Classes begin Wednesday at UWSP

When classes open on Wednesday, Sept. 2 at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, the student body will number about 8,450 with slightly more than 1,500 of them freshmen.

Checkpoint in the University Center’s Laird Room, which involves textbook distribution, tuition payment, processing of financial aid and issuing identification cards, will be on Monday, Sept. 31 and Tuesday, Sept. 1 from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Monday and 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday. There will be a holiday, Sept. 7, for Labor Day. A recess will be held Nov. 26 – 29 in conjunction with the Thanksgiving Day holiday. Semester exams will run from Dec. 17 – 22 and midyear commencement ceremonies will be on Saturday, Dec. 20.

Registration for part-time students will remain open through Sept. 14.

Returning students and first-time visitors will be greeted and guided to their destinations by a series of new signs installed across campus during the last weeks of August.

A total of 79 signs in three basic forms will provide pedestrians and drivers with a sense of arrival on campus and better identification of individual buildings. Two updated campus map signs have also been added at the west entrance to the University Center and on the south side of Fourth Avenue near the Reserve Street mall. All parking lot signs were also replaced and will provide updated information about the permits required and hours of enforcement.

The new signs replace various signs across campus that were created over different times using different styles. A combination of locally generated revenue from Student Housing, University Centers, Parking Services, the UWSP Foundation and campus licensing fees helped pay the cost of the $190,000 upgrade.

Residents moving into Hyer and Roach Halls will find significant upgrades to their halls. During the summer, a $2 million project remodeled the toilet and shower areas replacing old, worn out fixtures and converting the showers to private shower stalls. Improvements were made in the bathroom lighting and ventilating systems and floors, walls and ceilings received new surfaces. Handicapped accessibility to the first floor toilet and shower areas were improved to accommodate visitors.

Hyer and Roach Halls are the 11th and 12th halls to be renovated in this manner. The upgrade process began during the summer of 1991 and moved through the eight residence halls of the DeBot Residence Complex. In 1999, Smith and South Halls will receive similar renovation completing all 14 halls now in use.

Students pursuing degrees in medical technology and related fields will directly benefit from a $350,000 project to provide quality laboratory space for the Medical Technology Department within the west D-Wing section of the Science Building. To accomplish this, a marine biology research lab was relocated to improved facilities on the ground floor. The new medical technology lab will provide 20 work stations, an adjoining 13-seat research room, lab prep space complete with a new biosafe fume hood and emergency eye-wash/safety shower, and a small two-seat room to accommodate fluorescent and darkfield microscope work.

The Medical Technology program had occupied an outdated 10-station former chemistry research lab in the Science Building. The room had always represented a compromised design for the program--its size required double sections of instruction and did not meet new safety standards for handling blood-borne pathogens. State of the art equipment was acquired through 1997 lab modernization funds and will now provide students with the opportunity to use similar equipment to that found within clinical hospital programs.

Students and the public will soon experience a $332,000 lighting and sound system upgrade in the Fine Arts Center’s two main performance halls. The project involved the replacement of deficient and unreliable stage lighting in the 350-seat Michelsen Hall and replacement of similar lighting and sound systems in the 375-seat Jenkins Theatre.

Michelsen Hall is the primary teaching and performance theater for the Music Department in the College of Fine Arts and Communication. Jenkins Theatre serves the same function for the Theatre and Dance Department. The Fine Arts Center was completed in 1970 and since then, there has been little modification of original equipment. The condition, age and scope of the previous lighting and sound systems were affecting the quality of instruction and performances. As part of the sound upgrade, an infrared sound distribution system was also added in Jenkins to better accommodate the hearing impaired.

The University Center, the primary out-of-class social, recreational and educational building for the campus, is receiving a five-stop elevator at a total project cost of $435,000. Although the center was technically accessible, the building’s three phases of construction in 1959, 1965 and 1972, resulted in multiple floor levels that were a definite barrier to the handicapped and a significant challenge to maneuver freely throughout the building.

When it is completed, installation of the elevator near the center junction of the main building and its two additions will enable building occupants and visitors to easily travel to all levels of the building. The project also includes the installation of a ramp to join two non-aligned floor levels immediately adjacent to the central dining area and the new elevator.

Other projects not as visible but still important to campus operations included: a $73,000 project to install an emergency electrical generator to serve the College of Professional Studies Building, plus a separate connection of the Science Building D-Wing to an existing generator. A $50,000 project to link the first floor Science A-Wing classrooms to the building’s main air-conditioning system is still underway at this time.

At the Maintenance and Materiel Building on Maria Drive, the campus’ single walled, 10,000-gallon buried gasoline tank used to fuel fleet vehicles was replaced with a new pump, double-walled tank and automated leak detection equipment in a total project costing $98,000. Ninety miles to the north, at the campus’s Treehaven Education Facility near Tomahawk, eight buried fuel oil tanks were also removed and the entire complex converted to natural gas at a contracted price of $56,800.

Approximately $10,000 was used to remove some deteriorated and uneven asphalt from an area in the Health Enhancement Center formerly used as an indoor track. The former track was replaced with concrete.

Those who park in Parking Lot R south of the Learning Resources Center along Portage Street will find the center entrance closed and all entrance directed to the east end of the lot. The center entrance was closed for safety reasons, but also netted the campus an additional four spaces of much-needed parking.

During the final two weeks before the start of school, each building, plus the entire campus, had electrical service shut down. These shut downs allowed electricians to clean, test and inspect the campus’ entire 12,000 volt primary and secondary electrical supply system. The project was contracted directly out of Madison as a "test case" for similar preventive maintenance on other electrical systems throughout the state so no cost information was available.

One project that did not get underway this summer but student residents in the Allen Center Complex will soon notice, involves the repair of a damaged steam condensate line along North Reserve Street. The $417,000 project which will begin September 8, involves the excavation of the entire steam supply and return system from Hyer Hall south to Pray-Sims Hall and a small section south of the Allen Center. The project involves re-insulating and replacing the pipe casing and enclosing the entire system in a concrete box.

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