This
was the first meeting of the newly-and-as-yet-partially-constituted group:committee
members in attendance:APPC members
and subcommittee co-chairs Michael Groth and Scott Heinekamp; Deans Ellen
Hall and Susan Ryan; Nancy Karpinski in Dean Terry Martinez’s stead; Trustee
Jay Woolford; student members Melissa Golden ’03 and Kirsten Strigel ’03;
Vice President Ann Rollo.Also in
attendance at this meeting was architect Grace Chiang.It
was announced that the alumnae representative had been chosen:Patty
Callahan, and that the election process for the remaining two faculty members
is under way.The listserve address
for the group is appc-spc@wells.edu.
After
introductions, Jay Woolford gave a summary of the planning process and
the development of the Master Plan.As
an outgrowth of planning and site discussions for the new science building,
it became evident that a more comprehensive review of facilities utilization
on the Wells campus was in order.Some
guiding principles: to see whether we are using our facilities effectively
for a student body size of roughly 450; to have input from Holt et al.
(architects); to look at issues of accessibility, pedestrian flow, and
automobile parking.
At
this point, the way is clear to agree to, or amend, or expand the planning
process and its impact on the Plan.Three
motives are woven into the Plan in its current form, all of which have
as their goal to create and strengthen the sense of Wells as an intimate
learning environment.These three
are
1)
To optimize assets and increase utilization; to adapt and/or reuse existing
facilities, in particular Zabriskie, when it is vacated; to reduce operating
and maintenance costs;
2)
To provide better accessibility to all points of the campus;
3)
By restoring logical pedestrian flow, to create a unified campus environment;
Grace
Chiang was then asked to review the status of the ongoing process of program
charrettes, whose reports have informed and will continue to inform our
work.Space design charrettes for
the science building are imminent.
There
was then a discussion of how our group will share minutes and other information.Concerns
about public access to internal documents, if posted on the local server
aurora.wells.edu, were brought out and discussed.In
general it was felt that this group should err on the side of openness
and that our minutes should be posted for the community to see.It
was felt that “sensitive” material can be conveyed in a manner that gets
across the sense of what is discussed without needing to provide detailed
blow-by-blow accounts of every conversation – that they can be “judiciously
forthright”.We agreed that we would
use the third-floor-Macmillan meeting room to house our working materials
(which would be available to the community), and to meet there as well,
so that our resources are at hand.
Our
next meeting will take place in two weeks, on March 28 2001, at 11:30.
Respectfully
submitted,
Scott
Heinekamp, co-chair and secretary pro tem