Major campus moves ahead

Uni­ver­sity offi­cials have announced a space recon­fig­u­ra­tion plan designed to max­i­mize the use of research facil­i­ties, pro­mote inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research col­lab­o­ra­tions and enhance the iden­ti­ties of the university’s newest colleges.

Under the new plan, the majority of the Col­lege of Social Sci­ences and Human­i­ties (CSSH) will move to the Renais­sance Park building on Tremont Street, new class­room and lab space in Mugar and Hurtig Halls will be ded­i­cated to the Col­lege of Sci­ence (COS) and the Col­lege of Arts, Media and Design (CAMD) will expand from its base in Ryder Hall to the United Realty (UR) com­plex on Leon Street. The moves, which will be rolled out in phases, will take place over the next three to four years.

These moves are part of series of rec­om­men­da­tions made by a plan­ning com­mittee appointed by Provost Stephen Director that included sev­eral deans and staff from the Office of the Provost and the facil­i­ties depart­ment. The university’s deans and other exec­u­tive offi­cers reviewed the committee’s recommendations.

The relo­ca­tion plan is pos­sible due to the university’s new long-​​term lease of the prop­erty at 140 The Fenway (for­merly known as the Forsyth Insti­tute), which will soon house the School of Phar­macy, the Bar­nett Insti­tute of Chem­ical and Bio­log­ical Analysis and sev­eral offices and pro­grams within the Col­lege of Engi­neering.

“We have worked hard in recent years to reor­ga­nize and strengthen our aca­d­emic oper­a­tions,” said Provost Director. “Now we are taking the next impor­tant step — to make sure that our campus prop­erly sup­ports edu­ca­tion and research and North­eastern today. I would like to thank the many people from dif­ferent units and depart­ments who col­lab­o­rated on this impor­tant space reconfiguration.”

The Col­lege of Engi­neering will use the newly avail­able space in Dana, Egan and Forsyth Halls — orig­i­nally des­ig­nated to house these offices and pro­grams moving to 140 The Fenway — to sup­port fac­ulty growth and expanding research programs.

The move of CSSH into Renais­sance Park — with the excep­tion of the School of Crim­i­nology and Crim­inal Jus­tice, which will remain in Churchill Hall — brings the col­lege closer to Inter­na­tional Vil­lage, which will strengthen the inter­na­tional emphasis of its cur­riculum and research. A dis­tinc­tive street-​​level entrance will mark the college’s pres­ence at building.

New space in Mugar and Hurtig Halls will be ded­i­cated to the COS for the areas of biology and chem­istry, as well as inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research involving drug devel­op­ment. Addi­tional plans for Mugar include housing the entire biology fac­ulty on site, adding a Col­lege of Sci­ence stu­dent ser­vices center to the building and ded­i­cating new space for the recently merged Depart­ment of Earth and Envi­ron­mental Sci­ences and Marine Sci­ence Center faculty.

CAMD’s move to the UR com­plex — which includes Lake, Holmes, Meserve and Nightin­gale Halls — will enable the col­lege to sup­port new and future inter­dis­ci­pli­nary fac­ulty and pro­grams. The new pro­grams will be clus­tered together in areas of par­tic­ular focus, such as net­work sci­ence, game design and cyber security.

The UR com­plex space will also be used to expand the infor­ma­tion assur­ance and health infor­matics pro­grams within the Col­lege of Com­puter and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence.

– by Greg St. Martin