SLC will be ‘heart’ of University

Admin R&B

Paul Cassilly, project manager for the Student Learning Center, takes members of the University Facilities Committee on a tour of the building. (Dan Mclaughlin * The Red & Black)

Standing in the Student Learning Center’s unfinished lobby, Paul Cassilly asked his audience to see not the construction, but the future “heart” of the University.

“This is going to be a point of destination, a place where kids are going to want to come to,” said Cassilly, the project manager for the new Student Learning Center, to a group of the University Council’s Facilities Committee members.

The $42 million SLC, which is scheduled to open for regular classes by fall of 2003, is a unique conception, as it mixes 26 classrooms with 96 group study rooms, said University Librarian Bill Potter.

“We looked around at other places, but we didn’t find another place combining classrooms and study space like this building,” Potter said. “It will give this building a sense of life, activity.”

Included in the building’s plans are several lecture rooms that promise a unique twist on attendance, using UGA Card scanners to help professors take roll.

The system, which is optional for professors to use, was an “inexpensive addition” to the building, Cassilly said.

This high-tech attendance monitor is another “risk” students deal with when millions are being spent, said Geoffrey Grimes, the committee’s student representative.

“I think this could change the culture. Now, there’s no way (faculty) can take attendance for a 300-person class, so we laugh at them. Soon, they’ll be laughing at us,” said Grimes, a junior from Milledgeville.

In addition, the building includes wireless Internet access, 500 computers and more than 1,000 data ports.

But one of the biggest draws, Potter said, is the large second-floor coffee shop.

“(The SLC) may thin out the Main Library a little, but it will be a magnet to draw students studying elsewhere, like local coffee shops,” Potter said.

The building’s second and third floors support 24-hour study areas open to students at all times of the day.

Despite the progress on the building, which committee member and Regents Professor Loch Johnson called “awe inspiring,” important questions remain as to how to fund upkeep and maintenance projects, Potter said.

So, Potter said the University hopes to sell room sponsorships for about $25,000 apiece.

“If we named everything, we could get $6 million for programs, art, more furniture, replacing computers, to keep up to date,” he said.