Submitted to President Leo Lambert in December, the Academic Facilities Plan will take affect this summer just in time for the new school year.

Dr. Gerald Francis, provost and vice president for academic affairs, devised the plan with 10 other members of the Long Range Planning Committee.

“Arts and Sciences will get the most new space in this plan,” Francis said. “But when completed, it will also help Education and Communications.”

The two new pavilions in the Academic Village, the Spence Pavilion of Philosophy and Religious Studies and the Belk Pavilion of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning , will open in the fall of 2007. The philosophy department’s current house [next to Holland House across from McMichael] will most likely be torn down soon, opening up the whole quad. Religious studies will move out of Alamance to the Academic Village.

CATL will leave the Holland House, allowing leisure sport management, Project Pericles and admissions to be based there.

“Religion above us is vacating space,” Francis said, referring to the second and third floors of Alamance. Major renovation will take place, including the installation of an elevator. Francis said that human services and part of the English department will then move in. Completion of the Lindner Rotunda is projected for fall, 2009. Francis described it as a “really nice facility with a big dome.”

This building will be placed right before the edge of the Academic Village parking lot and will eventually house history, sociology and some interdisciplinary programs. At that stage of completion, Francis said that sociology will come out of a small house and history will come out of Powell, allowing for the renovation of its second and third floors.

Though still unclear as to what will go into Powell at that time, Francis predicts that it could be some sciences, leaving more space in McMichael for the lab-based sciences which require extra room.

The “white building” by Belk Library, actually called the White House, is intended to house environmental studies, which will move Financial Planning to a house behind religious studies’ current location.

“We met with many departments and programs to seek their input, so when we developed our final plan, we had good buy-in,” Francis said. “Everyone was not completely satisfied, but there have been no major concerns.”

Reporter: Ashley Barnas - Photos: Ashley Barnas 04/05/07