As the school year has gotten under way, maintenance crews have been hard at work transforming the empty shell of the former administration offices into the new Student Media Center. The center, which is tentatively expected to be operational towards the end of the semester, will house many of St. Louis U. High’s media-based student groups, such as Prep News, the Dauphin Yearbook, Gadfly, SLUH Sports Network, and Sisyphus.

        Following the relocation of the administration offices and Counseling Department to the new Dill Center for Academic Success over the summer, the former quarters of both departments—which sit centrally located on the first floor of the school building—became open real estate. Near the end of last school year, plans were made to fashion the area into a media hub for the school, with the hope that increased proximity would foster collaboration between groups.

        Already, the former counseling office has become home to both Director of Communications Ben DuMont and Digital Media Specialist Ryan Doyle, among other faculty members.

The former administration office, however, needed a remodel before it was ready for student use. Because of the late-July move-in date for the Dill Center, work on the space was unable to begin until late summer, meaning that the initial target completion date of the first day of school was well overshot. With the original footprint of the offices remaining virtually unchanged, maintenance work has focused largely on replacing carpet and painting walls, as well as removing the built-in receptionist desk area.

        The plan for the Media Center calls for each respective club or publication to receive a dedicated office, each of which used to belong to an administrator (Yearbook’s office, for example, was formerly that of Assistant Principal for Academics Kevin Foy). The offices will be an upgrade for all groups involved, all of whom either work out of cramped and outdated arrangements, or have no designated office at all.

        “It is sort of bittersweet to leave our current office,” said Yearbook editor Patrick Brennan. “But, I think it’ll end up being a very good thing for the Yearbook. It’ll be nice to have new equipment, and the location is way better than the J-Wing, where we’re at now.”

        The removal of the receptionist desk has also created a large open space in the center of the Media Center, which will become a collaborative working space for all media clubs. The space will have new iMac desktops to allow for easy use of software in the Adobe suite, as well as a collaborative working area, among other things.

        Though no set decisions have been made with regards to furnishing the center, the faculty group coordinating its development—composed of DuMont, Doyle, and English teacher David Callon—anticipate spending the first round of funding on furnishing the common space with new amenities. As more funding hopefully becomes available in the future, focus would shift to meeting the needs of each individual club and upgrading their technology.

        “For the open collaboration space, we are planning to get some new computers, and some new furnishings,” said Doyle. “We’d like to get whiteboards for all of the nests in the different areas, or new chairs for most of the clubs, but it’s going to be a combination (of new and old) during this first phase.”

        Throughout the process of designing the new space, Doyle has been in constant contact with moderators and student leaders of the respective clubs, taking their feedback into account in order to best meet the needs of every party.

“With the number of clubs and with the budget, we didn’t want to shirk any one club,” said Doyle. “We wanted to make sure that the shared space especially was really inviting and conducive to everyone, with new state-of-the-art technology and nice furnishings that could stand the test of time.”
        Currently, Doyle, Callon, and DuMont are working to iron out the logistics of the project, such as setting up the necessary internet and electrical networks, and deciding on set numbers of computers and furniture to buy.

“We’ve contacted Color Art, who have done all of our furnishing for the iLab and the new science labs, to help draw proposed designs,” said Doyle. “Then, it’s figuring out what it will take to get an (internet) network, because, obviously, (the space) wasn’t built for that. And we’re trying to figure out what electrical things we need, too. So just a lot of logistics behind what’s going to go where, how it’s going to happen, when it's going to happen, and how it’s going to get paid for.”