Can You Help Fill Our Blank Space?
In the past fifteen months, Belmont has experienced the opening of beautiful new living and learning spaces in the form of the Wedgewood Academic Center, the Johnson Center and Two Oaks Residence. In some of these cases, the move to the new space has created vacancies that could be repurposed for other campus community needs.
Recently, I sent out a campus-wide email inviting all members of the Belmont community to engage in a process to generate ideas for how we could best utilize the newly vacant spaces in Gabhart, Hitch and Fidelity. Here’s a link to that email just in case you missed it. The link can also then direct you to the submission site for your ideas.
This process is not unlike the work that we did to include student ideas in the design of both WAC and Johnson. Both of those buildings are reflective of the ideas of numerous individuals and student organizations which made suggestions that resulted in the creation of spaces that are much better than they would have been without broad participation. In the case of WAC, the presence of a food court and coffee shop, study space on every floor, study space inside and out and lots of natural light are all examples of how student input helped design the building. In the case of the Johnson Center, the outdoor dining, the different themed dining areas, the “to-go” area and the various studios and specialized rooms were all informed by student input. This current process creates the opportunity for even more involvement.
Not many university campuses have the opportunity that we have today to look for ways to utilize unused capacity to further enhance the experience of students. I feel truly blessed to be able to work at this task with you.
This should be fun. So let’s make “it a game—wanna play? I’ve got a blank space baby…write your name.”
-Taylor Swift, “Blank Space”
Bob Fisher