The move to Manhattanville will leave a lot of space vacated on the Morningside Heights campus over the next few years. And besides Uris Hall, which has been designated for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, it’s not clear how the space will be used.
The Student Affairs Committee of the University Senate, in an effort to advise the administration on the redistribution of the space, is beginning a report to analyze student space around campus.
“It will be a very clear explanation of what space there is now, what’s the nature of that space, and what we need,” SAC chair Alex Frouman, CC ’12, said.
The senators will seek to quantify areas used by students in Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of General Studies, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences—the schools with the most dire space needs, according to both Frouman and University Senator Eduardo Santana, CC ’13.
University President Lee Bollinger has already promised Uris Hall, the home of the Business School, to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, after it moves.
“We could start populating Uris right now. We are really at the end of knowing what we can do,” Executive Vice President for Arts and Sciences Nicholas Dirks said. “Some departments don’t have enough space for new faculty, and we have some units in the Arts and Sciences that are really, really pressed for space. The School of the Arts is having trouble finding offices for some of the most distinguished faculty that we have recruited.”
Frouman and Santana said that undergraduates and GSAS students in particular need more space, especially relative to schools that have their own sizable buildings or additional resources.
The report will look at spaces such as group study areas, rooms for specific types of student groups, and lounges, examining the resources available to students and the needs of different populations on campus. It will provide objective measurements of the space, such as square feet and number of chairs.
Members of the Student Affairs Committee hope that their research will allow the administration to respond more easily to student needs once the space becomes available.
Santana said that this is one of the first times since recent debates over the smoking ban and the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps that SAC and the University Senate are “reaching out to our respective constituencies to really utilize the manpower of sending concerned student leaders to really analyze what it is that students need.”
The first building to open in Manhattanville will be the Jerome L. Greene Science Center for Mind, Brain, and Behavior in 2016. No opening date has been set for the new Business School building.
And although space will become available on the Morningside Heights campus in stages—depending upon the progress of construction—Frouman said that the report will serve as a resource for future students.
“We’re in this for the long haul,” Santana said.
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