When students, faculty and staff return to the Hibbs Building for their Fall 2006 classes, they will have a new downstairs neighbor, The University College. By reclaiming the first and second floor spaces used by dining services since the 1960s it created space for a University College in the building as well as more faculty offices and classrooms.
“University College is intended to be really the front door for the university that provided academic support services for all entering freshmen,” said Stephen Gottfredson, provost and vice president for academic affairs. “We’re hoping not only through the University College but also some of the curriculum changes to do a better job of engaging our students.
“We intend to provide common experiences for all entering students to help students develop ties to one another.”
The University College will include advising, mentoring and tutoring for first-year students. In surveys conducted by Gottfredson’s office, VCU students reported they are less engaged with the school and with each other, and VCU wants to address the issue.
To renovate the 96,000-square-foot Hibbs Building within one academic year, VCU had to find room for dozens of offices, 10 computer labs, the Language Lab, the Writing Center and almost 1,000 classroom seats that served 8,000 to 11,000 students each weekday.
The availability of the University Student Commons Theater as a classroom and the Department of Biomedical Engineering’s departure from 901 W. Grace St. gave VCU the space to empty Hibbs for a unified renovation.
“We had to make up for the loss of space in those three huge rooms,” said Margret Vopel Schluer, business manager for the Department of English, Hibbs largest occupant. Vopel Schluer’s duties include scheduling classes for the department’s nearly 100 professors and teaching assistants.
“When the university has a space crunch the doors fly open and you wind up teaching in places you never taught in before,” she said. “We’re basically in every building on campus.”
This means more movement for the English department’s faculty, including instructor Faye Prichard, who frequently taught in the Hibbs Building.
“I never minded my rooms in Hibbs. I had everything I needed,” Prichard said.
Now she crisscrosses the campus in 10-minute gaps to teach her composition classes.
The move to the seven-story former hospital at 901 W. Grace St., which served as the West Grace Student Housing and home to parts of the University Honors Program, has been hard on faculty.
“This was designed for biomedical engineering,” Vopel Schluer said, “so a lot of the offices are huge labs that we’ve had to break into offices. Faculty have made some concessions.”
Prichard moved from an office shared with one other person with a window where she could “see students buzzing around” to a large room shared with four instructors. Bookshelves, boxes and furniture segment the room.
“I think it comes with negatives and positives,” Prichard said. “The worst is not having any privacy. There are five of us in this office. It’s hard to be working all day not having a moment to call your own.”
Brian Ohlinger, associate vice president for facilities management, called the move necessary for a quick renovation.
“The ability to temporarily relocate the classrooms was instrumental in our ability to get the renovation done in a year,” he said, explaining that building life spans are in the 30-year range, and having passed that the Hibbs Building suffered mechanical failures and appeared dated.
“As much as we needed to vacate the building, we’ve taken the opportunity to refresh and renew the entire building.” Ohlinger said.
Gottfredson called Hibbs “a building that had been used very hard.”
“All of the major systems were failing regularly,” he said. “The air conditioning would fail in the warm months, and the heat would fail in the cold months. It just had reached that point in its life when everything needed to be replaced.”
Vopel Schluer said everyone in the building suffered from the problems. “Facilities management on campus did the best they could with the building and its antiquated systems,” she said, “but there comes a point in time where there’s not much you can do.”
The cafeteria became another issue.
Gottfredson recalled his six years in the building as Dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences.
“I’d walk into my office at 7 o’clock on Friday morning and smell what the students would be having for lunch that day,” he said.
Vopel Schluer said the cafeteria, however, created more problems than just odors.
“The fact that the cafeteria was in the building often set off fire alarms because toast burned – that kind of thing, which was very disruptive,” she said.
Historically, Hibbs was the first academic building constructed for the Richmond Professional Institute, which merged with the Medical College of Virginia to form VCU in 1968.
Built in 1958-59 and expanded south to triple its original size in 1967, the Hibbs Building had no significant renovations until the project began last summer. VCU identified Hibbs as a necessary project and added its renovation costs to the General Obligation Bond for Higher Education in 2002. Voters approved $10.6 million to fund the project.
“The largest portion of that is for the mechanical systems that’s probably $4.5 million,” Ohlinger said, estimating that new classroom furniture will cost $400,000 and updated data cabling will cost $500,000. The remaining funds will go to replace walls, floor tiles, ceilings and lighting.
VCU didn’t consider demolishing the building because of its sound structure. A new building would have taken two years to complete and cost “easily $30 million,” Ohlinger said.
“For just under $11 million we’re getting a new building, so it’s really a great investment.”
The renovated Hibbs Building is also expected to be more energy efficient than the original structure.
“That’s all part of it,” Ohlinger said. “With the savings in the mechanical systems of replacing 30-year-old systems, you get a 20 percent savings just because the technology has changed.”
Nonetheless, members of the VCU community just strolling by won’t notice the major changes because Hibbs will retain its original exterior look.
“One thing about it that it does fit in,” said Ray Bonis, assistant archivist at the James Branch Cabell Library, is that Hibbs “is red brick like a lot of Richmond.”