The Duke University Writing Program, currently located at the Bell Tower trailers on East Campus, will move into the nearby Art Building in Fall 2006.
Renovation of the Art Building began Monday, with the process of asbestos abatement. Project completion is scheduled for mid to late summer, said Bob Barkhau, director of facilities for the School of Arts and Sciences.
The 9,400-square-foot Art Building, which sits between the Bivins Building and the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building will accommodate offices for all of the program's staff, the Writing Studio, two writing classrooms and have open floor space on the second floor to hold various functions, Barkhau said.
"The classrooms have been outfitted to meet the criteria of the University Writing Program, equipped with audio and visual [support]," he added.
The renovation of the Art Building will cost a total of $1.3 million. The funds will be provided from a variety of sources, including the Arts and Sciences internal funds and University internal funds, officials said.
Although the current location has not caused any inconveniences, faculty and staff said they look forward to the move.
"It shows the support from the Duke administration for the Writing Program," said Joseph Harris, director of the Writing Program. "It will be a central and vibrant space."
The move comes as the program is garnering national attention. It was recently awarded the Writing Program Certificate of Excellence by the Conference on College Composition and Communication.
"There are few Writing Programs in the nation housed in their own buildings, and we're going to be one of them," Harris said.
Bob Thompson, dean of Trinity College, believes the new building will help the program in various ways.
"It will help to consolidate the program more, show more permanence and importance to the program," he said. "This is a positive development from a message standpoint, moral standpoint and function standpoint."
The building will also help unify the now scattered faculty, administrators said.
"It will be nice to have everyone under the same roof," said Michele Strano, a lecturing fellow who teaches Writing 20. "There is now a natural division among the three trailers, you tend to only talk with those in the same trailer."
In addition to bringing the faculty closer to each other, Harris also envisions the centralized location fostering a stronger faculty-student relationship. "Right now, we only see them when they're dropping by to have a conference with a teacher," Harris said of students. "As classes will also be taught in the building, we'll see a lot more of our students more often."
Faculty also hope the Art Building will bring a new, more esteemed, image of the department.
Strano said every time she had to tell students her office is actually in a trailer "[her] authority takes a knock."
"The symbolic message of housing the Writing Program... in its own building is a sign of respect," Harris said.
In the future, Harris hopes to expand the program, while holding onto the current success.
"I want to continue the work that won the award, which is largely based around Writing 20," he said. "I also want to increase working with faculty from other disciplines with more advanced writing."
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