Bernstein Hall, Colgate University’s newest academic building, was officially dedicated on Friday, Sept. 20. Situated between James C. Colgate Hall and Dana Arts Center, the addition of Bernstein Hall is one step forward in growing Colgate’s Middle Campus and will anchor the under-construction Peter’s Glen.
Colgate hosted an open house and celebration for the new building on Friday, Sept. 20. The event included a self-guided tour, open classes and demonstrations from both faculty and students. An Experimental Exhibition and Performance Lab, a Fabulation Lab, a Media Archaeology Lab and a Computer Lab were among some of the programming offered.
Because the event took place over Homecoming Weekend, Colgate alumni and families attended the ceremony. Numerous people who were integral to the project’s success — including faculty, professors, architects and engineers — mingled around the completed building. Also in attendance was President Brian W. Casey, who explained to the Maroon-News the significance of the dedication.
“[There are] lots of people to be acknowledged,” Casey said. “The architects are up, the people who designed the building — everyone’s here. The construction managers [and] the project manager. A building is really funny — whose building is it? The other day I walked through, and there’s a group of first years sitting there on their laptops, and it dawned on me. They’ll never know that there was a Colgate without this building.”
Casey specifically highlighted contributions from three faculty members in making the project a reality: Provost and Dean of the Faculty Lesleigh Cushing, Professor of Art and Film & Media Studies Lynn Schwarzer and Professor of Film & Media Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Mary Simonson.
“The conversations about that building started over three years ago or more, where Lesleigh convened the artists on the campus and the computer scientists — everyone involved in this, and there might have been hundreds,” Casey said. “The [professors] who were really the thought leaders on the program were Mary Simonson and Lynn Schwarzer. If I think about the people who really lived the program and were endless in conversation with faculty about what that program could be, those are the three.”
Casey added that Schwarzer has been extremely involved in every aspect of the process.
“[Schwarzer] has lived every square foot of that building for four years. She has put every part of her mind [toward] bringing academic life into this building,” Casey said. “I think [Schwarzer] thought about every square inch of that building 1,000 times.”
Simonson has also been heavily involved in the planning of Bernstein Hall since its inception. Planning began in 2018 with discussion surrounding the future of “integrated arts” at the University. Simonson is a member of a group of faculty, staff and administrative stakeholders interested in the arts and technology, referred to as “The Middle Campus Working Group,” who helped brainstorm Bernstein Hall into fruition.
“The idea for this building came out of many, many years of discussions about how to support and enhance the arts at Colgate,” Simonson said. “[We] talked not only about new buildings and facilities, but also about collaboration, programming, exciting faculty initiatives, the courses we teach now and want to teach in the future. For many years, artists, media-makers, performers and musicians have been integrating new — and older — technologies into their creative practices, and we were excited by the idea of a building that would let us explore how the arts, technology and computing can — and do — inspire and inform each other.”
Bernstein Hall will be the center of arts, creativity, technology and innovation on campus with hopes of creating an interdisciplinary space to blur the boundaries between each discipline.
Faculty in film and media studies and computer science now have offices in Bernstein Hall in addition to classes in theater, art and music. There are new spaces and resources for students and faculty, including fabrication labs, a digital recording studio, an archaeology lab, the Experimental Exhibition and Performance Studio (EEP), computer labs, a robotics lab and flex classrooms.
Associate Professor of Computer Science Elodie Fourquet, whose office is now within Bernstein Hall, believes that integration between fields is vital to see academic overlaps.
“For me, the main form of technology is the forms that we don’t realize. It’s actually the bringing of different groups of people together because computer science is now intertwined with film and media studies and art,” Fourquet said. “This integration attracts students to my course as computer science students discover how art can be part of their field and contribute to new digital works. Meanwhile, students from other artistic backgrounds in my course see the various applications of computer science.”
Fourquet also noted that particular courses in Bernstein Hall, such as AI and Race in Contemporary Media and Playful Polemics: Video Game Theory, History and Methods combine equipment and aspects of both disciplines.
“I think it shows students that are going to take Intro to Film and Media Studies that the students that are doing computer science beside them are not that different,” Fourquet said. “When they have some special topic course in Film and Media Studies that critiques video and game and does analysis on why they are designed that way, [it shows] that computer science needs people that design games that are different than the typical ‘game world’.”
Another example of interdisciplinary crossover is found in the fabrication labs. The first use of these labs is to facilitate the digital art curriculum through a range of equipment, including a digital loom that connects to sensor data to weave fabric based on a range of local ecology data sources. The second is a space for computer science and digital art, which holds equipment for circuit etching and sensor building and will provide spaces for new courses.
Professor of Computer Science Joel Sommers explained why the space is so important.
“I think the main thing for computer science moving down the hill is that we have space that we didn’t have, and that has enabled all sorts of new things to be done here,” Sommers said. “Things are safe here if [students] want to come back during the week. Before, students were having to pack up all their stuff in boxes and carry it around, and these things are kind of fragile.”
Bernstein Hall is also the new home of Colgate’s Thought Into Action (TIA) program. TIA provides students with the opportunity to have hands-on, membership-based experiences. Through TIA, students can become entrepreneurs by creating businesses, non-profits and campus initiatives. Active TIA initiatives include Raider Rentals and Flour and Salt Bakery.
Junior Mina Zaman is a student participant in TIA and spoke about how the program has used Bernstein so far.
“Bernstein is the new home of TIA where all student entrepreneurs meet with their designated mentors or gather together for events hosted by the TIA,” Zaman said.
Another aspect of the building that has many students talking is the new gaming lab. First-year Alyssa Bleyl noted that availability for the lab is currently limited.
“The gaming lab is a lab required for a film and media studies course, so as of right now it is only open to students in that course,” Bleyl said. “I think it’s only open to those students right now, but my supervisor told me that they are going to work towards having a signup system so other students outside of the department can come in and use it.”
The interior of Bernstein Hall leaves possibilities open for the future. As technology improves, those involved in planning wanted to ensure the building can grow with the University, resulting in the industrial look of the exposed ceiling. Casey shared how excited he is for the future of this building and its capability to expand.
“We don’t know exactly how that building will be used ten years from now, and so instead of encasing the infrastructure in walls, we just left it exposed,” Casey said. “The technology we’re working with 10 years from now is going to be radically different than now. The whole building is designed to be manipulable and permeable and changeable.”
