It was the purple watch.
Coupled with his purple tie, purple cufflinks, and purple socks—the man was clearly not afraid to sport some purple. But it wasn’t the color that led the man to dress like this; rather it was what the color represented.
Dr. Ken Morgan, the director of both TCU’s Energy Institute and the School of Geology, Energy and the Environment, sat adorned in purple in his new corner office on the first floor of Rees-Jones Hall.
While Morgan’s excitement and pride about the new opportunities that Rees-Jones is bringing to TCU extends into his choice in clothing, other faculty members and students are simply verbally expressing their excitement.
TCU’s Energy Institute, the Institute of Child Development and the IdeaFactory were moved into the newest academic building on campus, Rees-Jones Hall. This new 62,000 square-foot interdisciplinary academic building was opened in August after more than 16 months of construction. According to the physical plant’s website, Rees-Jones is home to interactive academic classrooms, faculty offices, interdisciplinary space, an incubator lab and a global seminar room.
Classroom Integration Developer Joanna Schmidt said the incubator lab, which is located on the third floor of the building, serves as an interdisciplinary space for the collaboration and generation of ideas.
Additionally, the global seminar room on the first floor has Skype technology that allows users to connect with people across TCU, Fort Worth or the world.
Faculty members are raving about how Rees-Jones provides a better way to teach students. Students are saying they are benefiting from this difference in their learning experience as well.
It’s not what you know; it’s whom you know
Arguably new, more interactive technology and better looking classroom spaces would be beneficial to most academic departments on campus. So why were the Energy Institute, the Institute of Child Development, and the IdeaFactory chosen to move into Rees-Jones?
Morgan said the move made sense for the Energy Institute because the institute was growing in its “interest, impact, and influence.”
“We are piped into everything here,” Morgan said. “Rees-Jones offers the institute the high-tech ability to create with others around the world and to show and display information in a better way for our students in the energy minor.”
Dr. Amanda Howard, assistant director of the Institute of Child Development, said faculty members within the institute feel very fortunate about their recent move from Winton-Scott Hall to Rees-Jones Hall.
Howard said when she heard that the institute was going to be moving “it was a little bit like winning the lottery.”
Cedric James, assistant director of the IdeaFactory, was just as excited about the organization’s move into Rees-Jones. James said the IdeaFactory’s new space provides students with the opportunity to hone in on their ideas and the resources to get work done.
“Students seem to get a lot of value from having an aesthetically pleasing and comfortable environment to enhance their education,” James wrote in an email.
Macy Ellis, senior combined science major and energy technology and management minor, agrees with James.
“Rees-Jones is an innovative type of atmosphere,” Ellis said. “There’s so much glass and so many windows that the space feels very open, so you’re not claustrophobic when you’re studying in there.”
Moreover, both Morgan and Howard said it was their institutes’ relationship with Trevor Rees-Jones that spurred their move this August.
Morgan said Rees-Jones is a member of the Energy Institute’s advisory board and a trustee of the university. According to the Energy Institute’s website, the energy advisory board is made up of executives from over 23 energy companies.
Given Rees-Jones’s and the Energy Institute’s close involvement with shale core energy technology, Morgan said it made sense for the Energy Institute to move into newer facilities in order to conduct better research on this technology.
Rees-Jones decided to get into the oil and gas industry, namely, shale fracking after working as a bankruptcy attorney. In 2008, the Dallas native sold out of his Barnett shale of Fort Worth $1.5 billion richer, according to forbes.com.
Forbes.com said Rees-Jones’s net worth now stands at $5.4 billion.
But Rees-Jones is not just one of the nation’s wealthiest and savviest businessmen; he is a philanthropist, too.
In 2006, the 63-year-old and his wife Jan established the Rees-Jones foundation. In an open letter on their foundation’s website, the Rees-Jones’ wrote that the organization has a “heart” for “children who through no fault of their own found themselves in intolerable situations involving abuse or physical or mental disability or simply unsafe living conditions.”
Moreover, the organization’s website lists “Human Services for Children, Youth, and Families” and “Youth Development,” as two of its four areas of giving.
According to its website, the Institute of Child Development conducts its research so as “to help children suffering the effects of early trauma, abuse or neglect.”
Knowing this, the Rees-Jones’ support of the Institute of Child Development makes sense.
Howard said “the Rees-Jones’ are one of our oldest and dearest funders. They’ve given grants and gifts to the institute over the last 7 years.”
Recently, this support has manifested in a big way.
“When the Rees-Jones’ gave the large gift to TCU to construct the building, they also gave us some money toward our endowment so that the institute can carry,” Howard said. “That’s part of the reason that we’ve moved into the building.”
In reference to the Idea Factory’s move: James said it was higher administrators like the chancellor and the provost who assigned the IdeaFactory to its new space.
“We did not request it,” James said.
The IdeaFactory is a unit of the College of Science & Engineering that “provides an environment and resources where an idea can be advanced to a prototype, and potentially, beyond,” according to the organization’s website.
Schmidt said the IdeaFactory was moved into Rees-Jones Hall so that it would be centrally located and so that people would actually know about it and be able to interact with the organization.
Tangible Changes for Students
Morgan and Howard’s tones of voice elevated and their grins widened when they spoke about how the facilities in Rees-Jones Hall are allowing professors to better teach courses to their students.
“The way I ran my courses was dictated by lecture hall type space we had in Winton-Scott,” Howard said.
Howard said the courses the institute offers are grounded in collaborative and discussion-based work, which works well with the open layout of the classroom spaces in Rees-Jones. She said like many other child development faculty members, she has revamped the way in which she structures the discussions and activities in her course to best utilize the space to enhance her students’ learning.
“Students are able to go beyond the foundation of their lecture-based work and think really very deeply and critically in these new creative classroom environments,” Howard said.
Moreover, Schmidt said every classroom in Rees-Jones is equipped with AirMedia technology, a wireless high-definition presentation system that allows users to wirelessly present to a projector or high definition display via their personal laptops or tablets.
The classrooms are relatively large and have easily movable furniture, which allows professors to set up the classroom in whatever manner is best for the discussion that day.
Junior child development major Taylor Neudeck said the auditorium style classrooms in Winston-Scott Hall, where the institute was previously located, were very inaccessible to movement, making it difficult to do group projects.
“The openness of the classrooms in Rees-Jones allow us to do so many great learning activities in class,” Neudeck said. “For example, we can now do stations for labs to better learn the material which we couldn’t have done in the lectures halls of Winston-Scott.”
Howard said she knows this technology is being well-utilized for students in a senior seminar course in professional development taught by Dr. Casey Call, professor of child development.
The course is taught in Room 3333 of Rees-Jones Hall. This classroom has six monitors, one for each group of desks. Professors can break students into groups to work on assignments and then project each team’s work to the entire class, said Howard.
“You can see the convergence and divergence of their thinking on the same problem which is really interesting when you’re talking about some meaningful world and political issues,” Howard said.
Neudeck, who is taking Dr. Call’s class this semester, said this technology which allows the class to work in groups at their tables proves more effective than listening to professors’ lectures.
“The technology helps us focus better in class because you don’t have to strain your eyes to look at the front of the classroom at a screen,” she said. “All the information is right at your table and we can easily interact with our group.”
Another child development major, junior Amy Cusimano, said the institute’s new space is most beneficial because of the additional space it provides.
“Before class I can review material, which is really helpful,” Cusimano said. “In Winston-Scott there are no study areas, so you’re confided to sitting in a crowded hallway before class.”
Cusimano also said the ability for students to break up into groups helps students apply the material they’ve learned in lectures to real-life situations.
Similarly, this new technology in Rees-Jones is beneficial to the now more than 370 energy minor students, said Morgan.
Ellis said Rees-Jones has diverse study areas that have a good “feng shui.”
“There are areas where you can study that it’s secluded, so it’s quiet enough to get some good work done,” Ellis said. “But the study rooms are great too, if you are working with a group, because most of them have walls that you can write on, which is really beneficial for group projects.”
Morgan said the global seminar room in Rees-Jones that allows students to virtually communicate with people around the world is what’s most beneficial to energy minor students.
“The high-tech ability to create with others around the world and to show and display information in a better way is what makes this space so beneficial to us,” Morgan said. “There are more resources, better data-gathering tools, and a greater ability to move and display information.”
Schmidt said the global seminar room is equipped with Skype capabilities and is tiered so that everyone has a good view of the projections.
“The room can also be easily rearranged if the presentation requires because it’s tiered with the desks and not the floor,” Schmidt said.
Similarly, the Institute of Child Development is also using the global seminar room as a global classroom.
Howard said she now does Skype calls twice a month via the global classroom to mentor several governmental and nonprofit organizations around the world.
“The global classroom allows us the ability, in a very polished and high-tech way, to give those trainings so that the work that we do can have a deeper impact,” Howard said.
For students who utilize the IdeaFactory, James said its new home in Rees-Jones “provides an environment where like-minded people can advance ideas and pursue passions that are aligned with the TCU educational mission, but not necessarily ones that fit within a particular class, laboratory or special topics course.”
But with this new technology comes some uncertainty.
Neudeck said the technology sometimes is hard to navigate.
“We along with our professors are trying to figure it out,” she said. “It’s going to take some getting used to; we are sort of the guinea pigs for the technology in the building.”
Beyond the Classroom
Morgan and Howard said the new space has given their institutes a higher level of prestige within their respective fields.
For Morgan, a “more prominent location and being a part of the whole idea of what’s being built in conjunction with Rees-Jones with the library as a data hub and a global center is going to uniquely prepare students to be part of the unprecedented growth in energy-related jobs.”
Howard also said the institute’s new space has made those from around the state, country and world take notice of the program. She said this attention is beneficial to all child development majors, especially those who are applying to graduate school or are looking for jobs.
“Without the Rees-Jones endowment gift and Rees-Jones Hall. we’d be really hard-pressed to be able to bring our students to that level of notoriety,” Howard said.
Students are agreeing with Howard and Morgan that the new space is bringing more prominence to their work.
Cusimano said child development is a growing major, and now more people know about it.
“Before we didn’t have a building, so no one really knew about us,” she said. “This space makes us more prominent on campus.”
Neudeck said having the Institute of Child Development in Rees-Jones gives the credence and value to the program that it deserves.
“Since the institute is not just a department but a functioning internationally-recognized program, Rees-Jones better represents the importance of the institute’s work,” Neudeck said.
Moreover, Schmidt said, “there’s possibly another lab or seminar type room coming into Rees Jones but I’m not sure if we are announcing it yet, so check with the Provost.”
What is known is that TCU is continually making efforts to utilize new technology to create more effective learning for its students.