With the renovation on the docket, the Department of Art & Art History collaborated on many aspects of the project, from planning meetings two years prior to construction, to the details of design and functionality as renovations were made. They worked from makeshift classrooms at 838 Riverside Drive during the renovations and remotely during the pandemic.
“Looking back, as each year progressed, our departmental majors actually began to decline. Prospective families could not see the value of the education past the visual experience they witnessed during campus tours of our department,” recalled Beldue.
“The newly renovated Owen Hall will finally visually match the Department’s mission statement; Our goal is to foster excellence, individuality, and diversity while encouraging freedom of thought, imagination and honest, open inquiry as catalysts for personal growth. The Department of Art & Art History is excited to grow enrollment to rival the top five on campus, to attract the students of highest potential, and to build the understanding in our immediate community, nationally and internationally, that we are scholarly focused.”
Enrollment growth also propelled the Department of New Media into the renovated Owen Hall.
“In the past six years, the number of students majoring and minoring in new media has more than doubled, making it one of the fastest growing departments on campus. This rapid expansion resulted in New Media outgrowing its home on the second floor of Zeis Hall,” said New Media Associate Professor and Department Chair Christopher Oakley. “With the move to the newly renovated third floor of Owen Hall, faculty and students in New Media will finally have the physical space needed to bring the existing and emerging curriculum fully to life.”
Their new spaces include two large computer labs and classrooms, outfitted with the latest technology, as well as a dedicated animation studio for traditional and stop-motion animation. There is also a fully-equipped video/virtual reality/motion capture studio that will offer students the ability to light and shoot videos, experiment with virtual reality, or digitally record realistic motion on 3D models through the use of newly-acquired motion capture suits and software. The new Fabrication Lab offers a makerspace where students can use high tech equipment like 3D printers, computerized sewing machines and laser cutters, or low-tech equipment like hammers and nails and drills to create prototypes of their designs. A project room, student lounge and audio/editing suite are available too, and to showcase all this creative work, there’s a gallery space dedicated to new media.
“For the first time in our history, New Media classes will take place in labs and studios designed for them. New Media faculty carefully thought through every possible advance in technology and future proofed the space to allow for changes in technology, offerings from new faculty, and our overall curriculum,” said Oakley.