MU designates place for faculty lounge

The lounge will be located in the Reynolds Alumni Center.

By Isabelle Shaw

Published March 12, 2010

In response to faculty requests for space to collaborate and mingle in an informal environment, MU is designating the Tiger Bistro at University Club in the Reynolds Alumni Center for faculty members once a month.

Faculty will have access to the lounge every third Thursday of the month from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. The first meeting will take place March 25.

Faculty Council expressed support for reserving space for a faculty lounge at its last regular meeting March 4.

"At present, faculty have no place on campus designated for informal gatherings," Faculty Council Chairwoman Leona Rubin said.

The space will be used for faculty members to share ideas.

"Within departments and colleges, faculty might gather in cafeterias or at seminars," Rubin said. "However, to encourage interdisciplinary interactions across multiple departments and colleges, faculty need opportunities to meet and talk. Informal gatherings have more potential to facilitate cross-disciplinary collaborations by serendipity rather than logical design."

Provost Brian Foster and Rubin first met to discuss designating a space for faculty members in December, according to a previous Maneater article.

"We have been working with the Faculty Council for some time to get this off the ground," University Club General Manager John LaRocca said. "It is our hope that some faculty will attend the receptions that may not have ever been here before. We also wanted to work with the provost and Faculty Council in having a centrally located place that faculty can relax, network and exchange ideas."

MU spokesman Christian Basi said the administration was very supportive of the new idea and Mizzou Advantage, MU's new set of initiatives to make the university more competitive, was a major factor in getting it started.

According to the MU Web site, the five areas Mizzou Advantage focuses on include pioneering food sciences, new media, the convergence of human and animal health, sustainable energy and managing change from transformational technologies.

$6 million will go toward hiring new faculty and staff, building bridges with other outside partners, promoting new curriculum opportunities, increasing research funding and bringing new academic conferences and international scholars to MU.

Basi said it is hard for faculty members to collaborate with other faculty when they are on different ends of campus.

"The new Tiger Lounge would help to facilitate those collaborations," Basi said. "Provost Brian Foster is very much in favor of this new lounge. He considers it a component of the Mizzou Advantage."