The Huntsman Hall Has a Bright Future

By Ken Snyder

I’d like to shed some new light on Huntsman Hall. We have decided that the new facility will be the first on campus to feature LED lighting throughout the building. In the past, this form of lighting has been more expensive to install than traditional lighting. Now our electrical contractor, working with lighting specialists, tells us it will be less expensive to install LED lights than the usual incandescent lights. The cost of maintaining them is also less, and LED lights last longer too.

Brooks Dufner, of “Tec” Electric, 

installs LED lighting in room 218.

The problem is that Utah State University has never installed LED lighting in any classrooms on campus. We literally have no first-hand experience. What if this new lighting technology makes it harder for students to see what is on the board? What if it causes glare off the students’ papers so it causes eye strain? What if it doesn’t work well with broadcast technology – a key part of our strategy on delivering education in the future? These are questions to which we don’t know the answers. We want answers to these questions before we build a new building with 23 new classrooms – all with LED lighting – in them.

 

So we decided to renovate classroom 218 in the George S. Eccles Business Building to use LED lights as a test. This classroom, which was already in the renovation plans anyway, is the classroom that we use most often when we broadcast our courses to our regional campuses. It will be interesting to see how the new lighting affects the quality of the in-class experience, and the quality of our broadcasts.