing advertisements, student work and
public service announcements. The
space also features alcoves with chalk-
board walls and team rooms below the
lounge, which any University student
will be able to reserve online.
The other common space, which
has not yet been given a name, is still
under construction and is not slated
to be finished when the dorm opens.
As this area facing State Street is still
under development, Lausch said the
space may be used as a public gather-
ing place and may feature MHealthy
classes or host receptions and gather-
ings. Lausch also said she is working
with the SAC department on this proj-
ect.
As the residential building pre-
pares for the incoming students, some
academic units of the building have
already begun moving in.
With part of the School of Infor-
mation's move to the building last
Monday, Dean of SI Jeffrey MacKie-
Mason said he is excited about the
range of new technologies that the
school will have in the building. These
include life-size, high-definition
uncompressed video conferencing and
wireless video camera systems in the
classrooms, MacKie-Mason said.
MacKie-Mason added that he is
looking forward to having the school's
doctoral and master students - previ-
ously split between North and Cen-
tral campuses - together in the same
place. The North Campus component
of the department will be moving to
North Quad in October.
MacKie-Mason said the other
advantage of North Quad is the poten-
tial to work with the Department of
Communication Studies as well as the
Sweetland Writing Center and the
Department of Screen Arts and Cul-
tures.
"We're all units that deal in vari-
ous ways with media and information
and communications, and we have
a lot of common interests and a lot of
overlap in both teaching and research
objectives," he said. "We haven't been
able to interact very much in the past,
because we've been scattered across
campus, so we're really looking for-
ward to interacting with the units. It's
like a digital life playground around
here."
Danielle Peters, Senior Infor-
mation Assistant at the Language
Resource Center, said the center is also
excited to move into North Quad on
Aug. 6 and to work with the different
departments in the building.
The LRC will also expand its sat-
ellite television offerings in the fall,
so that anyone can bring a laptop into
North Quad and watch satellite TV
over an IP web address, Peters said.
The LRC is working with the Univer-
sity to make this offering campus-wide
in the future.
With a move-in date of Sep. 1, Phil
Hallman, the Donald Hall Collection
Librarian, said he hopes that the move
from E. Liberty to North Quad can
help the library - which houses over
20,000 DVDs, screenplays, books and
an archival print collection as part of
the SAC department - become more
recognized on campus.
"We're sort of an unknown library
for the most part for campus, so hope-
fully we'll be a little more known in the
North Quad building," Hallman said.
The Sweetland Writing Center
will also be open in North Quad on Jul.
28, though its peer-tutoring centerwill
remain in Angell Hall.
See photos of North Quad at
I MichiganDailycom
CORRECTIONS
" A July 19 article in the print
edition of The Michigan Daily
("P4k stabs hearts in Union
Park") inaccurately referenced
Johnny Marr's guitar play-
ing. Marr was not present at
Pitchfork Music Festival.
" Please report any error in
the Daily to corrections@
michigandaily.com.
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