by Dean Karla Zadnik, OD, PhD
We are well out of the gates! Our new building on the southeast corner of 11th and Neil Avenues that will house our clinic and associated functions and personnel is underway. As of the third week of July, weekly—almost daily—evidence of progress can be seen as we walk or drive by that corner.
We will occupy the bottom three floors of the building. The first floor will house the Hoya Eyewear Gallery, patient reception, billing and other key clinic administrative personnel, and our Vision Rehabilitation Service. The Binocular Vision/Pediatric, Vision Therapy, and Advanced Ocular Services will occupy the second floor. Our Contact Lens and Primary Vision Care Services will occupy the entire third floor.
In addition to patient care facilities, the building will include clinical faculty offices and open workspaces, a shared student/staff/faculty lounge, various conference and meeting rooms, IT, and a shop to service equipment. The building will look traditionally academic from the outside and will have an open, welcoming interior with lots of nooks and crannies for informal interactions among students, staff, and faculty.
Meanwhile, renovations in the Fry Tower are proceeding rapidly. The former patient-oriented research waiting areas on the fourth and fifth floors are walled off. Behind them, those spaces are being converted to conference rooms. Room 33 is being altered to accommodate student life space with extra money from the university to subsidize that work. The anatomy and optics teaching labs are being created in the space at the north end of the Fry Tower basement (formerly “Multimedia” back in the day).
Through all this, the students, faculty, and staff are all good-naturedly occupying swing space. Four research study coordinators are cheerfully housed in one faculty office in Fry. Jeff Walline (OD, MS’98 PhD’02) welcomed Don Mutti, OD, PhD, to his office through autumn 2020.
The sixth floor will be internally remodeled to include the dean’s suite along with student services, advancement, communication, and financial/human resources staff.
We predict that all move-ins will be complete by autumn 2020.
We can’t see the future without you!