Life Beyond the Curriculum
Campus life beyond the curriculum is tremendously important. We are justifiably proud of our programs, but some of our facilities are substantially sub-par. We need to make major investments in facilities for the performing arts and for athletics.
Arts on Campus
Our overall plans must ensure that we have adequate facilities for the myriad ways in which faculty and students are engaged in the creative and performing arts. In particular, our proposed signature initiatives depend on bringing together faculty from multiple disciplines.
In initial studies on facilities for some of the performing arts, outside consultants developed a provisional recommendation for a “Village for the Arts” that upgrades Strong and Todd Union and provides for approximately 57,000 net square feet of new rehearsal, performance, teaching and support space in a connecting building.
- The complex, if fully developed, would provide the following:
- Music: 150 seat recital hall; five new music rehearsal spaces; 40 plus practice rooms (consolidating scattered practice space); classrooms and seminar space; administrative space.
- Theater (all within renovated Todd): new 150 seat flexible theater; renovated rehearsal space; classrooms appropriate for teaching directing, acting, production; support shops and studios; dressing rooms; production offices; administrative space.
- Dance: large performance/rehearsal studio; two dance studios; dressing rooms; administrative space.
- Electronic Music: music cognition lab; recording studio; tele-presence studios; development laboratory/workspace.
- Strong Auditorium Improvements: new fly tower with expanded wing space; enhanced acoustics; new orchestra shell and pit; air-conditioning; improved audience amenities.
Athletics
Our athletics programs and facilities have a major positive impact on our capacity to recruit and retain undergraduates. Since the renovation of the Goergen Center, indoor facility use has more than doubled; we are better able to recruit the scholar-athletes who bring us distinction in athletic competition and in their academic work. To continue and build on the success of the Goergen Center, we have commissioned two studies for additional projects.
- Phase I - Fauver Stadium and the adjoining fields
- Make a significant investment in the stadium to provide adequate locker rooms, training rooms and equipment rooms on a par with facilities at peer institutions.
- Improve outdoor fields to provide more flexible, central field space for varsity and recreational use.
- Replace the current natural grass baseball field surface with an artificial turf, like the new turf on Fauver Stadium, and add lights.
- Integrate the baseball field with Fauver Stadium by enclosing both in an attractive boundary wall—redefining this entrance to campus and creating a coherent outdoor complex.
- Phase II – Indoor Space
- Extend our indoor space and create major new programming opportunities through the provision of an attractive and flexible assembly space that absorbs and extends the functions of the Palestra and current Field House.
- The athletics complex would be extended to Wilson Boulevard by removing the rear of Zornow and constructing a new signature building that would open up campus to the Genesee River.
- This space (83,000 net square feet total) would accommodate a field house with a 200M indoor track and multi-use court space, additional cardio fitness areas, team rooms, meeting rooms, and other program space netting 62,000 net square feet of new space.
- It would accommodate up to 6000 people for large University events (e.g., concerts, major speakers, graduation and other events) with flexible configuration options.
- The existing Field House space would be converted to multi-use use indoor courts.