Posted on Thu 12 May 2022 at 14:59 by
Jacob Withington You may have noticed that rather large building that has been slowly appearing over the past 4 years by the bus stop. For those of you who don't know it's the new School of Management building.
The aim of this building is to bring the school together under one roof as currently it is split across 8W, Wessex House, The Edge and East Building. This originally £70m investment features (to name a few) 8 lecture theatres, very large sudy space capacity, a cafe and many offices! For more details visit this BathTime article. If you are as boring as me and love a floor plan you can also visit the original planning application here. Sounds sensible so far right?
Well, originally set to be completed before the 2020/21 academic year, I'm sure you can guess whether it's gone over budget. With it now set to open in mid-May and for the school to be moving in from June, at the start of semester 2 we started to explore how the space will be used.
Therefore, I was surprised even with this big investment to discover that we do not have enough teaching space to move all teaching into adequate fascilities and out of ones that don't work such as The Edge and the Library, of which the latter should be prioritised for study space!
So I started to explore why this is occuring and why this new building isn't solving our space issues, especially after some queries from students about how it will be used. I discovered earlier this year that the whole building would be guarded by turn styles, only letting in SoM students to the whole building. It was a shock that this large, fancy building boasting amazing facilities would only be accessible to a select cohort of students. It was also a concern that in a time when we don't have enough study or teaching space that new facilities to solve this problem are being guarded for special use that may not fully utilise them. When teaching is being forced into inadequate space such as The Edge and The Library(great for study not for teaching!) why are we not fully utilising these very adequate new spaces?
Therefore me and your SU President started lobbying for a more community based approach to this new addition to the campus, not barring stduents from it but allowing for shared use and collaboration to fully utilise our resources. We first met with the Dean and Deputy Dean of the school to understand the rationale and put forward our thoughts, we then raised our concerns to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Chair of Council and a number of Council members. This initiated a number of conversations across the university to establish how the space should be used. I raised it in the Teaching Timetabling and Study Space group that coordinates our infrastructure to support... well what it is in the title.
This all culminated in the lovely turn of events where amongst other recommendations to solve our space demands on campus these 2 popped out:
- That the new SoM building's study space will be open to all students!!!!!
- The teaching space in the building will be centrally timetabled to fully utilise it but prioritised for the school.
It is worth noting that many departments have their own study spaces but it is usually not guarded, or this big! It is useful to have departmental space to feel a sense of community with your department but when such a lovely large space is guarded this is when there is an inbalance here that contradicts our welcoming, open campus.
This is a great example of the influence your SU can have on big decisions when you raise concerns to us.
