Stacey Sutton

A brand new Faculty Center for Teaching, Learning and Development has been built in the second floor of Steely Library.

The center contains state-of-the-art video editing systems, student conference rooms, instructional classrooms, and audio-visual listening stations.

“This center was built to offer service and support to all part-time and full-time faculty”, said Beth Stiegler, Northern Kentucky University’s Director of Faculty Development. Inside the main room are new computer workstations and media equipment set up on brand new furniture and encased in a glass wall. These machines were mostly intended for faculty use but may be, eventually, available to students based on demand.

Besides the main room, the center also contains two new faculty training classrooms. “The center is designed for individual faculty or small group training,” said Stiegler. The training classrooms contain new software and media projection equipment used to keep faculty up to date. “It also gives faculty members a chance to use software they can’t afford on their home computer,” said Stiegler.

The center also boasts of two newly remodeled conference rooms where students may meet. These rooms consist of tables and chairs and are soon to have media equipment. Dr. Arne Almquist the Associate Provost of Library Service said, “I used to find students meeting in stairways and places that were really noisy. Now students can walk in, get a key from the desk, and have a nice meeting space. The rooms are completely redone.”

Next to the FDC is also a new Media Center open to all students. Inside this room students have total access to the library’s entire VHS, cassette, CD, and LP collection. The individual stations are located together in a new listening and viewing room conveniently attached to the checkout desk. The media center also holds the Greater Cincinnati Library Consortium Media Collection. This means that NKU students now have access to different media items from all over the tri-state.

The center was built through a joint partnership made up of: Steely Library, which provided the spac; the Information Technologies department, which afforded much of the funding, and Vice-Provost Dr. Paul Reichardt. “Last year we moved from three different offices. Now it’s nice for all three teams to be together working seamlessly to serve and support faculty,” said Stiegler

Though the center is open to both students and faculty now, Dr. Roger Redding will officially introduce and open the center with a ribbon cutting ceremony from 3:15 to 5:45 on Oct 8.