Although officials hoped the new addition to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions would be completed in time for the wave of spring break visits from prospective Duke students, the building will probably not be completed until late March or early April.
The new building is intended to provide a better welcome to prospective students than the current facilities can offer, through a more spacious facility for presentations. Construction was mainly slowed because of snow and ice, but the project should be complete for the high-volume months of April and May, said Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions.
The structure itself is complete but interior finishing work and landscaping remains to be done. Officials expect to obtain a certificate of occupancy from the city of Durham by late March.
The new building is centered around a large presentation room comfortably seating 150 prospective students or visitors. A projection screen will allow videos and slide shows to be used in the presentations, and a kitchen will also be available for possible catering functions.
In the past, prospective students often complained of large crowds having to cram into admissions space, which comfortably seats only 45 people. Some days, as many as 400 students visit the school, forcing admissions officers to lead visiting groups down Chapel Drive to an open classroom or lecture hall for the presentation.
"I didn't come on any special weekend, so I don't think there was an abnormal amount of people, but my mom and I had to stand the whole time," freshman Farokh Irani said of his admissions visit last year.
With the new building, admissions officers hope this will no longer be necessary. "The idea is this - we will have about 18,000 people visit us this year and we want to welcome them in the best way possible," Guttentag said. "For over half of our visitors, the living room we have is too small for our information session. From a logistical and welcoming perspective, it just made sense to build this addition."
The need for the new building has been around for years, but it was not until the Office of Undergraduate Admissions received the funding from the Board of Trustees a few years ago that they started work on the project.
University Architect John Pearce planned the addition so the new building would be structurally similar to the current admissions building, which once served as the president's house. The same Duke stone and slate that cover the walls and roof of the original building adorn the new one. The unique curve of the roof and design of the windows have also been duplicated.
The new building is designed with the comfort of visitors in mind, Guttentag said. The building lies behind the original and will have a new parking lot that accommodates 17 cars, built to meet parking needs. Overflow parking will be directed to the nearby Duke Gardens lot, which will be connected to the admissions office by a path.
Visitors will enter into the entrance hall of the new building before being ushered into the presentation room. After the presentation, they will have a chance to take a tour of the campus.
Guttentag hopes to put in a sitting wall outside for people to relax on between information sessions. He hopes the improvements will make visits flow more smoothly, and will put the visitation part of Duke's recruitment process on par with that of other upper-tier schools to which Duke students also apply.
"The four things I love about this new building are the space it offers, the flexibility it gives us, the ability to have audio-visual presentations and that we are going to be able to welcome visitors more appropriately," Guttentag said.
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