After a number of workshops over the past six months, the university has finalized plans for $10 million in renovations to the Arthur M. Sackler Center for Health Communications at the Tufts Medical School in Boston, according to Paul Everill, a Sackler Graduate Student Council (SGSC) Executive Board member.
The goal of the renovations is to create an identity for the school and a genuine campus environment, according to a feasibility study on the medical school's Web site.
"We really don't have [those things] right now," Everill said. "The Sackler Center is going to try to fill this gap."
Included in the plans for the building are a fitness center, a gymnasium and classrooms. Construction is scheduled to begin next fall and should be completed by the following summer, according to Everill.
Everill said that the eight-story center's new cafeteria will have a "mall food-court kind of feel."
The new gym, which will measure between 1,200 and 1,300 square feet, will be in the basement. It will feature aerobics equipment and a yoga classroom.
The current gym is located in a small area of Posner Hall and lacks decent facilities, Everill said.
As a result, Tufts medical students account for about 70 percent of the members at a nearby YMCA. "We try to make up for the lack of facilities with subsidized memberships to the YMCA," Everill said.
The new fitness center will likely be open all day because students' schedules only allow them to use it between lectures and during lunch breaks.
On the first floor, the plan is to preserve one of the two existing lecture rooms and transform the other into a multipurpose room that could host organized meals or presentations.
Floors two through four will expand the classrooms already there, opening up the space in order to create a more comfortable environment. The cafeteria will be on the fourth floor.
The renovations will allow the building to take advantage of its orientation toward the south by replacing many of its walls with glass. "We always have light coming in from that side of the building," Everill said.
Floors five through seven will be modified library space, putting more of an emphasis on study rooms and communal seating. According to Everill, this will provide a social study environment for students.
"Seating and couches give more of a laid-back and relaxing feel," he said.
Finally, the eighth floor will house information technology and other offices that will be moved up from the first floor.
During construction, the Sackler Center will not shut down completely, but it will be affected. "There are going to be constrictions," said Everill. "They are relocating certain classes."
While there will be substantial renovation inside the Sackler Center, the outer structure will remain virtually the same.
"One prospect was to entirely do away with the Sackler building ... and build a brand new skyscraper, but that wasn't particularly useful," Everill said. "The logistics of it became quite daunting."
The new center will be open to students from all of Tufts' schools, Everill said.
