The Institute expects to have much of the new equipment for the Communications Center, formerly called the Modern Classroom Facility, installed by the start of the spring semester.
After the equipment has been set up, the center’s five lecture halls will be equipped with wireless microphones, light, and sound controls for the lecturer’s use; new screens; and remote controls for the projection areas.
Two large problems connected with the center include high air pressure inside that makes it difficult for the doors to close when people exit and a leak that drips into the preparation area behind the lecture halls that has managed to evade efforts to identify its origin.
A number of small problems have also arisen because the Institute "tried to put the building on-line before all the equipment and furnishings arrived," according to Richard Teich, who is in charge of maintaining the Communications Center and scheduling its classes.
The 30-man classrooms are currently using old blackboards and old chairs because of this. Gordon Lavis, manager of academic shops and instrumentation facility said he expects that permanent chairs and new blackboards will be installed before the start of the spring semester.
Scheduling conflicts have also resulted from the fact that many groups would like to use the new building.
The building was "designed to be used for an educational engineering scientific center. To continually flip-flop back and forth between various events and scientific educational purposes is very difficult," said Teich.
Many students and professors have agreed that the building is an improvement over the Sage Lecture Hall and West Hall Auditorium.
The Bedford Auditorium is "potentially the best in the country" and is "orders of magnitude times better" than Sage Lecture Hall, according to Physics Professor Alfred Leitner.
"At least now when I attend a boring lecture, I can fall asleep in comfort," said one upperclassman, who preferred to remain anonymous.
