Our vision for the new building requires real teamwork

Ken Snyder

When major goals are achieved, you often hear people talk about the teamwork that it took to get to the victory. When it comes to our new building, teamwork is not just an abstract concept. We’ve formed teams and their work is cut out for them.

Here are the teams we are now putting together:

1)      Classroom Advisory Team – This team will be charged with the responsibility to give us recommendations on such things as the type of technology to be installed in each classroom, what the teaching stations should be like and what kind of furniture we should include in each room. This team, made up of faculty members, will also be coming up with recommendations about classroom layout. For example, should the classrooms be flat or tiered?

2)      Department Heads Advisory Team – We’ll be looking to department heads or their representatives to help us nail down the number of courses that will need to be taught and how big the classrooms should be. The group will be asked to estimate how much space we should plan for to accommodate our future faculty and staff needs.

3)      Program Leaders Team – This team will be charged with advising on staffing and space projections needed for our programs. “Programs” in this context refers to things such as the MBA office, the MSHR office, the Advising Center, the Huntsman Scholar office, the proposed Center for Entrepreneurship, the proposed Center for Global Engagement, the Shingo Prize organization, etc. (And yes, I realize that there are several more not included in this list). This team will be made up of both staff and faculty – particularly the faculty members who work in these various programs.

4)      Technology Team – This team will be charged with coming up with recommendations about the technology infrastructure needs we will have in our new the building. Things like our WiFi specifications and electrical supply issues will need to be considered. This team will be made up of of any faculty or staff members interested in contributing.

5)      Student Advisory Team – This team would be charged with figuring out and making recommendations on the important stuff such as should there be a student lounge or a food court? Should vending machines be part of our new building? Where should we put them? We plan to meet with the Business Council and ask them to form a sub-group of volunteers for this team.

6)      National Advisory Board – This will be a team to advise us on major building issues and we will be asking them to help us with the campaign to raise money through the naming opportunities the new building will create. We will meet with the National Advisory Board and ask them to form a sub-group of volunteers for this team.

We are looking to volunteers to serve on all the teams I have just described. We have scheduled a day of programming workshops on Sept. 21 for the teams to meet with the architects. We will have an orientation meeting to define the scope of the work ahead prior to that time so that everyone can prepare for the workshops.

We know that when it is all said and done we won’t be able to meet everyone’s expectations for added space. I have visited several schools who have recently built new buildings, and all of them reported this was their experience. So, once we collect the different requests, we will need to prioritize the programming needs and make decisions about what will be included and what will be left out.

When this new building is done, there will come a time that someone will talk about the teamwork that was involved in creating this new structure. For those who have actually served on the teams and done the work, such statements won’t just be platitudes. The real team players will be there. I hope you are one of them.

Ken Snyder