Boatwright renovations expected to increase traffic to TLC

The summer brought many changes to Boatwright Memorial Library this year, but has anyone checked out the third floor?

Just past the entrance to the Media Resource Center, and up the stairwell to the left, students can wind their way to the Technology Learning Center (TLC): a program run by the Center for Teaching and Learning Technology that provides technology resources to faculty and students on campus.

Melissa Foster, the TLC computer lab specialist, said construction workers gutted bathrooms, bashed holes through walls, painted and installed windows, making the TLC not only easier on the eyes, but also, she hoped, easier to find. Before the renovations, Foster said the third floor of Boatwright had looked like a tunnel.

"You'd come up the stairs, and you wouldn't know if they were leading anywhere," she said. Foster hoped the wider hallways and lighter walls would make people more comfortable visiting, she said.

The TLC offers one-on-one consulting with student experts, access to software programs such as Photoshop and iMovie and free three-day technology equipment rentals. Visitors can scan documents, print posters, use digital voice recorders and more, either by appointment or just by dropping in.

"It's a place that's always available," Foster said. "Nights, weekends, odd times of the day--and it's monitored. We're always here."

The TLC has changed immensely in the 10 years she has worked there, Foster said. It began as a room of 10 computers for faculty use only, she said, and now it's a series of labs and classrooms that are packed at the end of each semester.

"We get a lot of people for poster printing for symposiums and conferences," said Julian Libihoul, a junior from Brussels who works in the TLC. "And we get a decent amount for Photoshop and iMovie," because more and more professors are assigning digital stories in their classes.

But students can't just drop off a file to print or ask a student to set up a film project for them. Foster said that the TLC was not a print shop or a help desk, but a place for students and faculty to learn.

Working in the TLC is now also a unique opportunity for students. "Anybody can work in the TLC," Foster said. She wants a staff with a variety of skill sets, not just those who are technologically savvy, she said.

Libihoul hopes that working in the TLC as an associate will help him complement his business major with knowledge of design programs, building his resume to go into advertising, he said.

"We're getting paid to learn these programs, while people outside the TLC pay to learn such skills," Libihoul said.

But the TLC's location remains a worry for Foster and her co-workers, so they have made a small change of their own to increase awareness on campus. Now, when visitors walk into the TLC, their eyes are immediately drawn to the students wearing hot pink shirts.

The official TLC shirts, worn by the student experts who work there, were redesigned by Korine Powers, a graduate of the class of 2012 who worked in the TLC.

"That was one of our goals," Foster said, "to make people pop."

The "heliconia" pink is certainly brighter than the grey shirts staff members previously wore. Students had begun referring to their old uniforms as "zombie skin," Foster said, because they made them blend into the walls of the TLC.

"It does attract attention," Libihoul said, but whether it will bring traffic to the third floor of Boatwright remains to be seen.

Contact staff writer Katie Branca at katie.branca@richmond.edu