One of UNLV's oldest buildings has been given new life.
University officials was scheduled to rededicate John S. Wright Hall this afternoon after the completion of a major $19.7 million renovation and expansion.
Originally built in 1965, the new facility now contains the most technology- savvy classroom complex on campus, Cam Johnson, manager of the Student Computing Support Center, said. The more than 89,000-square-foot, three-story building contains 17 technology enhanced or "smart" classrooms that include a ceiling-mounted projector, a retractable screen, amplified audio, a DVD and VCR player, a computer, document camera and hook-ups for laptops.
About 74 of 227 classrooms on campus have that kind of technology, Johnson said, but the university's long-term goal is to upgrade all of them.
"I think the campus is really starting to get aggressive about bringing all of the facilities up to grade," Johnson said.
"It's forced us (computing and UNLV's planning and construction offices) to work together that much more. Technology is hard-wired into all of the projects coming up on campus."
This summer, Johnson's office will remodel or convert six classrooms and upgrade 21 more, he said. Retrofitting a classroom can cost anywhere from $15,000 to $40,000 depending on whether or not new conduit or other modifications to the building need to be made to install the technology, Johnson said. The hardware alone runs between $10,000 and $15,000.
Wright Hall, reopened in January, primarily serves the history, political science and anthropology departments, which were until recently housed in the Central Desert Complex.
The hall is named after one of UNLV's founding professors, the late John Wright, whose son Tom is still a history professor at the university.
"He'd be really proud of this one," Tom Wright said,"Considering that he had to teach in his first year in borrowed high school classrooms and Sunday school rooms."
The facility contains 99 faculty offices, two lecture halls, 15 classrooms, four seminar rooms and eight laboratories with unfinished space for four more, Tim Lockett, assistant director of construction, said.
The university tore down part of the original building for the new wing and refurnished about 19,700 square feet for faculty offices.
Most of the technology in Wright Hall was built into the state-funded construction costs, Lockett said. About $2 million of the $19.7 million total went to furniture and equipment needs.
The $2,000 document camera is a modern-day overhead projector, but it can project any document or even three-dimensional items onto the large retractable screens, Johnson said. The technology allows a professor in the building's archeology or anthropology labs to be able to project a fossil or a bone to the rest of the class without being forced to pass it around.
The classrooms are set up for wireless and Ethernet Internet access and have electrical plugs along the floor to allow students to bring in their laptops, Johnson said. Professors who want to utilize computers in class may also have a 30-unit mobile laptop station delivered to the classroom.
The mobile unit allows any professor in any of the enhanced classrooms to use the computers, Johnson said.
The three larger lecture classrooms also have both wireless lapel and hand-held microphones for the professors and students to use during lectures or class discussions, Johnson said. All of the technology is controlled by one lecturn-top remote control that the computing center can access remotely to help a technology-impaired professor start a video or use the projector.
The help desk, which professors can call through in-classroom phones, can also arrive on scene within five minutes to fix any technological glitches a professor may be having, Johnson said.
Students entering or exiting classes in the Wright Center Thursday said they appreciate the large retractable screens and the document projectors the most when they are in class.
"It's good because you can see it and hear it no matter where you sit," said Priscilla Scott, 19, an international business major from Las Vegas.
The technology makes it a lot easier to understand what is going on in the classroom, said Dominic Dorsett, a 20-year-old from Seattle who is taking anthropology in Wright Hall.
"I'm a business major, so science is a lot easier when you can touch it and see it instead of just reading about it in a book," Dorsett said.
"It's always nice to see upgrades in the campus. It's good to see that UNLV is putting its money to work."
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