Open meetings on space plan

Music student Joellen Housego fiddles with The Snitches at Student Orientation last week, during a two-day street festival.

The shape of Concordia for decades to come is being designed. With the need to achieve a balanced two-campus operation at a time when we are facing our first deficit in nearly a decade, it's not an easy decision. On the other hand, an anticipated government grant for building expenditures and the University's own fundraising efforts provide a rare window of opportunity.

The Board of Governors, at a special September 9 meeting, discussed a document prepared by Rector's Cabinet Executive Director Garry Milton that outlined the methodology, assumptions and principles of the work that had been done to arrive at the conclusions adopted by the Rector's Advisory Group. The plan being proposed derives from the Faculties' own academic planning process and is consistent with the option chosen by most, though not all, of the members of last year's Advisory Task Force on the Revitalization of the Loyola Campus.

The plan would see many of the departments that are already based at Loyola staying there, namely
Psychology, Communication Studies/Journalism, the performing arts (Theatre, Contemporary Dance and Music) and Lonergan University College. The sciences, the Science College and the components of Psychology that are currently at SGW would also move to Loyola.

Many factors were taken into account when developing the plan. As well as the general goals that were presented to Senate and the Real Estate Planning Committee of the Board last year (state-of-the-art space, optimal learning environment, synergies among cognate areas, effective use of space, revitalization of the Loyola Campus), the proposal took into account minimizing students' travel between campuses, the cost of new building and renovation, the degree of acceptance inside and outside the University, the timing of construction and disruption, conformity to government space norms, and the potential effect on future enrolment.

An essential element of the plan is the desire to establish "residential populations" on each campus. In other words, to create an environment where students and faculty can receive all their necessary courses and services without having to travel to the other campus. The planning document assumes that renewed facilities for Engineering and Computer Science, Fine Arts and Commerce and Administration will be built downtown and that a new building to house the sciences will be built at Loyola.

An open information meeting with the senior administration will be held October 1, at 9:30 a.m. in the D.B. Clarke Theatre in the Henry F. Hall Building downtown, and in the Concert Hall at Loyola at 2:30 p.m.