Contact: Jim Hultine, School of Education, (785) 864-9612
LAWRENCE - Moving week for the University of Kansas School of Education begins July 31.
Faculty and staff will be moving from Bailey Hall on Jayhawk Boulevard and the Dole Center on Sunnyside Drive to the $14.1 million newly restructured seven-story Joseph R. Pearson Hall and Teacher Education Center on the corner of West Campus Road and 11th St.
The move to the new location marks the first time in the school's 90-year history that nearly all of the faculty and staff will be housed in the same building, said Karen Symms Gallagher, dean of education. Fall semester classes begin Aug. 24.
"Our new facility will provide the best learning opportunities available to future teachers, administrators, counselors and psychologists in the United States," Gallagher said.
"These new state-of-the-art classrooms and facilities will enable KU to attract the best students and faculty, to add seminal research and grant activities and to make new resources available to educators throughout Kansas and the nation."
The public will have two opportunities to tour the school's new home: An open house planned for Homecoming weekend, Oct. 21; and the formal dedication April 21, 2001.
Gallagher said that phone service and Internet connections will remain operational through the move.
To coordinate moving 235 people and their furnishings, Gallagher contracted a professional move-planning firm, FaciliTEAM of North Kansas City, Mo., to assist. Jim Hultine, assistant to the dean, heads the school's Move Management Team, which has met regularly throughout the past year to prepare for the move.
Originally constructed in 1958 as a men's residence hall, Joseph R. Pearson Hall has been transformed to a 105,000 square-foot, student-centered building with 18 state-of-the-art classrooms in addition to laboratory and clinical facilities and office spaces. Renovation work, designed by Evans Gould architects of Lawrence, began in August 1998. The front door of the renovated building originally faced west. It now faces the east, with a view of the Campanile, Potter Lake and the Kansas Union.
Through the 1996 Crumbling Classroom funding for Kansas Board of Regents universities, the Kansas Legislature provided $12.1 million for the renovation of Pearson. In 1998, the Kansas Board of Regents approved an additional $2 million to help furnish the Teacher Education Center.
The enrollment and outreach of the school have outgrown Bailey Hall, which became the school's central administration and classroom building in 1956 . Constructed in 1899 as a state-of-the-art chemistry facility, Bailey was refurbished to accommodate the School of Education after the chemistry department had moved to the newly constructed Malott Hall.
In recent years, KU's School of Education has been housed in four locations: three on the Lawrence campus -- Bailey Hall, Robinson Center and Dole Center, and one at the KU Med Center in Kansas City, Kan. Offices for the health, sport and exercise sciences department will remain in Robinson and a few offices for the Center for Research on Learning will remain in the Dole Center.
Number of faculty and staff = 235
Meetings of dean with contractors on project progress = 60
Days required to move = 4
Pieces of furniture to be moved = 4,500
Boxes packed and moved = 10,000 to 12,500
New keys that need to be cut by Aug. 4 = more than 700
Keymakers at KU = 2
Crew members required for moving = at least 50
Truck trips required between Bailey or Dole and Pearson = 120
Cost of move = $51,000
Number of aspirin consumed = estimate unavailable