The long-awaited opening of West Chester University’s new Sciences and Engineering Center and Commons (SECC) is finally at hand. However, the massive multi-million dollar construction project isn’t as ready-to-go as planned for the fall semester. Now, classes clash against construction and educators mesh with electricians as the school pushes further into a space that is far from being ready.
Since breaking ground on April 27, 2019, the very center of West Chester University has been nothing less than an active construction site. Just inches from Lawrence dining hall, and cutting a wide gash between the major pathways that once connected one half of the university’s dorms to the other, stood a long line of fences. These fences bore, over their chain link, tarps illustrating what the mess within would become. An idyllic stone and glass temple, devoted to the future of science studies at WCU. The project would in total be an over $50 million dollar, 176,000 square feet behemoth. According to West Chester, “the largest single building project ever to be undertaken in the history of Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education (PASSHE)”, would include a 460-car parking garage, 800-seat residential dining facility and multiple major lecture halls among other facilities.
West Chester University has been notably vague about when this all was supposed to be ready and open for student use. Before anyone knew what the Coronavirus was, the project had a reported end date of fall 2020. Once 2020 dawned on the university, President Christopher Fiorentiono held fast, insisting, at a ceremony where the final major steel beam was set into place, that “nothing — not even a pandemic — [would] ever stand in the way of [their] mission of advancing student success.” However, this same promise came with the update that the building’s completion would be pushed up to spring of 2021, a semester that many will notice came and went without any new buildings being opened.
Fast forward to Aug. 11, 2021, just weeks before the start of the fall 2021 semester. President Fiorentino sent out another communique on the status of the SECC, this time outlining the building’s imminent opening as a series of layered phases. The first of these would be an academic phase, after which “the academic spaces will be in full swing [starting] Monday, August 30, including active learning classes, research and instruction labs, faculty offices and collaborative spaces.” This would be followed by a “Dining Phase” where “multi-station food service centers, large open dining areas… a [health food and smoothie store,] convenience store, and bakeries will be open for service by the spring semester.” Finally the “The Community-based Phase,” which was not accompanied by an arrival date, will see the projects’ full implementation, including the “460-space parking garage, a larger-than-life video presentation wall, meeting rooms/ballrooms and the complete outdoor plaza.”
This is all significant for two crucial reasons. First, more than one class of students will graduate before getting to appreciate the fruits of West Chester’s labor. Secondly, and most importantly, West Chester University went into the semester expecting to have a fully functioning academic center. Aug. 30 has come and gone, and one quick walk through the halls of the building will show that it is anything other than “in full swing.” Opaque tarps cling to dusty walls in a feeble attempt to cover the mess of rubble and construction equipment that hides behind the doors of most classrooms. The rooms that are finished enough to be in use contain such aesthetic fallacies as glass missing from the doors, and wires dangling from unfinished drop tile ceilings.
Were this to be more of a tourist attraction, a building that one could enter for no other reason than to cut cross campus en route to more completed centers of education, there would be no problem. However, everyday WCU is working to push more and more classes into the site. Like walking on a bridge that’s still being built, students are learning on a daily basis that their courses have been moved into SECC classrooms that can only be identified thanks to the papers taped to every door, displaying its room number.
“By all appearances, the entrance was an active construction site,” said Dr. Kevin Dean, dean of the WCU Honors College. “As I arrived, a truck was blocking most of the entrance and was in the process of unloading chairs. As I entered the building, I noticed caution tape and plastic tarps over several entry ways to rooms under construction.” This was the general sentiment of most of the professors spoken to. The SECC, at the very least, bears no appearance to a finished product.
“The interactive technology seems like it is going to be very useful later in the course,” added history professor Dr. Tia Malkin-Fontecchio. “[But] the noise from construction was very distracting… especially since there is no door installed. I feel like the door would be an easy fix and help with noise. It shouldn’t be dependent on the rest of the building being finished.” Dr. Malkin-Fontecchio referred to one particular instance, where drilling in the room next door made it almost impossible to continue her lecture.
The integration of students into the unfinished building has been just as much of an administrative struggle as it has been a physical one. In more than one instance, classes have been forced to juggle both remote and in-person formats due to the SECC’s lack of ability to host certain classes. On top of this, the University faced a major overload of its Ramnet campus wifi in the first few weeks, making online classes more difficult.
“We were definitely slowed down because the building wasn’t finished and we were moved online abruptly” claimed Dr. Dana Morrison, Assistant Professor of Education. “I was able to adjust thanks to the past year of teaching virtually, but many of my students had connectivity issues when the campus WiFi went down during our class time. Many had to huddle around a single laptop to join. Others couldn’t join at all.”
These problems were only exacerbated for the Department of Physics & Engineering, which is meant to now be housed entirely in the new SECC. “It’s been awkward,” says Matthew Waite, Department Chair. “We did not have regular access to the building until the first day of classes, so we were rushed to get the labs ready… we are still getting the labs set up as we go along.” Waite insists that the whole ordeal put his department and its students in a “difficult position both mentally and physically.”
“We were all ready to get back to campus,” he said. “And we were told we would be back on campus. Then told two days before classes started that we were going back online.”
It’s clear that the situation at West Chester’s historic addition was, and is, a work in progress. However, there isn’t a single educator spoken to who didn’t go out of their way to praise the hard work of every construction worker and technology specialist rushing to get the building up to date. Perhaps the situation isn’t ideal for everybody, but after so many semesters of uncertainty, a rocky transition back might be the only option.
Matthew Shimkonis is a Third Year History Major. MS925373@wcupa.edu