As the University's newest quad receives its finishing touches, students and administrators alike are expressing both excitement and frustration over the impending changes.
Although the new admissions building has been raved about by admissions staffers, members of the Computer Science department, which will be housed in the other new building, have been expressing concerns that the building will create difficulties for undergraduate students.
The Decker Quadrangle, named for Alonzo G. Decker, the late co-founder of Black & Decker, is scheduled for completion in September 2007. In just a few months, the Homewood campus will have a 604-space underground garage, a 79,000 square-foot Computational Science and Engineering Building and a homey but huge 28,000-square-foot admissions building.
Altogether, it will cost $75 million - a price the admissions staff claims it is well worth.
"Everyone's very motivated. Everyone's very excited to move," said John Latting, director of the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. The admissions department space will be quadrupled, so there will be no need for staff to be packed in "like sardines" any longer. There will be safe storage for student transcripts and other sensitive documentation, and the transition will only take a week at the end of the summer.
"We've been hampered for a long time by our space here in Garland," Latting said. "We don't have a proper place to have a meeting. The functioning of the office will go better [in Mason Hall]." The new space will give admissions a more comfortable and cohesive environment.
Latting lit up as he spoke about the imminent move. He thinks Mason Hall will let every campus visitor, whether a prospective student or returning alumni, know that "we care about the individual. We care about you as a person."
But not everyone whose offices and classrooms are slated to move is pleased with the expenditure. The campus reconfiguration is "generally not good," said Scott Smith, chair of the Computer Science Department, "because we're going to be divided up."
"For research labs, it's great," Smith said. "For degree program cohesion it's horrible."
Smith said that collaboration and cohesion are vital to advancement in his field, especially for undergraduates who are still discovering the scientific community. This year, Smith has begun to focus more on strengthening the curriculum committee, getting faculty talking in informal evening meetings and creating places for undergraduates to work together.
"I've been thinking about this cohesion issue because this [move] will be a big blow to it," he said.
Can the pros of more collaborative space and great research labs outweigh the cons of departmental schizophrenia?
"It's more on the minus side for undergraduates," Smith said regretfully.
And Hopkins undergraduates are evidently already jaded enough to agree offhand. "The priorities are off," sophomore physics major Jason Shaev said. "Instead of trying to look good, what about the current problems the undergraduates have, and will continue to have?"
Across from Shaev, sophomore chemical and biomolecular engineering major Robert Attorri smirked. "When you rely on charitable and alumni donations you have to look good," he said.
Shaev and Attorri laugh as they tell stories of dying raccoons trapped in long-decrepit academic buildings, or of the whitewashed plywood blocking off certain campus staircases, but they are obviously bitter.
"It's embarrassing." Shaev said, shaking his head. Those problems of daily upkeep continue to linger because, these students claim, the buildings affected are only the ones where most undergraduates attend class or study, not the buildings that house brochure-bullet quality utilities.
Has Hopkins been sold to the highest bidder? The accusation that style has been elevated over substance cannot fall on deaf ears to students walking through immaculate landscaping, on shining brick pathways, only to spend their time in classrooms with rats and clanking radiators, or "single" dorm rooms stuffed two to a room. Nor can it be dismissed by professors worried about departmental integrity, who work in labs arbitrarily cut off from colleagues in the same discipline.
Mason Hall will welcome any and all who set foot on campus, guiding them towards some buildings and away from others. On their way to cutting-edge labs, visitors will walk on brick and marble, and may stop to smell the lavender or lie in the lush green grass. They'll love it here at brand-name Johns Hopkins University. It'll be a nice place to visit, after all.
But then, they don't have to live here. Yet.
The admissions building is named after Raymond "Chip" Mason, chair of the University board of trustees. It will house the admissions office, alumni board room, information on Hopkins history, current research, and the undergraduate experience. It's going to be a three-story beauty, rising alone in a luxurious grass field.
The CSEB building will host the NSF Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology, the Institute of Computational Medicine and a Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, as well as rooms for collaborative work between members of the Whiting School and the School of Medicine.
The garage, hidden under a field, will provide much-needed and ostensibly safe parking for Baltimore Museum of Art visitors and University employees. And the Decker Quad still has space for two more buildings, their uses yet to be determined.
