4 minute read
Built for Its Time
MTSU’s new Behavioral and Health Sciences building was designed with today’s realities in mind
by Drew Ruble
MTSU created the College of Behavioral and Health Sciences as part of an academic reorganization less than a decade ago to better focus on preparing research-based service providers and to offer the best education in health, mental health, and human services in the state of Tennessee.
In many ways, alumni of the six disciplines that make up CBHS—Criminal Justice Administration, Health and Human Performance, Human Sciences, Nursing, Psychology, and Social Work—are still getting used to the idea that they are connected to MTSU’s “newest” college, since many of them earned their degrees before its creation. These anchor programs have long been part of MTSU’s remarkable community impact, preparing the front-line professionals who are essential to ensuring that communities thrive.
Now the college is taking the next step in its evolution, opening its new $39.6 million building for the Fall 2020 semester.
This academic building brings together three of the college’s six departments—Criminal Justice Administration (CJA), Psychology, and Social Work— which offer highly related, integrative programs previously located in multiple buildings across the campus, to allow for greater collaboration.
The building provides critically needed classrooms, offices, and lab space for CBHS and its programs, including eye tracker and whisper rooms for neuroscience, sensation and perception, and cognitive research; dedicated labs for collecting questionnaire and other data; and computer labs specifically for teaching undergraduate and graduate statistics and data collection.
It’s a timely project given the uncertain world we live in today. For instance, in the wake of the recent and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, some of the work that will take place in the new building could have far-reaching positive impacts on society as a whole. “We’re going to be going beyond traditional criminal justice,” said Lance Selva, the former CJA department chair (as of March 2020). “We’re expanding into homeland security, emergency management, . . .
predictive analytics. . . . And this isn’t just border security stuff. We’re talking about new technologies capable of securing the United States.”
The new facility also has a command center where CJA students can practice coordinating and mobilizing resources when disasters strike.
“We’ll be getting into emergency management and disaster relief management, too. We’ll be bringing in experts to help our professors teach the latest methods of coordinating resources,” Selva said. “We’ll have a command center, for instance, that is an emergencysimulation room with 28 computers, multiple projectors, and four 80-inch monitors that can serve as TV screens as well as show computer screens. This will be hands-on learning, not abstract learning.”
Located between the Student Union Building and the Tennessee Livestock Center, the CBHS building was constructed using $35.1 million in state funding. Additional needed funds were raised by the University. The designer was Bauer Askew, while Turner Construction was the construction manager/general contractor for the project. The state-of-the-art, 91,000-square-foot building offers amenities that were unimaginable in previous departmental configurations. As an example, Department of Psychology faculty taught in classrooms spread across campus while their offices were in Jones Hall. Psychology students previously had a closet-size testing room that doubled as storage space for files and videos. With all three departments being housed in the new building, it will also facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration
between CJA, Psychology, and Social Work. There’s lots of overlap in those disciplines. The interactions of each department’s students and faculty will be greatly enhanced—they won’t have to walk across campus anymore. Such an environment will be ripe with opportunities for innovation.
In addition to faculty offices being in the same building as classrooms, the new building will have large and small spaces for students to spend time before and after class, facilitating the kind of impromptu meetings and informal discussions (among students or between students and faculty) that deepen the learning experience. Students from across the three disciplines now have much better access to spaces outside of the classroom that will bring about their interaction with each other and with faculty—and give them a better opportunity to be comfortable as they meet, read, study, and relax before and between classes. The new, interconnected building also will make it easier for students to be familiar with and locate their professors to access their help with coursework and professional advising. MTSU
photos: J. Intintoli
