{"id":8183,"date":"2025-01-30T23:26:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T04:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=8183"},"modified":"2025-01-30T23:26:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T04:26:23","slug":"dr-lassiter-on-teaching-with-construction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=8183","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Lassiter on Teaching with Construction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0This afternoon, I sat with Dr. Lassiter, a published biology professor here at Roanoke College, and discussed what it means to teach a class a dozen yards from an active construction site.\u00a0 Dr. Lassiter said, \u201cTeaching right beside where the construction is has been challenging at times.\u00a0 On the day that it’s happening, it can be frustrating, but I try to step back and remember the bigger picture.\u201d\u00a0 As he later told me, the plans for the McConnon Discovery Center have evolved slightly since conception, \u201cThe original plan was to do more renovation with Trexler, where some of the interior walls might be rearranged, so a little more substantial there.\u00a0 For Life Science, there would have been renovations as well, but most of the walls would\u2019ve stayed where they are.\u00a0 The latest \u2013 we’re more focused on getting the new building up and running.\u00a0 We also know that fundraising priorities include the Res Life halls, student aid, and scholarships.\u00a0 I think there is still the idea to renovate Trexler and Life Science.\u00a0 As part of the new science complex, my understanding is the buildings will get better heating and air so even before getting into other renovations, we will have benefits from having the new building.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cOn the days when we have had the construction noise, I’ve moved classes, if necessary, to a classroom that wasn’t being used.\u00a0 And for test days, I have reserved another room in another part of the building if needed.\u00a0 Thankfully, we get weekly emails about interruptions to water or other construction news, but sometimes we just know if there is going to be disruptive noise that week.\u00a0 They’ve done a good job of telling us, in general, when things will happen.\u00a0 So for our class, because it started about halfway through, I just finished it as well as I could.\u00a0 Later that day, I made sure that for our class, as well as the next class I had, there was another place I could take you in this building if needed.\u00a0 Since the construction is mainly on one side of the building, if we go to the other side of the building, it’s usually okay.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Professors have faced a variety of daily complications since construction began, from parking in a new gravel parking lot to reconfiguring research space.\u00a0 \u201cA lot of the disruption was invisible to students this summer, we had to move everything out of Massengill that we wanted to stay and find places for it in Life Science or Trexler.\u00a0 For biology, we had our microscope facility in Massingill, underneath the auditorium there were rooms and we had a confocal microscope, a fluorescent microscope, and a cryostat.\u00a0 We’ve kind of squeezed together, but when the new building comes we will have more space to spread back into.\u00a0 So it’s just this year-and-a-half-ish period where we\u2019re going through growing pains.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The demolition of Massengill has been felt throughout campus, but before long the tremors will turn into screws whirring into place and the McConnon Discovery Center will rise in service to an invigorated science program.<\/span><\/p>\n

Juniper Rogers<\/p>\n

Section Editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0This afternoon, I sat with Dr. Lassiter, a published biology professor here at Roanoke College, and discussed what it means to teach a class a dozen yards from an active construction site.\u00a0 Dr. Lassiter said, \u201cTeaching right beside where the construction is has been challenging at times.\u00a0 On the day that it’s happening, it can…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-folks-at-noke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}