Save the Classrooms in Heavilon

Disabled faculty and staff should be kept in mind in terms of proximity to their offices.

Having classes close to our offices increases the chance that students will come by our offices for additional help or just to talk about something that they found interesting during class. It helps to build a culture of learning.

9 years ago Featured

This move will cut down on faculty-student interactions. A student is much less likely to walk a quarter of mile to my office to talk about a paper assignment than up one flight of stairs.

I strongly support the petition to save Heavilon Hall classrooms. Dispersing faculty and students to other campus buildings undermines the academic community centered in Heavilon Hall.

Alumnus and former Heav. resident

Students need to take their classes in the vicinity of their professors and TAs' offices.

This is a silly idea. Why send people off to other buildings?

Taught many classes in these rooms as a GTA, 1999-2004. (Alumnus, PhD, 2004.)

I can understand having English 106, or composition courses in Engineering, Chemistry, or other areas of the campus because it is difficult for students to get across campus between classes. Putting lower level math and science classes might be nice in the Liberal Arts area, but the English department offers relevant and applicable courses that would be of interest to non-English majors. With a constantly growing student body, and the efforts to create interdisciplinary degrees, and the need to ensure that future scientists and engineers have strong ethics and critical thinking ability, it doesn't make sense to decrease the number of classrooms in Heavilon, unless the plan is to give the English Department another building, or a completely new, larger building, which is unlikely. I do not understand why Heavilon is so neglected. During one summer course, the professor had to go into another room to ask the workmen to stop drilling and hammering until the class ended. For a subject, teaching English is actually a bargain, as all yu need are classrooms, computers, a board, and a professor. Purdue doesn't realise how much bang for their buck they are getting.

The mere act of dismantling this building and it's facilities is nothing short of barbaric and openly displays to the staff, alumni, and students (incoming as well as current) the amount of unabashed bias and towards the arts that this once proud school now has. Yes the school is majorly an engineering and science school but this does not mean that the capacity for teaching of history, sociology, and language should be left to rot by the wayside while marching ever forward towards mechanized imbecility. The arts teach the ability to expand thinking beyond the mundane, to see further than what is immediately in front of you and to draw together conclusions out of scattered and seemingly innocuous information. If you want to remove the English department from Purdue (make no mistake that is what scattering it to the wind will do) then you should remember two things, Mr. Daniels; 1) you cannot read an instruction manual without Language Arts and 2) you were replaced as governor and can be replaced as the head of Purdue just as easily.

It's crucial that we be supported in our wish to teach near our faculty offices. So many important conversations with students spill over after class, or are needed before classes begin, and these take place in those offices. The rooms on Heavilon's first floor, many with movable tables, all with chalkboards and computer, are perfectly suited for the intensive and various ways we teach in the Department of English--with spirited discussions, in-class writing assignments, presentations, lectures. The fact that we weren't even consulted concerning this massive change to our time-tested methods (I've been a Professor of English here for 30 years) is beyond disheartening; it's demoralizing, and downright insulting. We are asking you to reverse this decision, and welcome us back to our own classrooms. Marianne Boruch

I would prefer to keep the Heav building, the class should be nearby the teacher 's office

If they scatter the english department, its no longer deparment. Also, it will be hard to use writing lab.

9 years ago Featured

My most effective and innovative pedagogy has come from chatting with other teachers in the hall before and after class. We lose this when we lose our communal teaching spaces. Additionally, students who attend office hours tend to do better in coursework, and attendance for office hours always goes down when the classroom and the office are in separate buildings.

Moving all the English department classes out of the English department building is a short-sighted move. Space matters.

Purdue MA and PhD in English, Full professor at SMSU, Marshall, MN

BA in English, 1971. Pretty much loved in Heavlilon Hall

My wife worked in this building for several years, and unless the aim of closing classrooms is to make them safer and update them, then I am for this petition.

9 years ago Featured

Scattering the First-Year Writing classes across the university, rather than in and near Heavilon, makes the lives of both instructors and students unnecessarily chaotic.

My colleagues, current and former, have made excellent points about community, but let's think also about our undergraduate students taking ENGL 106 - if we move all the classrooms from the first floor of Heavilon, we're asking our students to move between three different buildings for a four-credit hour class. How does this benefit them? How does it benefit them to move classes further from the writing lab? Shouldn't we be considering those student experiences?