On Oct. 24, Howard Hall opened a new faculty lounge in room 212. The lounge features Howard’s classic stained glass, re-used furniture from around campus, faculty artwork new and old and even a dartboard. The new space encourages cross-college collaboration between faculty and aims to create a space for everyone with multiple different seating options, spaces and things to do.

During the opening event, faculty mingled, talked about the space and even color-commentated a game of darts. Just at the space’s opening, collaboration is already starting to take place as professors across different disciplines start to meet and converse with one another. 

“The idea for this space came out of a faculty survey about what we could do to promote more interaction among faculty members and across different disciplines,” said Bret Sikkink, faculty development specialist at Drake University. “A few of the suggestions…included things like shared spaces.”

Drake administration chose Howard Hall to house the faculty lounge because the Center for Teaching and Learning is located there, as well as the office of the Deputy Provost for Academic Affairs, Jimmy Senteza.

“Howard is like a proof of concept to see how much interest there would be in having more spaces like this,” said Sikkink. “As far as I know, we’re not planning on opening or looking for any more spaces. We’d be open to hearing what faculty are interested in having as far as collaborative workspaces.”

The lounge is meant to be a space where faculty can come socialize and collaborate. To aid with this, the Center for Teaching and Learning has installed a dart board for faculty to use.

“The dartboard was suggested by one particular faculty member who said that it might be fun to have something in a collaborative space that was a little whimsical and might get people to linger in the room for a bit longer,” said Sikkink.

All the art in the space was created by current or former Drake faculty members and curated by Anderson Gallery Director Lilah Anderson.

“We wanted to make [the lounge] an attractive space to be in and to showcase the work of our faculty,” said Sikkink. “We’re not done. We still have some more stuff that we’re going to do around that.”

The new faculty lounge isn’t the only initiative the Center for Teaching and Learning has started this year, previously holding panel discussions on Generative AI for teachers to help design and build courses, integrate AI into assignments and support faculty in research endeavors. They’ve also signed a contract with the National Center for Development and Diversity to provide professional development for faculty and are encouraging scholarship of teaching and learning research.

“I’ve been teaching at Drake since 2005, and I have heard people asking for a faculty lounge since then, so it’s been a long time coming,” said Megan Brown, professor of English. “Faculty morale is low right now, and I hope that having a comfortable gathering space will improve that situation. Also, I hope to see more colleagues visiting Howard Hall. It’s an old building, but it has a lot of character.”