Clockwise from upper left: Workers prepare to seed the lawn south of Richards Hall. The east painting studio features a ceiling open to clerestory windows. Graduate student Richard Schwartz works in his new studio.

Richards Renovation Capitalizes on Light, Space

By Kim Hachiya, Public Relations

After more than two years' and $8.5 million worth of renovation, Richards Hall has opened its doors to students and faculty. Chances are, they will like what they see. Although not quite finished, and not yet fully occupied, the building is home to classes this semester and workers are racing to meet a December grand opening deadline.

Joe Ruffo, chair of the department of art and art history, said the building should be the envy of art departments nationwide. He should know, as a member of an arts accreditation review team, Ruffo has seen plenty of art facilities. He thinks Richards Hall is near the top for the programs the building will house ­ notably ceramics and sculpture.

Casual visitors may not notice many exterior changes in part because of a conscious effort to retain the building's 1908 modified Richardsonian flair.

"The windows were restored to their original style," Ruffo said. "The glass is thermopane, but the windows are such an important thing for the look of a building. They have done some pretty horrible things with windows on this campus."

Ruffo praised the architects, Bahr, Vermeer and Haecker, for their sensitivity to historical aesthetics.

"We asked them to retain its flavor, and they have," he said. The exterior paint color was researched and is the original brown. The roof tile was saved and reused, augmented with some tile salvaged from a state-owned building in Crete.

Barry Shull, manager of architectural and engineering services for Facilities Management and Planning, said the contractor, Builders Inc., deserves much credit for preserving the building's integrity while dragging it into the 21st century.

"It's a massive structure. Parts of the building had 18-inch thick brick walls that the contractors had to penetrate to pull ductwork through," Shull said. "It was a logistical nightmare in many respects."

The main floor footprint of Richards Hall is similar to a 4-leaf clover with each of the clover leaves directed toward a different purpose.

The central core of the main floor of the building consists of three gallery spaces. Collectively known as the Eisentrager/ Howard Gallery of the Department of Art and Art History, the name refers to James Eisentrager and Dan Howard, both emeriti professors of art and long-time faculty members in the department, who both had studio space in Richards Hall.

A hallway rings the perimeter of the gallery space, and following it leads one to the departmental office suite on the southwest, the ceramics studios on the northwest, painting studios on the northeast, and drawing studios, new restrooms and elevator and a vending area to the southeast.

The departmental office suite, located in the old painting studio, still features some building graffiti painted on steel beams. The suite overlooks an outdoor sculpture court that will hold a foundry and provide workspace for those working on large objects. The court is one of two exterior pavilions added to the building; the other houses the outdoor kilns.

The ceramics studio offers plenty of space for students and opens into the kiln area. Assistant Professor Pete Pinnell is directing a kiln building class this semester to put seven wood-fired kilns into the structure. An electric kiln is housed inside the building.

The painting studios are enormous with diffused northern light.

"Isn't that magnificent?" Ruffo says, gesturing toward the soaring ceiling. The ceilings in the room are open three stories up with clerestory windows in the cupolas. "I'm calling it the largest undergraduate painting studio in the county. And by volume, I'm surely correct," Ruffo said.

Shull estimated the ceilings at 25 to 28 feet and said the exposed beams really give the rooms character.

The floors throughout the building are painted concrete, except for some carpeting in the galleries and office suites. The extensive expanse of off-white walls seems to beg for exhibitions of student work.

"We asked for and we got a no-frills, industrial type environment," Ruffo said.

The second floor of the southern section of the building is dedicated to office and studio space for faculty and graduate students. (There are no second or third floors on the north end due to the high ceiling space in the first-floor studios.)

"As soon as we move into this building, we are out of space," Ruffo said. In the time between the planning and renovation, the department has added faculty and students.

The attic space on third floor is finished for storage and mechanical operations.

"It's amazing how much mechanical space a building like this needs," Ruffo said. Many art materials, such as paint, glaze and other products, produce fumes and require extensive ventilation and air handling.

The garden level features a 200-seat auditorium in new space that was excavated from beneath the ceramics studio. Seats were salvaged from the old second-floor auditorium.

A paper-making studio, in its original basement location, will be the last space to be completed.

A new north entrance will be completely handicapped accessible and also provide an entrance safe from the weather.

Ruffo said that while some ancient wooden beams were reinforced with steel, the architects and builders found Richards Hall to be in remarkably good shape for its age and level of neglect.

"This place is solid as a rock. Look how thick those walls are. If there was ever a storm, this is definitely the place to be," he said.

Shull said the building, originally built to house mechanical engineering, had not undergone heavy renovation since 1908. Some parts were still without air conditioning and it was woefully deficient in terms of handicap accessibility. Mechanical engineering moved to the Walter Scott Building in 1972 and the art department took over the space.

Once the building is fully operational, Ruffo said, the galleries will begin programming exhibitions. He's planning a season of exhibitions of alumni work as well as BFA and MFA exhibitions. He hopes to open the first exhibition in February. One plus is that the galleries will be open on weekends and football Saturdays.

Woods Art Building is also undergoing some renovation on the first floor, he said. The old ceramics area will become an all-purpose art studio. The east end will house the dean's offices for the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts.

Ruffo said he wants people to remember that Woods and Richards halls both exist as homes for the department.

"It's been a good grand project," he said.

The century-old Livestock Judging Pavilion is set for demolition.

NU Livestock Judging Pavilion Worked Its Course

By Sandi Alswager, IANR news assistant

The faded red brick livestock judging pavilion at the University of Nebraska East Campus here now holds only the echos of a judge's reasons or the excited cries of a winning livestock exhibitor. Two washed-out, wooden signs promoting beef and pork hang above the ring. Around the ring are the stalls where the livestock stayed, and upstairs are the classrooms and the rooms were the students lived. Bleachers, installed by the students on the south side of the arena, long have sat empty.

The century-old livestock judging pavilion held more than livestock shows, hogs, cattle or sheep. It was a place of learning and the converging of great minds and people. The old building also was the home of many animal science students who were paid to stay there and take care of the livestock.

The Livestock Judging Pavilion or Horse Barn, constructed in the early 1900s, has run its course. The condemned building is set to be demolished the first part of October and made into a short-term surface parking lot until plans are made for the spot.

"This old pile of red bricks would have been nothing if it wouldn't have been for the great students who occupied it," said R.B. Warren, NU Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources animal science professor emeritus.

Warren began teaching classes in the building when he joined the university in 1956. He recalled the pavilion's greater days at a Sept. 8 Block and Bridle Club Steak Fry and last salute to the old building. The former livestock judging team coach said he admired the students who came to the university, and they made his time worthwhile.

The 75-year-old said he was sad to see the building go.

"We had a good facility. It's been a pleasure to work with the students here," Warren said.

Many of the nearly 90 alumni attending the event came to see the building that holds their college-year memories whether they be of winning a livestock show, feeling the muscle of a lambchop or sharing friendships. As alumni walked on the floor of the arena that night, many picked up the cedar blocks from the floor, once covered with sand, as a souvenir of the building.

The students not only lived in the pavilion, they did the livestock chores, as well as painting, repairs and other janitorial duties. They also got the judging pavilion ready before and after events. In addition to the many 4-H, FFA, and other livestock shows held in the pavilion, many Nebraska farmers were given an opportunity to see the college's first-hand results of the cattle feeding experiments during Feeders Day. The event, started in 1911, had 4,500 attendees its second year. Visitors viewed the cattle from hay racks and wagons that lined the feedlot east of the pavilion. It was discontinued in 1963 in favor of smaller meetings across the state.

The current Animal Science Complex that opened in the late 1980s eventually took the livestock judging pavilion's place.

Distance Ed Consortium Gets $4 Million Grant for 'Digital Divide' Research

By Daniel R. Moser, CIT coordinator of news and publishing

A distance education consortium headquartered at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will lead a $4 million project to develop and deploy advanced Internet services and technologies over satellite to help close the "digital divide" that separates rural and low-income Americans from their urban and higher-income counterparts.

The National Science Foundation is funding a three-year grant of nearly $4.04 million for the Advanced Internet Satellite Extension Project.

The American Distance Education Consortium, based at UNL, will lead the research and development project, which will seek wireless Internet solutions to better serve rural and remote learning centers, businesses and offices. It also will focus on improving Internet delivery to tribal colleges, historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions.

Janet Poley, president of ADEC, will lead the project with UNL's Dale Finkelson, an Information Services network engineer, and Dan Cotton, director of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources' Communications and Information Technology unit, and the University of Maryland-College Park's Don Riley, chief information officer, and Valorie McAlpin, associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

ADEC will partner with the Tachyon Corp. of San Diego, Calif., a global wireless Internet provider that carries network traffic via satellite between Tachyon Access Points (TAPs) and end-user premises and a Tachyon Satellite Gateway in San Diego.

Among the questions to be addressed by the project:

o how to deliver Internet services without land lines at a reasonable cost to rural and underserved learning communities;

o whether the TAP technology will work to deliver these services; and

o how best to assure that networking and learning applications developed within Internet 2 can be available to rural learning centers and colleges and universities that are not part of the Internet 2 implementation.

The issues involved in this project sometimes are referred to as the "digital divide".

ADEC is particularly interested in how well this type of system can be developed and used for distance education. Future learning applications will need to advance beyond electronic mail, web and other services. Voice and video as well as document sharing and display are important to some education programs.

The project also will examine the effectiveness of learning using various media attributes. High bandwidth applications like those being deployed under Internet 2, offer realism to the learning environment. Increased bandwidth has the potential to improve learning through symbols and visuals and increase two-way communication, active engagement and rapid adaptation to learners.

ADEC is a consortium of 58 state universities and land grant colleges. In addition to the core institutions identified, ADEC expects that many of its member institutions will become involved in the project. A council including representatives from the historically black colleges, the tribal colleges and Hispanic-serving institutions will be established shortly. Also a "blue ribbon" panel of well-known experts in teaching and learning methods will be established.