Aldrich Gets 20 Radical Classrooms

Twenty classrooms of a radical design--built like a newspaper copy desk--will rise in the Business School's new Aldrich Hall this summer.

The rooms are shaped like horseshoes, with the instructor's desk in the middle. They are designed to give students face-to-face discussion with each other and thereby "give new vitality tot he case method of instruction."

The Business School has already built a mock-up of the new classrooms in a temporary workshop. Classes will use it until the end of the year and make suggestions how it can be improved.

The model room seats 110 persons. When class is in session, students sit behind carrying, continuous writing tables. All seats can be turned through a semi-circle arc.

This arrangement, the Business School says, also gives students a better view of the combination blackboard and movie screen at the front of the room.

The blackboard-screen rest on tracks, end can be pulled three and a half feet out of the wall. There are no windows in the mock-up room; indirect flourescent lamps and spotlights in the ceilings are used instead.

John G. McLean, associate professor of Business Administration, says that the classroom is "the first of its kind, so far as we know."

"The design represents a substantial departure from the conventional classroom layout. For that reason, it was deemed prudent to construct a mock-up room for experimental purposes. On the basis of experience in the test room, it should be possible to make substantial improvements in the design before the final plans for Aldrich Hall are completed."