Page 16 - College Planning & Management, September 2017
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DESIGNED FOR PERFORMANCE
A NEW UPSTATE NEW YORK ARTS CENTER IS FOSTERING STUDENT AND FACULTY COLLABORATION AMONG DISCIPLINES AND RAISING ACHIEVEMENT.
By Meng Howe Lim
IT WAS 2009 AND MARK GEARAN, president of Hobart and William Smith Col- leges (HWS), was in an admissions mode.
“We were losing good students to other top liberal arts colleges,” Gearan says. “Our admissions office knew it. Our board of trustees knew it. We had talented students in the performing arts; all we were lacking was the facility.”
At that time, studies in music, dance, theater and film were dispersed across the 195-acre lakeside campus in upstate Geneva, NY, known as one of the most picturesque in the country. Professors in the respective fields barely saw each other, let alone were they able to collaborate and synergize their programs. Music students had to lug heavy instruments about, with
little space to store them safely.
“It was a horror show,” says Chris
Woodworth, associate professor of Theater. Under Gearan’s leadership, the school
began planning for the largest building project in its history: a 65,000-square- foot, $31.5 million performing arts center, located strategically at the entrance to the campus. After a search for an architect, the colleges hired GUND Partnership
of Cambridge, MA, to design the center. Multiple sites were considered, and each performing arts discipline was studied to determine the feasibility of bringing them all together under one roof. All the while, GUND kept the momentum going in col- laboration with Gearan and his assigned task force.
A FACILITY FOR COLLABORATION
The new building, which opened in February 2016, has had a demonstrably positive impact on student achievement by raising pedagogical standards, improving student employability, increasing inter- est in performing arts majors, recruiting better faculty and students and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration.
“I am able to ask for a higher quality of work,” says Cadence Whittier, professor of Dance at the colleges. “As a dancer and choreographer, I am now able to create choreography in the space in which it is going to be performed. We’re all, students and faculty, producing better work.”
The building, Gearan and interviewed faculty agree, is a visible commitment on
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