Rama Rao stated that the Committee's guests today had been invited to discuss space considerations on campus, particularly the availability or lack thereof of classroom space. Mr. Crosby noted that George Perkins coordinates space usage for Academic Affairs. Perkins is also the director for the Division of Institutional Research. Perkins has been reviewing classroom and office space using a formula required by administrators in Tallahassee. According to this formula, UNF is OVERBUILT in classrooms and under built in office. While the campus agrees that there is a need for more faculty office space on campus, we do not agree that UNF has an excess of classroom space. Perkins is contesting the formula with Tallahassee.

The College of Health is due to begin construction of a addition. As part of this addition the campus hopes to create some pleasant seating areas and improve the use of the area to the south of the current building. The campus has rethought its original plan to expand College of Health's use of classroom and labs in the stadium.

Ground will be broken in June to begin construction on the first phase of the new social sciences building. President Delaney has given an additional 1.3 million dollars to this construction budget. This phase of the social sciences building will not contain a large number of general use classrooms, but will contain classrooms designed to suit the needs of various units of the social sciences, such as anthropology labs/classrooms. And, of course, new offices for the social sciences faculty will be provided. As a side note, Crosby indicated that faculty offices in new buildings are larger than the ones in the old buildings. While this is good for the faculty, it does use up the square footage allotted for the total building.

The College of Education building will be built on parking lot 3. It has been funded with 12 million dollars for this current year with 12 million more expected in the coming year.

An architectural firm has been hired to design the new student union. Money has been made available for planning by the legislature. The portables west of the College of Health will be lost when the student union is under construction. The student union is planned to occupy most of the current parking lot 4.

Rama expressed his concern for the safety of crowded classrooms. He is especially concerned with backpacks being dumped in an already narrow aisle so that a quick exit from the classroom would be difficult. Mr. Crosby said that classroom capacity is determined by a formula for space usage. Enrollment Services is always under pressure to add students to classrooms since each student generates approximately $8,000 per year for the University. The final determiner of the number of students per classroom is the fire marshal.

A general discussion of time utilization of available classroom space was initiated. Peak hours of classroom usage is 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. -7:30 p.m. Faculty members are not required to be on campus more than 9 hours a day. That creates a classroom utilization problem since a professor who is willing to teach an evening class (which are in high demand by our part time students) cannot then be on campus to teach an early class that same day.

Mr. Crosby suggested that at our next meeting, we might want to ask George Perkins to talk with us since his association with to the Division of Institutional Research gives him access to interesting usage statistics and since he is currently looking into the application of the usage formula designed by Tallahassee.

Our next meeting is May 10th at 12:15 p.m. Adjourned 1:00 p.m.

Submitted,

Verna Urbanski
Secretary to the Committee