On March 5, the Campus Leadership Team presented its plans for budget requests for the 2009-2010 school year
Eric Aikin
– News Editor –
On March 5, the Campus Leadership Team presented its plans for budget requests for the 2009-2010 school year. These plans gave a rough idea of the investments STLCC-Meramec will be making for the next school year.
The most major investment discussed for next year is a $265,000 renovation of the library’s second floor for the Center for Teaching and Learning.
“It’s a major renovation remodeling project. It’s quite involved,” Paul Pai, Ph.D., said. “It’s one that we want to support [for] our faculty and eventually staff development, which is our most precious asset in the long-term for the development of this educational institution.”
Chief architect of the project, George Wasson, explained that the renovation will give the Center for Teaching and Learning a useful multi-purpose space to utilize.
“It’d be a re-design including the old ITV classroom that we have [on the library’s second floor],” Wasson said. “A re-design of that to include space for faculty meetings, workshops, that type of thing. Also for working with electronic media, we’d be moving two senior instructional designers in, along with the coordinator for the Center for Teaching and Learning and one support staff person.”
The second largest investment discussed during the presentation was a $105,000 renovation of Media Services in BA105. According to Pai, problems with the room include a divider, dim lighting, the lack of a data projector, and a substandard soundsystem.
“The screen location and podium, those kind of things we thought we use a lot, whether with students or administration, internally or externally, we have a lot of activities in that room and oftentimes we’ve used that for open house activities,” Pai said. “Is that the place we want to highlight the attributes of this campus? If it is, we need to show our commitment to that.”
Other major investments discussed included a $35,100 art gallery renovation and a $27,500 audio console for Communications.
Dozens of other items were requested, including microphones, computers and renovated tennis courts, but budget limitations make it unlikely that they will become a reality.
“If you go to the very bottom line you’ll see that we’ve received a little more than $2.5 million worth of requests and that represents a real challenge for us because that list will do nothing but get longer. And we’re only likely in any given year to get a third to maybe a little more than that of the money,” said Pai.
