Day care center getting renovations
The completion of the new education building will create a new “Quad” on campus – the education quad.
The buildings surrounding this new education quad will include The Edith Bowen Laboratory School (EBLS), The Center for Persons with Disabilities (CPD), The Education Building (EDUC) and the new Emma Eccles Jones Early Childhood Education and Research Center and the Dolores Doré Eccles Center for Early Care and Education building. These buildings will surround a new area of greens which will “triple the play area for Edith Bowen students,” said Tom Graham, project manager for USU facilities planning.
LuAnn Parkinson, senior budget officer for the College of Education, is also very excited about the quad greens.
“I can pack my lunch, take a lawn chair and get a tan at lunch if I want to now,” Parkinson said.
Besides a new quad area, project managers are excited about the new building itself. Just a few weeks ago, on Jan. 15, a brand-new small-scale model of the building and quad was unveiled and housed in the lobby of the Education building. In a planning meeting that same day, Parkinson, Graham and other project committee members made several new decisions about the new building including the date to begin construction: March 1, 2009.
“Everyone’s excited about everything on this project,” said Parkinson, who is the voice for the donor and education department. “The donors are very involved in the whole process – right down to the brick color choice, which is what is being decided right now. Building supplies and labor are abundant and less expensive because of the econom, so we are taking advantage of that.”
In December of 2007, the Emma Eccles Jones and the George and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundations donated $25 million and $1 million, respectively, to fund the new education building project.
Parkinson said the foundation executors wanted the location of the new building to be in close proximity to the current education building in order to make the education departments more centralized in one area of campus. Because of this, the old tennis courts and soccer field between the cemetery and the Education building were ripped up and relocated. Costs were also conserved by rolling up and moving the lawn from its previous area to create the new quad greens.
“The only part of the education department that will not be over in the education quad now is the family life department, which remains over on the Old Main quad,” Graham said.
The new building will have two completely distinct areas and entrances.
“This is because there were two different donors for two different purposes,” Graham said.
The east side of the building will house the Delores Doré Eccles Center for Early Care and Education, which will replace USU’s Children’s House. The Children’s House provides child care and education for the children (ages 3-6) of students, faculty and staff. Graham said the building itself is scheduled for demolition and the new center will not only better accommodate the needs of pre-schoolers, but will have facilities to care for newborns, infants and toddlers as well.
Though the $1 million donation for child care is wonderful, Graham said they do not have the amount they really need yet to make the facility what they want.
The west side of the new education building will house three programs: the Emma Eccles Jones Early Childhood Education and Research Center, Sound Beginnings and the Language and Literacy Laboratory. The new early childhood education center, located on the first floor, will be a laboratory for early childhood education like Edith Bowen is a laboratory for elementary-aged children.
“Up until now there hasn’t been a place for students to do much field work in regards to early childhood education,” Parkinson said.
The children who come to the center will also enjoy a fully-enclosed “natural scape” playground.
“I’m really excited about the new natural landscaping. There’s not a lot of prefabricated play equipment,” Parkinson said.
Instead, Parkinson said, it will include playthings like logs, rocks, paths for bikes and scooters, hills, bridges, pebbles, mulch and lawn. The goal of the alpine, grassland and delta-like landscaping is to create a place of beauty and a natural outdoor learning environment.
The new building’s first floor will also have a large multi-purpose room. The front and back entrances to this room will be made completely of glass so that it looks out onto the quad greens and the beautiful playground. This multi-purpose room will accommodate indoor/outdoor receptions for the college and an indoor place for children to play on poor weather or red-air days. The room will have closets full of play equipment for the children.
The first floor will also house the Sound Beginnings Preschool, which teaches children with cochlear implants and digital hearing aides how to communicate with spoken language.
“These children have been deaf from birth and have never heard a spoken word. They do not know how to form words to communicate their needs,” Parkinson said.
Right now the preschool is located in one room of the Edith Bowen laboratory and has been there for a few years. The new building will not only have four new classrooms for the preschool, but will also have areas designated to meet every need of those with hearing aides or implants: sound booths, testing rooms, adjustment and repair rooms, etc. These needs will be met by trained graduate students and faculty.
The center will also have a Family Simulation Room family which is an apartment complete with kitchen, living room, dining room and bathroom where students can learn to “function with language in everyday life,” Parkinson said. Even the walls and the doors of the Sound Beginnings Preschool will be acoustically-engineering to keep out superfluous sounds that interfere with hearing aides and implants.
The second floor of the new education building will house The Language and Literacy Laboratory. The faculty in this program study language development in all types of children including those with all levels of disabilities, bilingual or at-risk. This laboratory is open to the public and any parents with concerns with reading failure, stutters or learning disabilities are welcome to call and find out how the center can help.
The second floor will also have two distance learning classrooms equipped with the latest technology. These rooms will allow college students who can’t attend the main campus to learn about early childhood education along with the on-campus students. Lectures can be transmitted in or out of the rooms and teachers can answer questions live from distance learners or tape their lectures for use via the Internet.
“The professors are really excited about this and many have already signed up to teach in those classrooms,” Parkinson said.
The third floor will include the administration offices and graduate-student cubicles.
–jennifer.whiteley@aggiemail.usu.edu