Volume 90, Issue 7October 26, 2009
News 2Features 5opiNioN 9sports - 10
~world headlines~scientific discoveries~tech break ~shooting club~what’s your beef~tim’s two cents~women’s soccer ~wrestling
satire 11
~halloweenerd~rumor mill
“I’m expecting that it will drag en-gineering on the campus forward,”said Dr. Terry Parker, EngineeringDivision Director, regarding theBrown building expansion. “I justthink it’s the most exciting thingthat’s happened to campus sinceI’ve been here,” Parker commented,noting that he was present for theconstruction of the Student Centerand the Recreation Center. As the new dorms come in to thesoutheast, the student center, therecreation center, and Brown build-ing are expected to see a lot more
trafc and 16
th
street is expected tobecome a busy crossroads.
Parker explained, “16th will
become more pedestrian friendly... There will be road, but that will notbe commonly used road,” as partof coping with the increase in foot
trafc.
The expansion will provide“classroom space and studentspace... desperately needed in myopinion.” Parker continued, “As thecampus has become more residen-tial, students need places to studyand be social.”Parker said, “We’re replacing
[classrooms] 201 and 204.” In their
place will be two more modernlecture halls, tiered rooms with dualprojectors that better integrate withthe expansion that will take theirplace. It turns out that replacingthem was actually less expensivethan salvaging them. There will be two new labs, anew classroom in renovated Brown,and a new classroom in the expan-sion. Each classroom is in the 30 to50-student range. There will also be a computingclassroom. It will be arranged toensure good line-of-sight to the frontof the room and will be equippedwith three projectors. There will be a new, large lecturehall on the end of the expansion
Alec Westerman
Staff Writer
Bidding begins for BrownHall improvements
An artist’s rendering of what the Brown Hall expansion will look like.
nearest 16
th
street. It will be orientedtoward campus-wide use. It mayserve as a place where studentscould watch movies, bring in speak-ers, or any number of things. There will also be a large areaavailable for campus-wide use. It willhave tables and chairs, social areas,areas built more for studying, pre-sentation areas, study rooms, anda coffee shop. Parker expounded,“The coffee bar area, that’s reallyintended to go get a cup of coffeewith your friends and discuss what’shappened recently.” The bidding has begun, but it isa lengthy process. “We’re forecast-
ing a February 1 ground breaking.”
Parker explained what has hap-pened and what is yet to happenby saying, “We’re talking about an
18-month construction period andwe’re having an 18-month planning
period.” The expansion is expectedto be complete in the summer of
2011.Reecting on the planning pro
-cess, Parker looked back at how theprocess started: with a spreadsheet
to determine relative oor space
ratios for various usages. He ex-plained that after that, thinking wasmostly oriented towards getting
as much oor space as possible.
Parker elaborated, “We wanted tomaximize the square footage wewould get and minimize effort.”However, the committee also madeit a priority to integrate the new andold buildings in a tidy fashion.In response to the constructionprocess, the campus will have toadjust to a temporary classroomshortage. Parker said, “We’re plan-
ning on losing [classrooms] 201,204, and the bay area... It’ll be aninteresting 18 months.”
All of this inconvenience, how-
ever, comes with great benet. Thecampus will get an additional 60 to
72 thousand square feet of indoorspace.“I see Mines becoming a realnational player, not only in itseducation but its research,” Steve
Castillo explained. “We have 4800
students… the very largest engi-
neering institutions have 8000…
we’re also getting to the size whereour output of graduates is gettingclose to the very largest.”Castillo took the position of Provost over the summer afterworking as Dean of Engineeringat New Mexico State University.Mines is an exciting place tobe right now, Castillo said; “Minesis an incredible institution with atremendous amount of potential…[with] expertise in the extractiveindustries that is now becomingso much more than that.”Castillo explained that Mines is“really becoming a national power-house… [but] having the resourcesto continue to fund that growth isa huge challenge… we’re on ourway to playing with the very best,not only in education, where we’vealready been, but in research.”When asked about his visionfor the school, he said, “The visionfor growth is not complete. We
have 3600 to 3700 undergradu
-ates – the question is, how big dowe want to be?” Castillo does nothave an answer to that question,but he said that “at some pointwe’ll have to level off” enrollment,and that “funding for both theteaching facilities is very importantto the Colorado School of Mines.” To that end, he said, the schoolis focusing on the new petroleumengineering building, MarquezHall; “Once Marquez Hall is built,there will be more room for teach-ing facilities. Getting petroleumengineering and Chemical Engi-neering into separate buildings isvery important.” Both departmentshave grown a great deal in recentyears, Castillo explained, and “wehave to do something to meet thatdemand.”Castillo admitted that theschool is going to have to comeup with a plan for dealing with in-creasing class sizes, but increaseddrop-out rates are not the answer.“I would like to see retention rates
at 100%,” he said.
Outside of being the Provost,Castillo serves on an advisorycommittee to the Engineering Di-rectorate at the National ScienceFoundation, where he “helps chartthe course of engineering researchin the entire United States.”“That’s a very, very nice ap-pointment that takes me sometime away from here, but Minesgets some representation at thenational level,” Castillo explained,“and I get to see what’s happen-ing at the national level with myother colleagues from places likeBerkeley and MIT and Illinois andStanford, and then help sort of guide the country in a certain way. That’s really pretty cool.”He also serves on a committeeat Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Thecommittee “evaluates [the lab’s]work in computational scienceand engineering on a yearly basis,so we do a review of all their re-search activities there - it’s abouta hundred million dollar portfolioof activities - and then we givethem advice as to what we think about the effectiveness of theircurrent work and maybe wherethey ought to look in the future,”Castillo explained.“Those are what I call profes-sional service,” Castillo said of these committees, “and in fact if you look at the faculty across theentire campus, all of them do thosekinds of things. Most of them don’tget paid for it, they do it because itgives them exposure and network-ing, but it’s also a service to theengineering profession.”In his spare time, Castillo en- joys cycling, horseback riding,and spending time with his twochildren. “I do have a motorcycle,”he said, “and I ride that from timeto time when the weather’s warm.I even ride it to work, where I geta little bit of ribbing here in Gug-genheim.”
Provost seesgreat potential
Sara Post
Editor-in-Chief
SARA POST / OREDIGGER
HappyHalloween!
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