Huntsman: a high-tech haven

Podiums that electronically adjust to the professor's height.

Group study rooms with electronic whiteboards that can transmit notes to your laptop.

Computers that will allow video teleconferencing in the classroom with the touch of a button.

Huntsman Hall is certainly a technological wonder.

With a price tag of $139.9 million, the building's 48 classrooms, 57 group study rooms and its lecture halls and conference rooms have all been outfitted with cutting-edge educational technology.

Wharton Chief Information Officer and Associate Dean Gerry McCartney was directly involved in the brainstorming that turned the technology in Huntsman Hall into a reality and, more importantly, helped make that technology user-friendly.

"What we tried to do here was use technology effectively," he said. "We weren't interested in technology for its own sake, but insofar as it supports research and learning."

With a focus on how people learn, Huntsman Hall was designed to utilize technology in a way that maximizes the resources available to the students.

"We wanted students to be engaged in an experience and at the end know something that they didn't know before," McCartney explained. "We wanted them to walk away with something of value."

Another focal point for the building's design was the professors. Technology was designed specifically to enhance their ability to teach in a classroom.

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, PC, helped design the building, which took years of planning and consultation that included multiple focus groups on an array of topics. The firm helped incorporate the technology in the architecture of the building.

Before construction began, a full-size prototype of a classroom was built and faculty were consulted to provide feedback.

McCartney said that this was just one aspect of the four or five years spent experimenting before deciding on the final building plans.

"You lay grass everywhere and come back later to see where people walk, and that's where you build your paths," he said. "You don't build the paths right away."

However, once the paths were laid, Huntsman Hall became a technological showcase.

Every classroom is equipped with two projection screens as well as blackboards, allowing professors to utilize multiple resources to supplement their lectures.

The sleek, high-tech podiums at the front of the classroom are a far cry from the outdated wooden models used in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall and are even being sold by KI, the company that designed them, as the Wharton Podium.

These complex machines provide instructors with an array of options at their disposal.

The podiums adjust to the individual height of professors, control the lighting in the room with several pre-set choices and include a computer and monitor.

The computer allows professors to choose from several pre-sets that connect to Power Point, Excel and Internet Explorer.

Also controlled by the computers are video cameras in the back of each classroom that will be available later this semester.

Professors will no longer have to request that a class be taped. With the click of a button they can activate the video camera from their computer, tape their class and then save it to a file for future use.

Another detail that distinguishes Huntsman Hall is the availability of group study rooms and the equipment available in them.

Outfitted with a computer, two display screens and outlets for laptops, these rooms also include an electronic dry-erase board that stores information to the computer.

Huntsman is also outfitted with luxuries like escalators throughout the building and a large assortment of computer work stations.

The building has already received positive responses from the faculty.

"The building was designed with technology in mind and that makes it easier," Marketing Professor Peter Fader said. "In class today I was going back and forth between Adobe and Excel, as well as using the overhead and the blackboard."

David Musto, an assistant Finance professor, has also made use of the two projection screens.

"Previously I would say, here is a link that you can look up online when you get home," Musto said. "Now I can actually use the other screen to show exactly what I mean."

"I can't think of anything they didn't do," he added. "It will be a matter of time before we adapt to the possibilities of today's technology but they've done everything they can do with the technology available."

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