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Future Scripps College Building Renovations Underway

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With the banner of “The Future Home of Scripps College of Communication” moved away from the front door of the former Baker Center at Ohio University, the process of creating the new home of the college is now truly underway.

The renovation project has been delayed about five years because of the financial obstacles, but now the university has made it a priority.
 
“We were so spread apart that it created a tremendous amount of inefficiency for the college,” College of Communication Interim Dean Scott Titsworth said. “If we were all under one roof, there was a great deal of efficiency that could be realized in the college.”
 
Titsworth sees the new building as a learning space to gain an international reputation.

 

“We want this to be a space that we can show everyone else around the world we are really proud of this. And this is a space that is going to help us excel even more as a college,” he said. 
 
Passersby will notice a number of changes to the outside of the building: most notably, the old patio and nearby brick wall outside the former Frontier Room have been demolished, as well as the stone stairs leading to the center's main entrance.
 

The new building will not only bring all the schools in the college together, but also connect itself to the RTV building next door.

There will be portals on every floor connecting the new communication building to the RTV building, Titsworth said. Right now the two buildings are connected only on one floor.

The moving date is scheduled in early August of 2013. Titsworth said it’s a fairly complex process of figuring out how to move everyone into a new building.

 

 

The way this construction project faces out is actually in two distinct phases, he said.

In the first phase, they will be creating space in the new building where the dean’s office, the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and the School of Media Arts and Studies will be located; in the second phase of the project, they will create space for the other three schools which are Communication Studies, Information Telecommunication Systems, and the School of Visual Communication.

All the classroom and laboratory space will also be created during the second phase and it will take about an additional year, according to Titsworth.