Back to VPFA Update- Summer
At Oregon State, Facilities Services doesn’t just maintain classroom and research buildings for students. Here, they go out of their way to collaborate with students to make all campus spaces more accessible for learning and discovery.
Art students transform Energy Center steam tunnels with mural
Students, faculty and staff, including OSU President Jayathi Murthy and Senior Associate Vice President for Administration Paul Odenthal, gathered at the Energy Center on June 11 – but instead of going inside, the group headed underground.
Waiting at the bottom of a steep ladder down into the steam tunnels, which run underneath the OSU Corvallis campus, were Senior Art Instructor Anna Fidler and students from her ART 115 2D Core Studio class.
Each year, Fidler assigns this class a project centered on patterns. This past spring, the class took inspiration from a tour of the OSU steam tunnel system, led by Les Walton, manager of energy operations. After the tour was over, Walton suggested that the students compete for the opportunity to create a mural for a wall at the tunnel’s entrance.
“This kind of real-world experience enhances learning by bringing students together as creative problem solvers, who demonstrate the value of art,” Fidler said.
The students submitted their proposals both as individuals and in groups. Walton and Richard Smart, a bookbinder and pattern expert based in Vancouver, BC, reviewed the designs and selected students Brenna Paddock, Cassidy Vafi, Oona Tuttle, Dylan Altemus and Hazel Smith as the winning group.
At the reception held at the Energy Center in June, the students explained their creative process to attendees and how they had merged their distinct styles of painting into a cohesive concept.
The group created a mural inspired by an archaeological dig site. The mural depicts an excavation opening into a scene of ancient ruins and designs reminiscent of hieroglyphs. The patterns from the mural extend to the actual columns supporting the steam tunnel’s structure. The students also added lighting from hanging bulbs to further extend the imagery from the mural into the physical space of the steam tunnels.
“I believe there is value in students making art in unexpected places because it causes a shift in the way people look at the world,” Fidler said. “Places that are perceived as ‘the usual’ transform into possibilities. Rather than going to class, they felt they were on a secret mission— going down a ladder into a hatch in a parking lot 16 feet underground to make a secret mural that would become a part of university history.”
Engineering students explore storm drainage systems
On May 29, UFIO staff members Rebecca Houghtaling, senior land use planner, and Aaron Amoth, project manager, met with Dr. Mehna Babbar-Sebens and students from her CE412 Hydrology class to learn about storm drainage strategies and systems being implemented as part of the Washington Way Improvement project. The tour was led by Nathan Patterson, civil engineer with design agency KPFF and Ben Folgate, railroad construction manager with Knife River, the contractor in charge of construction on Washington Way.
“There is a lot of value in stepping away from the classroom to show students real world applications of what they may be learning in the class at any point in time,” Babbar-Sebens said.
Houghtaling spoke to the group about the importance of planning for the long-term maintenance of facilities and systems, emphasizing the critical balance of functionality and aesthetics in design. Students had the opportunity to examine the different drainage solutions that have been implemented along Washington Way and ask questions about regulatory requirements.
Babbar-Stebens said that tours of active construction sites, such as Washington Way, present multiple learning benefits for students.
“Students learn about how typical construction projects are interdisciplinary projects, where integration of concepts from multiple civil engineering sub-disciplines as well as other disciplines beyond civil engineering are necessary,” she said.
Facilities Services tackles critical building upgrades for Horticulture Department
