UB Newsy Stuff

The new school year has of course brought the University of Baltimore back into my life in a big way.  Of course, it always is there, but during the summer I find myself going to campus only occassionally, and therefore, falling out of the gossip, if you will.

Before classes even started, I stopped by the new bookstore, and checked it out.  I mentioned it briefly during this post, and for the most part, the analysis still stands.  It is new and clean, but also increasingly less student friendly.

Then I assisted during new student orientation, which was really fun and rewarding.

Within the first week of classes, our school celebrated the groundbreaking of the new law school building. Of course, yours truly, while paying for its construction, will never see the inside of it unless I decide to take a tour after graduation.  Nonetheless, the event was attended by the local Baltimore and Maryland dignitiaries.  It has created a bit of a buzz around campus.  The current buidling, as I have written before, is practical, but a bit dingy and dour.  It has a very old, institutional feel.  Faculty offices are spread around 4 floors, the classrooms are all completely indistinguishable, the library is seriously outdated.

And to top it all off, the building is kind of hidden amongst other UB buildings.  Even people who have lived and worked in the Baltimore area have no idea where the law school is located.  A new building will hopefully give UB a little more status around the city, especially since we quietly are a major force in the area.

A second really cool UB news item was my chance to participate in a focus group session for the new website!  Our current website is functional, but the new design looks much better.  I had some detailed feedback to offer, and it will be interesting to see if any of my ideas get implemented.

I have never been in a focus group before, although I had some idea of what they entailed.  While generally given a negative public review (this movie seems like it was focus tested down to blandness, those new ads seem overly focus tested) for anything that is generic, being on the other side was new.  They showed us some proposed designs, and compared them to the current version.  We filled out a survey, which I am sure was decent, but then there was simply a roundtable discussion of the versions.

While school and life in general prepares us so much for getting critiqued, doing it is a completely different experience.  It can be hard to simply say, "This new design is useless to me," more so when you know the designer is sitting in the room with you.  At the same time, it was kind of cool to feel like I was seeing something that the rest of the UB community won't see for weeks!

As UB's blogging hasn't gotten up and running yet, continue to look here for weekly posts.