Curricular Services assists with latest building challenge

Some unexpected issues with campus buildings have kept the Curricular Services team in the Office of the Registrar on their toes in the last year, including disruptions affecting Van Hise and Humanities, as well as the new tower and older portions of the Chemistry Building. Most recently, in March the team helped relocate over 50 class sections from Art History classrooms. This became necessary after access to the Elvehjem Building was restricted when an engineering analysis identified issues with the building’s stone cladding exterior. The Elvehjem Building is home to portions of the Chazen Museum of Art, the Kohler Art Library, and the Department of Art History. Although the building does not have any General Assignment classrooms, limited access to departmental classrooms meant that Curricular Services was called on to identify alternatives for the remainder of the spring semester. The team worked to find new classroom assignments that would meet pedagogical needs (such as technology and seating type), remain as close to Elvehjem as possible so students and instructors had sufficient travel time to/from their other classes, optimize assignments for instructors with back-to-back sections, and meet accommodation needs for a number of instructors and students. With much-appreciated assistance from the RO data team, Ellen Clark, and Katie Block, the team also helped communicate changes to affected instructors, students and departments. Thankfully, much of this work was able to happen over spring break – just the luck the team needed to make this latest challenge a bit more manageable!