History Professor Jim Lehning has a spacious office and a great view of the Salt Lake Valley.
But that might not always be the case.
When the Quinney Foundation announced a donation of $26 million to the College of Law last November, the hundreds of people crowded into the law lobby cheered.
When President Bernie Machen announced that the donation was an important step in creating a law school campus on the U’s southwest corner, the crowd exploded in approval.
Transforming that corner into a law campus would require the law school?which is “bursting at the seams” for office space?to assimilate its neighboring building: Carlson Hall.
What students think
A brisk, 10-minute walk downhill from the Union, Carlson Hall houses the history department, the Ethnic Studies Program and the Tanner Humanities Center.
Completed in 1938, Carlson Hall was the first dormitory for women on the U campus?most offices are converted dorm rooms and therefore larger than standard faculty members’ offices. In 1998, the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places?fitting for the building that houses the history department.
“I think there was a general sense of shock among history students, faculty and staff when the law school” made the announcement, said Denise Kelley, chairwoman of the History Student Advisory Committee. “I have personally grown to love Carlson Hall?I would like to see the history department remain [there].”
As a historic building, Carlson Hall is an important part of the “history experience” at the U; relocating the history department will be a loss for future students, Kelley said.
She doesn’t think students fully take advantage of it, however.
Kelley isn’t sure how much of a factor Carlson Hall’s location is in deterring students from participating in activities or visiting professors, but thinks there’s a “general sense of student apathy” which deters campus involvement.
Despite the building’s history, history junior Larissa Taylor thinks the department should move.
“It’s at the bottom-most corner of the campus. It’s really inconvenient,” Taylor said. “I know history majors that don’t declare because they don’t want to go all the way down there.”
Not very many people are willing to make the trek all the way down to attend a lecture or visit a professor, she continued. She can understand, however, why the professors wouldn’t want to give the offices up.
What faculty think
Lehning wishes he could figure out a way to get students to visit him in his office. For one class, he required every student to come visit him. Two-thirds of his class did.
“It’s a good building for developing a departmental community, but it makes it difficult for students to visit us,” Lehning said, “unless they’re heading through the building on their way downtown. In fact, a number of us try to meet students elsewhere on campus. I always tell students to catch me after class?because it’s so hard to get them here.”
Not only does the inconvenient location affect students, it affects faculty as well. Lehning specializes in modern French history, but he has little contact with the French sector of the Languages and Literature department.
“It’s hard even to get to know those people,” he said. When he is in the neighborhood, and tries to visits friends of his in the College of Humanities, “they’re never there.”
History professors spend more time in their offices than other faculty members do, so they have more face-to-face contact with one another.
“We have a fairly good community as a department and that’s something we want to hold on to,” Lehning said.
“The good thing about Carlson Hall is you have an office this size, you can collect” all your stuff here and do research in your office, which few professors can do, he said.
Getting to class can prove problematic though.
History professors teach classes all over campus, Lehning said, and hardly ever in Carlson Hall. He’s been assigned to teach classes as far away from his office as the HPER complex, while many of his colleagues in the humanities college teach classes in the same building that houses their department or one right next to it.
“That’s not a huge hardship. That’s one of the consequences of it being on the periphery,” Lehning said.
“I think a more central location would be a lot better,” said Gene Fitzgerald, head of the Tanner Humanities Center. “We’re sort of a communal place where the humanities can interact with each other and the rest of campus.”
The remote location detracts from the center’s ability to provide that interaction, though.
“Geography is important in the perception of the entire campus. If you’re sort of on the periphery, you have to work harder to make yourself central in the minds of the campus,” Fitzgerald said. “We hope we can get new digs before too long.”
The center is not an academic department and has only five employees. Unlike history faculty, their offices aren’t in old, spacious dorm rooms, but Fitzgerald doesn’t want to lose the center’s nice seminar rooms. Recently redone with donated money, the rooms host teacher workshops, conferences, talks and meetings.
“I would still like to be able to use those spaces simply because it would be an insult to the donors if we didn’t,” Fitzgerald said.
Where would they go?
For Carlson Hall or its residents, no plans are set, and everyone is looking at options.
“Some [Carlson Hall residents] like it a lot, others are excited about being closer to humanities,” said Christian Anderson, assistant to the dean of humanities. LNCO houses most of the college; the philosophy department is in OSH.
Constructing a building adjacent to LNCO will take “a good long while,” Anderson continued, and both the history department and the Tanner Humanities Center will be involved in planning that.
“There’s not a simple answer to [the issue] because it’s pretty clear the history department loves their offices in Carlson. For them, it’s kind of a mixed blessing,” said David Pershing, senior vice president for academic affairs, in a December interview.
There are at least two alternatives to the expansion of the College of Law, in association with last semester’s $26 million gift from the Quinney Foundation, Pershing said.
The first is moving Carlson Hall inhabitants to new facilities close to LNCO, which would bring all the humanities close together. This plan would require a new building.
The second is leaving Carlson Hall inhabitants right where the are and find another building adjacent to the law school to spill into.
“That is a very reasonable possibility because it does not involve having to raise funds from the Legislature or private donors,” Pershing said.
There is no obvious existing building other than Carlson Hall for the law school, Pershing said, so the U would have to build a new one, primarily with private funds. As per the agreement with the Quinney Foundation, the school’s dean can use up to $1 million of the donation for the creation of new facilities?which is a start the history department does not have, and Pershing doubts the Legislature would be anxious to “sign up for a new history building.”