One looks at the exterior face of the Science Building at NEIU and its unusual interior and the classic drawing Relativity, by M. C. Escher, is called to mind.
In 1972, one year after Northeastern Illinois State College became Northeastern Illinois University, the NEIU Science Building was completed. Since that time many of its offices have been repurposed, it has seen a number of paint jobs, and the front entrance has had a major overhaul.
Still, at thirty-five years old, the NEIU Science Building continues to fall into disrepair and is sorely underutilized in regard to its original mission.
According to the Illinois Board of Higher Education 2006 Performance Report for NEIU, “The Science building, constructed in 1972, is in need of renovation. Insufficient laboratory space and inflexible layouts may hinder the learning activities that take place and exclude students who would otherwise enroll. In particular, biology courses have long waiting lists of students.”
In the late 90s, the Science Building Advisory Group (SBAG) was formed. Their stated purpose, according to their April 1999 bylaws, “The committee is concerned with all matters affecting the physical facilities and the operation and use of the building. Its purpose is to offer advice and to make recommendations on space allocation, upkeep, maintenance, repair, and any other pertinent matters. Such advice/recommendations will be made to the Dean, the Director of Physical facilities, or the Provost, as is appropriate.”
While they had some success in divvying up the display cases, it was and is the responsibility of the various departments to upgrade and the upkeep of their own exhibits and most are to this day gathering dust from before SBAG was ever formed.
Last updated in 2003, the Science Building Survey was one of the last gasps of SBAG and some of the suggestions gleaned from it form the basis for the long list of the building’s problems and needed fixes.
Dr. Paul Dolan was kind enough to take the Independent on a tour of the facility and share some of his insider knowledge of the building and its history. A full professor, Dolan has been teaching at NEIU since 1987 and has a clear grasp of the challenges facing his department and NEIU as an institution. While he is not unaware of the deficiencies in the building and NEIU’s science curriculum, he comes across as hopeful that the new administration can move forward in a direction that benefits his department, others in the Science Building, and the student body at large.
Many of the classrooms and labs have severely bowed ceiling tiles, some of which have collapsed into rooms and left obvious water damage on the tiled floor below. The electronics lab had a particularly close call with a heavy leak dropping a tile midway between a shelf full of reference books and expensive electronic equipment. On the other hand, some of the classrooms have no drop ceilings at all. Those teaching and learning in these rooms are completely unshielded from the sounds from the classes above and the busy ductwork. The closed off loading dock has two eye-beams that, according to Dolan, were never properly installed and cannot be used to secure a planned crane for lifting heavy equipment and machinery. The ceiling in the dock has been the site of a recent squirrel burrowing, insulation cascading down on various pieces of equipment below.