The Education and Human Services Building is 90 percent complete, Facilities Management officials say.

The completion date is still slated as March 13 for the building and May 20 for the landscape. The substantial completion date marks when a building can be used for its intended purpose, said Steve Lawrence, associate vice president of Facilities Management.

Once complete, users of the Education Building will enjoy some of the newest technology available.

“We have state-of-the-art technology,” said Kathryn Koch, associate dean of the College of Education and Human Services. “Faculty will have the opportunity to record all of their lectures and demonstrations, so students will be able to receive them through podcasts or Blackboard.”

Two of the features of classrooms in the building will be entirely new to any building on campus.

Outside each room there will be a touch-screen digital display called a RoomWizard, showing the room’s schedule, so that students can know when the classroom is available for use.

White boards will be equipped with a Copycam, a device that captures what is written on the board and allows it to be transmitted through the internet.

“Students will have the ability to reserve study areas, seminar rooms, or classrooms and take full advantage of the technology in them as part of their learning experience,” said Linda Slater, director of plant engineering and planning, in an e-mail to Central Michigan Life.

Three rooms in the building will support remote conferencing, and many rooms will be able to be repurposed at any time.

Furniture and technology costs for the building have been finalized at $2.8 and $4.1 million, respectively.

These costs are included in the $50 million budget for the building.

The furniture will start being moved into the building in late March, and is scheduled to take two months to complete.

Viewed as an initiative toward a more environmentally-friendly campus, the building will be the first at CMU to be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified.

Facilities Management expects the building to be silver-certified, but the final decision will not come until six months to a year from the building’s completion, due to a backlog at the U.S. Green Building Council.

The new building will be for the College of Education and Human Services and its various departments, which are currently spread around campus.

“(The education building) represents the addressing of current and future needs, learning needs for students within the college,” Koch said. “It addresses the need to make students familiar with what is needed in the classroom in the early 21st century and beyond, it makes them aware of new teaching methods. We also hope that this kind of facility will join us more with the community.”

university@cm-life.com

E-mail the author: James Fernandes