For a historic campus that is more than 150 years old, it’s not easy to keep it in top shape for future students. At Chatham University, the Facilities Rounding Program has been added to help.
This program was introduced this academic year with the goal of monitoring and improving the physical environment across all of the University’s campuses and strengthening the communication between staff, faculty and students. Rather than waiting for issues to be reported, the new program is meant to be more of a proactive approach to fixing the University’s campus buildings, grounds and infrastructure problems.
The rounding program taps people across campus, including deans, program directors and department chairs, to work collaboratively with Facitlities and the program’s leadership team to monitor specific buildings and areas, with an eye for spots that need attention.
“There’s been a lot of deferred maintenance over the years here, so what I think is going to happen is we’re going to see that there’s still a long way to go, and then we’re going to have to prioritize it,” said Scott Tatar, assistant director of campus services.
Another one of the program’s leaders is Kyra Krotec Tucker, the chair and director of the interior architecture program.
“Since I am one of the players on a multi-disciplinary team, my lens differs from the others and my lane is geared toward the quality and inclusivity of the interior environments,” Tucker said. “I’m hoping to walk through every space on [the Shadyside campus and Eastside location] and fully understand the condition of what we currently own, as well as review the appropriateness of the interiors for the population we serve. Once I understand the baseline, we can get some issues corrected immediately, while others we will need to design and budget for.”
Tatar is optimistic about the improvements that will come out of the rounding program. “Hopefully, with this program we’ll catch things before they become really big, because … there’s only so much money to go around, so if we’re ahead of the game, we can nip it in the bud,” he said.
There are opportunities for students to get involved, too. “I’d recommend learning who the building lead is for the buildings you frequent and contact them with any issues,” Tatar said. “If you see something, please say something.”
Students can also submit and track their requests for building repairs through Brightly, the new ticketing system for facilities management, which can be accessed through the Service Request page under the Facilities Management section on My.Chatham.edu. If anyone has any questions or concerns about the buildings on campus, they can send an email to facilities@ chatham.edu
