Phase II of campus renovations begins
By Nate Bloomquist
Apache Editor
And so the IVCC faculty office shuffle continues.
Phase II of the rerouting of the supply and return duct work in buildings A, B and C will begin shortly. Last summer, building A was renovated and asbestos was abated. Chicago-based Pepper Construction and Environmental services will begin work on the building the Monday after graduation.
All offices in building B will need to be relocated before the process begins. Last summer, offices in building A were changed during finals week, creating headaches for some instructors. To avoid that problem this year, faculty offices will begin to relocate the weekend of March 24-25. Clusters of offices in the building will be moved at a time and the process should take three to four weeks.
“It should run pretty smoothly,” said Physical Plant Director Larry Rousey. “It’s pretty much all taken care of and mapped out.”
The project will cost a total of $1,992,164 with $1,561,541 of that total being used for the duct work. The numbers were approved by the board.
The project is scheduled to be completed by Sept. 14. Rousey said he has every reason to believe the work will be completed on schedule.
“It went absolutely perfect last year and we’ve got the same construction management firm,” said Rousey. “I don’t see any reason why anything would be any different than what happened on Building A.”
Preliminary plans are already underway for Phase III, which will consist of work on Building C. That project will begin next summer.
The college’s assessment center will also have a new address soon. The center will move from its current location in Building B to C-108, however, no exact date for the move has been set.
The move will be completed when the remodeling of the library is completed.
Marianne Dzik, chairperson of the Assessment Center says she expects the move to be done by the end of the semester.
The center gives placement tests in math, English, chemistry and reading. It also administers tests for Ipeck classes in addition to proctor tests. The move will help solve an overcrowding problem and won’t be as noisy as the current location.
“We’re at a very noisy area now,” said Dzik. “We get lots of noises from when classes change. It’ll be a better testing situation for us, because sometimes we’ve just needed a bigger space too and we’ll have that.”
Cathy Bangert was hired by Title III to work in the assessment center. She was formerly the Director of the Dislocated Workers Center on campus. Dzik said there will be no new construction needed for the move. Dzik said the center’s current location in could be used for tutoring next year.
A new office area has been created in Building E, where a student lounge was located. The area is currently barren, but will soon house the campus workways center. This area will be the headquarters for a new campus publication called “Workways.”
The center will contain job-related resources. The publication will give information for those who are between jobs, looking for a new career, or are looking to start their own business. The center will be staffed with advisors and will contain computers for those who wish to look for job-related information.
While no definite time table has been established for getting the center running, Mary Lou Meader, the chairperson of the project said the area will be ready this spring and hopes it will be completed before the college’s job fair on April 19.
It will be funded by what Meader calls a ‘hodge podge’ of resources. Bangert, Maragaret Allen and Kathy Glasscock are also involved in the project.