Stu­dent Me­dia Cen­ter ren­o­vated dur­ing sum­mer

MISHAWAKA—Over the sum­mer, the Stu­dent Me­dia Cen­ter, lo­cated be­hind the Suf­fi­cient Grounds, un­der­went some ren­o­va­tions. In ad­di­tion to a class­room, kitchen, pod­cast stu­dio, film stu­dio, and meet­ing rooms, the build­ing is also home to the of­fices of Dr. Theo Williams, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and Dr. Robby Prenkert, as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish & Hu­man­i­ties.   

“We ac­cent-painted the walls, added stuff on the walls just to try to make it a lit­tle more home-y, you know, a place you can hang out,” said Prenkert. “Places to hang your coats, chalk­board paint, dec­o­ra­tions—that's the main stuff.”  

Prenkert and his wife, Bethel alumna Jeanie Prenkert ’92, did most of the dec­o­rat­ing.  

“We prob­a­bly put in 40-60 hours each work­ing in here to do these kinds of things,” said Prenkert.  

They also moved a tele­vi­sion to the din­ing room/​kitchen area that can con­nect wire­lessly, en­abling stu­dents to pro­ject im­ages from their phone or com­puter onto the screen.  

One of the main ren­o­va­tions is the ad­di­tion of a wall in the large class­room to sec­tion off an of­fice on the main level for Dr. Williams af­ter some mi­nor flood­ing dam­aged his base­ment of­fice last year.   

“That thanks has to go to Joe Zap­pia and the main­te­nance de­part­ment,” said Prenkert.  

Now that the se­mes­ter is here, the Stu­dent Me­dia Cen­ter is open and ready to use.  

“Any­one can use the me­dia cen­ter,” said Prenkert. “Any­one’s swipe card should work to get into the build­ing be­tween 8:00 and 5:00.”  

Ad­di­tion­ally, stu­dents are work­ing at the Stu­dent Me­dia Cen­ter from 7:00 to 10:00 at night.  

“We have work­ers now that are here in the evening,” said Prenkert. “The build­ing should be open so that any­one who wants to come in and use the build­ing, study here, use the com­put­ers down­stairs, do video edit­ing, or make a pod­cast or what­ever, can use it.”  

Cur­rently, the work­ers are stu­dents that are la­bor­ing on pro­jects or pub­li­ca­tions that they are a part of. Prenkert hopes that, in the fu­ture, the work­ers will be trained on all the me­dia equip­ment so that they can as­sist stu­dents who want to use it.  

“In the long-term the goal is that each of these per­sons can, if any per­son came with a pro­ject, a ba­sic me­dia pro­ject... all of [the work­ers] would be trained enough on the soft­ware and equip­ment and stuff that we have that they could help them.”  

Prenkert also said that the Stu­dent Me­dia Cen­ter can be a great place to study, and he hopes that stu­dents will feel free to stop by any­time to check it out.