By BRIAN TUREK
J Alumni News staff
The smell of wet paint, glue and varnish still lingers in the halls and classrooms of Andersen Hall. It is a smell that Grambling State University in Louisiana and other universities across the nation want to experience.
The $6 million Andersen Hall, formerly the Security Mutual Insurance building, is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s new home for its College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Now UNL is the envy of many journalism programs in the country.
UNL and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are two universities that have made some major changes in their journalism programs in the last year. Linda Shipley, associate dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, said UNL has an edge on any other university because all journalism classes are taught in one building as opposed to four or five.
Rama Tunuguntla, head of the department of mass communication at Grambling State University, said he, building planners and architects toured both UNL and UNC and decided UNL’s idea was what they were looking for.
Tunuguntla said the journalism department at Grambling is one of the biggest on campus, and it needs the technology and the ability to communicate between departments, like what is possible at Andersen Hall.
“(Andersen Hall) is one of the state-of-the art buildings that I know of,” Tunuguntla said. “We want the facility that will have the technology and one that will prepare our students for the jobs on the market.”
Will Norton, dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communica-tions, said the importance of having one building for all the journalism programs is that the profession is moving to an environment where radio, newspapers and Internet Web sites all communicate and work together to achieve their individual goals.
The college faculty asked architects to break up the traditional layout of the typical classroom-style building. Norton and the faculty wanted to “avoid territory that is guarded” so students can learn from students in other departments.
The University of Missouri has five buildings for its journalism school. At the University of Illinois, different buildings separate the different programs. The University of Florida has three different buildings to house its radio, television and newspaper schools. BYU has two classrooms that put out the same product, Shipley said. These are all major schools that are looking for new homes for their journalism programs in the future.
“There are a lot of other universities that are trying to move their curriculum to a combined product,” Shipley said. “We have the facility that can house that curriculum.”
The technology at Andersen Hall is designed for the future. Infrastructure of Andersen Hall has 25 percent of the fiber-optic line on the UNL campus, it can handle the wireless access to the Internet and it has rooms with one way-mirrors and distance-learning capabilities.
Distance learning is nothing new to UNL. As a matter of fact, distance learning has been a part of the College of Journalism and Mass Communica-tions’ curriculum since 1992, said Mike Stricklin, a professor at the college.
UNL is one of a handful of universities that offer a journalism master’s degree over the Internet. UNL tapes versions of each class. The tapes can be downloaded by people who want to work on a master’s degree without leaving their hometown in three formats: an audio-only format, a video format and a Real Player format. In addition, some distance students take classes “live” via satellite or computer connection.
“Our goal continues to be to offer the master’s program to other professionals wherever they are,” Stricklin said.
Andersen Hall also has two underground fiber-optic lines that connect three remote-controlled satellite dishes to Andersen Hall. The underground fiber-optic line is the largest on campus at 1,000 feet.
Allen Wedige, architect and project manager for UNL, said Andersen Hall is one of the “premiere buildings” on campus. Wedige said other buildings have Internet and cable hookups in each classroom like Andersen Hall does, but Andersen Hall “is loaded to the teeth” with mass communication capabilities, or technology in television and radio, that no other building on the UNL campus or any other campus has.
Wedige said renovating the innovative Andersen Hall was not as difficult as it might have seemed. As a result Andersen Hall opened its doors a semester early.
“(The faculty) was not supposed to move until January,” Wedige said. “We saved a lot of people a lot of money. We were able to do that by having a basic design that everyone could understand.”
The new plans for Andersen Hall called for a lot of open spaces and big classrooms. Security Mutual Insurance had offices and other small rooms that were easily cleared away because the building rests on several weight-bearing columns in its middle. This made the building easier to work with than one that has several weight-bearing walls throughout, Wedige said.
Norton, Wedige and Shipley agree that the best part of Andersen Hall is its flexibility.
“The main attribute comes from the flexibility to adapt to whatever comes next,” Shipley said.
“Architects built this building to be adaptable to different needs.”
The planning for Andersen Hall started in 1991. At that point, the faculty at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications could not plan for the technological changes that have evolved since the idea of the building got its start. These uncertainties led the way for flexible planning in the following years. The installation of multimedia capabilities in the classroom, wireless Internet access and individual improvements in each department will keep Andersen Hall on the cutting edge for a while.
“We are about as up to date as possible right now,” Norton said. “We have two television studios. We can broadcast productions and the news at the same time. We have the ability to teach five different distance learning classes at the same time, and we have a lot more space.”
Wedige and Norton said the plans emphasized making Andersen Hall a place in which it is pleasurable to work and study.
Andersen Hall was remodeled to maintain the integrity of its original 1950s decor, while adding a modern look. The woodwork in Andersen Hall is made of maple, a look that was popular in the 1950s. Openness and a lot of windows give Andersen Hall a distinctive look.
“I have seen no other journalism building that integrates order, light and technology like this one does,” Norton said. “Most buildings don’t allow lighting for this kind of renovation.”
Norton said the building was whatever the students want it to be. He said he wanted Andersen Hall to be a place where students and faculty could enjoy learning by moving away from the traditional classroom setting.
“This building is not just designed for studying,” Norton said. “It is designed to communicate freedom of expression, openness and throwing light on a subject.”