The David Letterman Communication and Media Building has brought a little bit of Hollywood and New York-based production studios to campus, said Roger Lavery, dean of the College of Communication, Information and Media.
In addition to housing classrooms, offices and a screening room, the Letterman building boasts two post-production studios and five editing bays.
These rooms feature the latest recording equipment for cinema, sound and music, instructor of telecommunications Stan Sollars said. Students trained on equipment this advanced will be able to enter any work environment they want, he said.
"Everything that we've done is for the students' benefit," Sollars said.
About 10 production-based telecommunications courses will benefit from the new, expanded facilities, he said. The Ball Communication building will still be used by faculty to teach classes and students, Sollars said.
However, he said the additional studios will better accommodate the work load of the approximate 1,200 telecommunications majors who often have large projects to complete.
The addition of the Letterman building creates a continuous connection of the Robert Bell Building, it, Ball Communication and the Art and Journalism Building, Lavery said.
Although Robert Bell does not contain any classes for CCIM majors, Lavery said the college is engaged in projects with the department of computer science that is located at Robert Bell.
The magnitude of the connection is that it will allow for more interdisciplinary learning while also creating a strong, unified identity for CCIM, Lavery said.
Incorporating the atrium space at the front entrance of the Letterman building for students to meet with each other and faculty was important to the design of the building, he said.
Design architect and College of Architecture and Planning alumnus Rod Collier worked on the Letterman building and said the atrium space was his favorite element of the building.
One subtle design feature that Collier said students might not have noticed initially is that Shafer Tower can be seen in its entirety through the windows in the main hallway.
"It's very clean, simple with a little bit of Asian influences here and there," Collier said of the overall design of the building. "They wanted something not necessarily corporate, but at the same time a little more elegant than your typical academic building."
Nathan Erwin, freshman communication studies major, said he liked the building overall but was somewhat disappointed that it was lacking key elements such as trash cans and benches outside of classrooms.
Although some conveniences are missing, Greg Graham, interim director of facilities and planning, said the Letterman building is operating in a stage of "substantial completion."
"It could take several months to wrap up the minor things," Graham said about when the building would be completely finished. "Most things the general public wouldn't generally notice anyways, but we would because we check to make sure all things are accounted for."
The construction company is not to blame for the incomplete status of the building, he said, instead it is because of delays in the arrival of parts.
Completed or not, students seem to appreciate the new building on campus. Freshman physical education major Heather Czajkowski said that she was pleased to see the university striving to improve and beautify the campus.
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