The English Department has 18 first-priority classrooms that house nearly 400 sections each semester, serve 8000 students, and are taught by over 120 instructional faculty. 11 of our 18 classrooms currently provide some form of technology: 4 of those classrooms are equipped with computers for writing instruction while the other 7 rooms are served by unreliable mobile Nomad carts. Literature, writing, linguistics, and film courses are significantly enhanced by the instructor's ability to present course material via PowerPoint/Keynote/Prezi, show films, access online videos of poets, writers, and various public intellectuals, project texts and manuscripts from various print media, facilitate student presentations, and workshop student writing. A multimodal environment is absolutely necessary for ensuring student success in both the undergraduate and graduate classroom. Several classrooms in Peck Hall are woefully deficient in providing adequate technology support for the Department's classes in writing, literature, film, and linguistics. We are requesting the conversion of PH 313 into a master classroom (to include ceiling projector, sound system, computer, document camera, DVD player, acoustic insulation, and new floor and ceiling, etc.) As a master classroom seating 30+ students, it would well accommodate any of the 80+ sophomore literature classes we offer each semester and/or any of our 40+ sections of upper-division courses in literature and film studies, thus providing some 520 students each semester with the necessary enhancements that current technology provides.
