The Proposal || Swapping Lab Space

For reasons I address in the next section, our institutional space request forms do not adequately address our needs at the branch campus. This afforded me the opportunity to craft a memo for my area director and the campus vice chancellor proposing a solution to computer lab space to support our Digital Technology and Culture (DTC) program, as well as our Rhetoric and Composition course needs. The proposal is brief, stating our existing space needs, proposing a computer lab swap, and including a justification for the swap. I also included a mock-up floor plan for what the newly configured space would look like and a proposed budget, which took advantage of the biennium capital planning funds that the state allocates for such changes.

Statement of Needs

The most significant challenge to program growth and expansion is the lack of space. To expand course offerings in Composition, Rhetoric & Professional Writing, and DTC, additional computer lab space and equipment is needed. Specifically, the Mac Lab needs to expand to support 20 computer stations with table room for an additional four students with laptops to connect to the network and work with the class. The Mac Lab is currently too small to allow many of the current courses to utilize it. For example, all of the courses cross-listed with English and DTC typically have 22–25 students enrolled whereas the Mac Lab has only 15 stations available.

Justification

Increasing course offerings through implementing the Professional Writing Certificate and the Rhetoric & Professional Writing option in English builds an infrastructure to support Writing Across the Curriculum and will significantly support DTC, one of the most popular and quickly growing majors on our campus. Rather than competing with DTC, Rhetoric & Professional Writing is a sister option that would provide growth avenues for both majors in a collaborative environment. Course offerings in all English courses, particularly those of Rhetoric & Professional writing, engage students in the critical thinking, inquiry-based learning, and integrative and collaborative civic engagement that support not only cultural understanding and intercultural relations, but also just and sustainable societies, policies, and practices. Such courses also directly support the College of Liberal Arts theme of social, cultural, and psychological impacts on human health by educating students in good communication skills and helping students understand issues of audience and usability.

Although the Rhetoric & Professional Writing option is not a new program, offering it at our branch campus is. Significant student interest (~15 students enrolled) in the first semester of the Professional Writing Certificate indicates a great interest in this English option. Students also requested the major before it was even fully implemented. There is no question that Rhetoric & Professional Writing attracts many students, but the fact that this option is so seamlessly interrelated to the existing and growing DTC program ensures its success and further underscores the urgency for updating, reconfiguring, and increasing our instructional computer lab spaces.

Solution

proposed floorplan

To address the current, pressing needs of program growth, and to maintain the “cutting-edge” status of our DTC program, we propose swapping the current computer lab spaces. That is, moving the dedicated DTC Mac Lab to the larger space in West 145 would allow us to increase course enrollments to support ~20 students (over the current 15). Moving the current PC Lab equipment to West 223 would still allow enrollments of 20 students because the PC equipment and smaller monitors would allow for more PC stations in that lab than it currently allows for Mac stations.


Budget Considerations

To truly support the growth of the programs, the newly configured Mac Lab should include all new computers, desks designed for iMac computers, and other equipment necessary for supporting our programs (see table 8.1):

Table 8.1: Needs and budget for newly configured Mac Lab.

Item Cost*
21 iMac computers (20 student + instructor console)
Configuration $1,799 each (apple.com with Apple Education pricing)
  • 2.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5
  • 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB
  • 1TB Serial ATA Drive
  • AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512MB GDDR5
  • Apple Magic Mouse
  • Apple Wireless Keyboard (English) & User's Guide
  • Accessory Kit
 $37,359.00
DSLR Cameras (+ Accessories) $2,000 X 06 $12,000.00
Photo/Video/Audio Production ( + Accessories) $5,000.00
Large-format Printer $6,000.00
10 iMac compatible SMARTdesks (each desk seats 2 students) $12,000.00
26 chairs ($80 each) $2,100.00
Total Estimate $74,459.00

* I contacted our instructional technology department on campus to request educational pricing for the items above. For equipment and supplies recommendations that others in the field have provided, I used various professional email lists (e.g., WPA-L, TechRhet, ATTW) to research costs for those not available through any university or state contracts. Additionally, I searched through several reviews of products online until I located a range of options for the equipment needs we hope to fill. The final items selected for the proposal represent cost-effective strategies for getting the most for our money while still keeping an eye toward upkeep, maintenance, and depreciation.

Because these costs represent a one-time investment in swapping and reconfiguring the two lab spaces, all estimated budget expenses listed qualify for state capital planning funds available through Minor Capital Investments and Omnibus Funding programs.

 


Both the area director and the vice chancellor supported this proposal and the opportunities it afforded. However, over the course of several conversations, I realized that implementing such a proposal would have to be prioritized over time. During one of our many meetings in the months following the proposal submission, I was asked to prioritize the proposal items. Following the literature supporting a critical pedagogy of place, I argued for new and/or reconfigured furniture to promote collaborative and flexible learning environments. However, I recognized that from an administrative position, student recruitment and retention were of greater priority and, thus, discussed with the area director and vice chancellor the affordances of new computers and software to facilitate recruitment and retention in our programs. Ultimately, upper administration decided to purchase all new iMac computers in the 2014 fiscal year. Additional equipment, desks, chairs, and so forth will wait for future biennium capital-planning proposals. However, the greatest “win” resulting from this proposal is that the importance of maintaining and updating equipment and program infrastructure became clear to administrators on our campus.

Prior to the discussions stemming from my computer lab proposal, the campus budget did not include a permanent budget or line items to maintain or upgrade instructional labs. After our many discussions regarding space, equipment, and software needs to meet pedagogical and institutional goals, the campus vice chancellor instituted a permanent budget line for instructional lab space beginning in the 2014 fiscal year. This new budget item will allow sustained support for our instructional computer labs in the future and will allow us to set long-term goals for special funding, such as the biennium capital-planning funds. My initial proposal did not include such long-term goals nor the establishment of sustainable funding, but through the many discussions with administrators I learned that these considerations are important components for any funding or space request.

In addition to budgetary “wins” and future guarantees for instructional lab upgrades, I also discovered that making requests from multiple sources is important. Hoping to update the dilapidated chairs in one of our computer labs, I decided to take a little chance. I followed the university's online facilities request form, asking for the twenty-four chairs in the lab to be replaced and providing detailed evidence of the unacceptable conditions. I also cited the possible health and safety issues of broken chairs. The facilities director came to the lab to verify the conditions and had several of the chairs tightened up. When I noticed this, I posted another request for new chairs. It took over a month, but we just recently received twenty-four brand-new ergonomic task chairs in the PC computer lab and an additional eighteen brand-new task chairs in the dedicated Mac lab.