While students start evacuating their residence halls for winter break, half of the Scripps College of Communication is moving into a new home.
Schoonover Center opened Monday for the dean’s office and faculty of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and the School of Media Arts and Studies. Eventually it will house all five schools in the College of Communication.
“Everyone will get a better space in this building than they have now,” said Tom Daniels, professor emeritus of communication studies and a building liaison for Schoonover.
Upon entering the building, students will be able to shrug off their backpacks and sit in front of the fireplace — a feature from the former Baker University Center, which used to be housed in that building.
In the first floor student lounge, there are several work stations where students can set up their laptops at round tables with a television screen in the middle of each table, said Scott Titsworth, dean of Scripps College of Communication.
Students at each station will have the ability to project their work on their laptops to television screens to show their group what they’ve accomplished, Titsworth said.
Using that same technology, students will have the opportunity to submit announcements or creative works to the school, so it can be projected throughout the building on television screens similar to the ones Baker, Titsworth said.
“This digital signage is a way that our students can apply what they’re learning for digital communication,” Titsworth said.
The school has not yet devised a system to field these submissions, Titsworth said.
The College of Communications’ dean’s office is located across from the student lounge, relatively close to its former home in the Radio Television Center.
The School of Journalism, on the second floor, takes up the largest amount of space because it is the largest school in the college, Titsworth said.
The School of Media Arts and Studies will move to the third floor of Schoonover. Schoonover will be connected to RTV on all floors except the basement.
But all the construction isn’t completed. The other three communication schools, including the J.W. McClure School of Information and Telecommunication Systems, the School of Communication Studies and the School of Visual Communication won’t be able to move in until the second phase of construction is completed by spring 2015, Titsworth said.
“Physical separation makes collaboration infinitely more difficult,” Titsworth said.
The second phase of construction includes finishing the first floor classrooms, the basement laboratories, and the office space on the third and fourth floors, Titsworth said.
“(Schoonover)’s really going to evolve as it’s being created,” Titsworth said.
The building is open to students.
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