Why Did the Student Cross the Road?

Guadalupe Hall selected for spring classes space

Emma Pollans
The Santa Clara
April 11, 2019

The Office of the Registrar announced at the beginning of this quarter that a select number of undergraduate courses would be offered in Guadalupe Hall.

The hall is located at 455 El Camino Real and offers 14 additional classrooms. The expansion was prompted by a shortage of classrooms on the main campus.

Currently, there are 80 classrooms on the main campus, as well as three temporary classrooms in the Sobrato, Graham and McLaughlin-Walsh residence halls.

The multipurpose rooms in these three residence halls are being used as classrooms from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

During the specified time frame is when the highest number of classes are offered, meaning 90 to 94 percent of the classrooms on campus are in use.

Since more courses were offered than available classrooms, the university decided to utilize Guadalupe Hall’s space for undergraduate courses.

This quarter, 15 of the 950 courses being offered are taught in Guadalupe Hall.

Previously, Guadalupe Hall was where the School of Education and Counseling Psychology was located, as well as labs and administrative spaces for the School of Engineering and some classrooms.

Ed Ryan, vice provost for Planning and Institutional Effectiveness, said the expansion of undergraduate courses into Guadalupe Hall is temporary.

“Once the Sobrato Campus for Discovery and Innovation is built, all undergraduate classes will be housed in general purpose classrooms on the main campus,” Ryan said. “The university is also exploring other campus space to convert into general purpose classrooms.”

The assignment of the classrooms is optimized with a classroom scheduling software used by the Office of the Registrar. Recommendations are made based on a faculty member’s teaching schedule, the furniture and the equipment needed by the faculty.

Daphne Chen is a sophomore and took a Business Law course located in Guadalupe Hall last quarter.

“Walking to Guadalupe Hall three times a week wasn’t a horrible experience for me,” Chen said. “But only because I didn’t have a class before or after, so I had more time to walk to class. My professor was pretty lenient about tardiness, he always started class around 3-5 mins late because students were running in late from Vari or Lucas Hall.”

Parking and Transportation Services has implemented a flag system in addition to the traffic signal at El Camino and Accolti Way to help increase the safety of those crossing El Camino Real.

Contact Emma Pollans at epollans@scu. edu or call (408) 554-4852.