At a time when the humanities are already under attack, its professors are stuck in the most outdated offices on campus. They have less resources, longer walks between classes and no choice in the matter.
Many of the humanities professors have to walk an unreasonable distance from their offices to teach at the ATC building. In addition, all of the humanities professors have to share one xerox machine, whereas arts professors in the ATC have one xerox machine per hall.
Something has to change.
At UTD, humanities professors from the Bass School teach a broad range of subjects, including philosophy, history, literature, creative writing, film and more. Yet, even though they’re part of the Bass School, they don’t get the same amenities as those who teach animation and games, media and technology fields. While the humanities professors occupy the “relic” Erik Jonsson Hall, all of the other professors, who are technology or visual arts professors occupy the much newer Edith O’Donnell Arts and Technology Building.
Jonsson is one of the oldest buildings on campus, at roughly 50 years old — the same age as the Eugene McDermott Library, and it shows. It’s a block of concrete and though it’s been renovated since it opened in 1975, it has retained its cold, brutalist architectural style. Anyone who has seen it can attest to its intense, artificial lighting, weirdly formatted offices and small scarce windows, so rare that some classrooms do not have any at all. Overall, the Erik Jonsson Building is the aesthetic opposite of new UTD buildings, and for the professors who call it their academic home, this matters, as it can make these professors feel less valued than professors who were moved to newer, nicer buildings.
One anonymous humanities professor compared the two buildings, saying, “ATC is bright, airy and not cramped” while Jonsson “has not been maintained as well as it could have been.”
Before the dawn of ATC, all professors in the Bass school had offices in Jonsson. When ATC was ready, the arts professors moved in while the rest of the humanities faculty were left behind. Currently, many of the professors who are left in the Erik Jonsson Hall teach classes in the same old classrooms or have to walk at least 15 minutes in the hot Texas sun to teach in newer classrooms across campus, hiking back immediately after class to grade work and reply to students’ emails wasting valuable time and showing a level of institutional disrespect to these hardworking academics. The same goes for humanities professors who work under the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. These professors work in Hoblitzelle Hall which is aesthetically similar to the Johnson building, except it is even older and significantly less well-maintained than Jonsson.
“There is only one xerox machine in the whole building,” another anonymous humanities professor stationed in the Jonsson building said. “With so many language and rhetoric classes, there is so much printing. If that machine breaks, we have to walk to the [Arts and Technology] building.”
That means professors, several of whom are older and less mobile than the student body, are resigned to making a 15-minute walk across campus just to make the copies necessary for classes to function.
The professor further explained that the air conditioning in Jonsson is flaky at best, resulting in hot offices and inconsistent temperature throughout the day. One might think that this is bound to change with all the new construction on campus, but so far, humanities professors have not been offered new offices.
University administration promised new offices for several schools on campus, but the Bass School and its professors have been left off the list, leaving them in cramped, ancient offices for the time being, while professors in schools like JSOM, ECS and NSM, on average, get space in significantly newer buildings.
The administration should compromise in either one of two ways: either they should give the humanities professors newer offices and newer classrooms, or they should give them classrooms to teach at nearby buildings that are not a longer walk away. These accommodations would benefit students and the professors alike.
Some may argue that humanities professors deserve to have offices in less developed buildings because they have less students since this is a mainly STEM school. Statistically, humanities students make up a significantly smaller demographic at UTD and humanities professors make up a small amount of all professors at UTD. Therefore, arguably the humanities professors having offices in older buildings would be insignificant, or even justifiable as they make up a small portion of the faculty.
However, these facts are irrelevant as humanities professors are still faculty and humanities students are still students at UTD. No matter the major or concentration, administration is responsible for ensuring that their professors feel cared for and their students know that their professors are able to focus on their students in order for them to receive a quality education.
I am not suggesting all professors get moved to the newer buildings as that would be unreasonable due to lack of space. There’s a much easier solution: at minimum, the professors that have most of their classes in ATC should have offices there. That way they wouldn’t have to walk an additional 30 minutes across campus every day — time they could spend grading papers, giving feedback or taking a well-deserved break.
Both of these solutions benefit students by giving them happier and more focused professors, which allows students to be given more individualized attention and overall improves professor wellbeing.
Happy teachers create happy classrooms. And UTD needs all the happiness it can get.