Campus Construction Update, July 16, 2024

Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management Nick Katers and Vice Provost of Academic Program Development and Strategic Initiatives Mike McKenzie join University Communications' Dave Blanks in studio to discuss progress on the second-floor renovation of App State's Hickory campus, as well as the finishing touches that are being applied to the Holmes Drive Parking Deck.

 

 

Transcript

 

Dave Blanks

Hey, folks, how's it going? I'm Dave Blanks from University Communications. Back with another Campus Construction Update. Today I'm joined in studio by Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management, Mr. Nick Katers and Vice Provost of Academic Program Development and Strategic Initiatives, Dr. Mike McKenzie for a discussion about the App State Hickory campus. Guys, thank you both so much for being here today. I appreciate it.

 

Nick Katers

Thanks, Dave.

 

Mike McKenzie

Thanks for having us.

 

Dave Blanks

So the topic at hand is the Hickory Campus. Hickory opened up to its inaugural class of mountaineer students on August 21st, 2023, and now phase two renovations are underway. So that's our topic for today. So I don't know if Nick, you want to start it out. This is phase two. Obviously phase one is complete. How many phases in the Hickory campus.

 

Nick Katers

So you know, we've probably we're probably looking at five phases. Initially we had a very generous appropriation from the state legislature for $41 million, and it was spread out over four years. So we realized that we couldn't just attack the entire building at the same time, and we would have to phase the building according to floor. So there are five above ground floors. So there will be five phases to the entire project. The good news here is that the $41 million appropriation is no longer spread out over four years. It's only spread out over two. So we'll be able to attack the second floor, in good order and more quickly than we had previously anticipated. So right now we're in Phase 2a, which, you know, Phase 2 is assume the second floor. Phase 2a is a very small improvement to the second floor. We're really focused on the addition of three new classrooms on the second floor. There's essentially a computer lab, a cyber security lab and a general chemistry lab. So I can let Mike kind of tell what went into the selection of those three. But again, we were working off the initial funding model, which didn't have a lot of money this year. And so we can talk about the future phases as well.

 

Dave Blanks

Sure. Yeah. Mike, speak to the classrooms.

 

Mike McKenzie

Sure. So as Nick mentioned, we have three new spaces that we're really excited about because there's a big need for them, frankly, based on the academic interest of the students there and where we see the future going with Hickory. So space one, as Nick mentioned, is a cybersecurity lab and Appalachian State last year had approval to offer a standalone bachelor's in cybersecurity. We have a cybersecurity lab that we're building in Boone. And now we also have one in Hickory. And what really makes the cyber lab cool is we've worked with Dr. Scott Hunsinger and his colleagues and other faculty to really design this to be state of the art. They told us what works for them from a, you know, a student experience and kind of where we landed.... the best way to describe it, I would say there's these pods where students work together and there's a control room where the faculty member can do things like send attacks at the students in real time, they have to kind of fend these off. And one of the biggest things that I learned very early on in talking to our IT folks is because of the nature of what cyber does, it is really important that they, in simplest terms, have their standalone computer network. You don't want to just use regular computers. So