Tom Irving and Andy Howard, along with Carlo Segre, Grant Bunker, Xiaofan Li, Thomas Henehan (Facilities), and Colette Porter (Faciliies Planning) have been asked to provide Dean Betts with recommendations on optimal use of the space previously occupied by the Psychology Department, both on the second floor of RAPSC and in its basement. The Dean plans to claim all of the office suite along the east hallway, including the space where the psychology department office was. He will also claim one office for himself after he is no longer Dean.
That leaves a substantial body of space on the second floor, plus some office and lab space in the basement. Some of this space is oddly shaped and has unusual attributes; for example, some of the rooms are RF-shielded for use in sleep research, and at least one has a one-way mirror installed. But one area, just west of the east hallway, would be suitable student / postdoc lounge space: it's been used that way in the recent past, it has working restrooms, and it won't require much adjustment to be usable. Many of the other rooms would be suitable for student and postdoc office space, which has the highly desirable effect of getting our students' office space away from the wet labs. That improves the students' quality of life and reduces the likelihood of safety violations.
Carlo, Grant, Tom, and I affirm that the highest priority is provision of office space for students. The Dean has encouraged us to avoid fighting over the space, and I think we can find ways to specifiy the kind of use we will put these spaces to and then let the division of space among the departments be a secondary consideration. There is money to enable the remodeling that will be required, but not a huge amount; so we need to conserve resources. In particular, I'm fearful that the Dean's suite will soak up a large fraction of that money, and there won't be much left for the departments. The committee met with Collette Porter at 10:30am on Wednesday 6 September to construct additional recommendations, but that meeting wasn't terribly productive, since Collette isn't familiar with the space and hasn't done a walk-through recently. Meanwhile Carlo, Tom, and I have done at least one walk-through each, and we're trying to predict the best ways to use the space.
Tanya met with Tom Henehan on Tuesday 12 September to discuss the previously approved upgrades to the teaching labs. Oscar, JF, and others had been involved in drawing up the plans for this project. It involves replacing the lab stools, window blinds, and possibly the lab benchtops in 306; adding a big-screen computer monitor to 306; and bringing in lab stools for the cell culture lab. The expensive part of this project is likely to be the lab benchtops because they may require asbestos mitigation. But Tom is going to seek a quote on the entire project, and then we'll try to get approval to move forward on the whole project.
We may want to move Biology 225 (Microbiology Lab) to the Cork lab; if we do, we may need to move Biology 431 (Physiology) somewhere else—perhaps Room 311, or some combination of Rooms 311 and 317.
Once the Psych space is apportioned and we have a good break room, we should probably consider reconfiguring the existing 2nd-floor break-room as a lab. It might be best to set it up as a generic research lab and offer it the incoming chair, when that person appears on the horizon, rather than giving it an immediate role.