In all 18 years Stacey Donohue has taught, she’s never seen the offices of the humanities department in one building. Donohue, chair of the humanities department at Central Oregon Community College, said this is what administration is trying to fix, and they’re doing it in the Ochoco building.
The Ochoco remodel to allow both the humanities and world languages and cultures departments to be in one building. This will add to the cohesiveness of the departments and encourage collaboration, according to Donohue.
“We will be able to talk and share curriculum ideas with other colleagues,” Donohue said. “It will be great to be able to have offices in one place, which will encourage communication within our department.”
The remodel is currently still in the early design phase, according to Rich Brecke, project manager for the Ochoco remodel. Work on the project could begin as soon as March.
Ochoco previously housed the science department and is currently equipped with science labs. This is not a concern in the remodel planning: The main restricting factor will be the budget for the project, which is $1,788,000. Projected construction costs are $1,066,000.
“The whole building won’t be remodeled due to budgetary concerns,” Brecke said. “It is still up in the air as to what exactly will be remodeled.”
There are currently 40 faculty in the humanities department, including part-time.
“I hope everybody in the department gets involved in the discussion regarding what they would like to see after this remodel,” Donohue said.
A lot of the department’s plans are still in the “wish-list phase,” according to Donohue.
“We have talked a lot about the things we would like to see,” Donohue said. “The humanities department would like to have a study space for students and the anthropology department would like to have a lab to use with their classes.”
One of the things the humanities department is trying to fit into the remodel plans is to have more computer classrooms for teaching.
“We hope to get another computer classroom so we can have more hybrid classes,” Donohue said.
This plan has been in the making for 18 years, according to Donohue, and the whole humanities department is “really excited to see it happen.”
Molly Svendsen
The Broadside
msvendsen@cocc.edu
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