RADFORD – Steelcase has donated $48,000 to be used in supplying furnishings and equipment for Radford University’s new iLAB Research Center in Walker Hall. The company has a global reputation for excellence in service and contributions to service agencies including those in healthcare, education and government.

RU President Penelope Kyle officiated at a ribbon-cutting held on Thursday, November 5 and thanked Mike Love, president of Nurture by Steelcase, and Director of Steelcase’s Educations Solution Group Sean Cocorran for the gift and their ongoing collaboration with Interior Design Chair Lennie Scott-Webber. Love and Cocorran are both members of RU’s Interior Design and Fashion’s Advisory Board.

“This will be a gift that benefits the university and students for many years to come,” said Scott-Webber. “The connections are out there. We have to watch for opportunities to be connectors,” said Kyle, acknowledging the unique opportunity made available through Scott-Webber’s long-time affiliations with the firm.

Scott-Webber and the Steelcase team have worked together extensively on design and research to enhance academic learning environments. Scott-Webber is a nationally known researcher and designer of instructional space. She presented the guests with a plaque honoring the showcase gift that will be placed in the iLAB to commemorate this gesture.

"This gift is most generous and a research dream come true,” said Scott-Webber. “The gift of furnishings and equipment, received through the Arts Society Foundation, will allow scholars to study the effects of an interactive teaching and learning environment in real time in a digitally enhanced, with appropriately designed setting.”

RU’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning Director Krista Terry, Technology Support Services leader Randy McAllister and staff member Scott Shull, and several members of the administration, faculty and staff from all disciplines offered expertise in developing the iLAB, which is the first Steelcase has installed in Virginia. Scott-Weber and Terry co-authored a joint proposal of the project.

The 24' X 28' space includes digital video screens, interactive white boards, copy cams, huddle boards, touch control pads and projectors. Classroom media is easily controlled in such a set-up, one of the features that today’s students come to expect when they enroll in college.

“Today’s students were born into a digital time and have expectations of how technology will be used in the classroom in richer and more effective ways,” said Love. “This is a new concept and a new way of learning. This is not just a gift of furniture. We will have insights on how classrooms should be, how professors teach, and how students learn,” he continued. “It’s not going to be in typical desks and chairs. Furniture is part of this but it’s about the entire environment. It’s a holistic solution.”

Among the furnishings are ergonomic chairs with seats that can be folded and horizontally nested within each other, making them stackable and easily moved to create different interactive learning spaces. Love said the furniture is developed taking into consideration everyone that uses it, including facilities personnel who move furniture.

Love presented an afternoon seminar for interior design juniors and seniors and discussed opportunities in the field of healthcare. He told students Steelcase believes healthcare reform is as much about the environment of healing as it is about medicine, if not more. “I was visiting an assisted living facility and when I walked in, I walked immediately into a kitchen area. Facilities like that are getting smaller, some having 10 - 12 beds. They want patients out of their rooms in commons areas,” he told students.

Another example Love gave were chairs designed to detect how long a person has been sitting. People will be monitoring the chair and if they notice there’s been no activity in the chair for five hours, they are going to suspect something may be wrong. “The healthcare design field has many opportunities for you,” Love said.

The iLAB Research Center strengthens Kyle’s vision as outlined in the university’s strategic plan, 7-17, Forging a Bold New Future, to provide and support learning spaces to enhance teaching capabilities and e-learning technologies that integrate with the teaching and learning process.

IN THE PHOTO: President Kyle presided at the official opening ceremonies for the new iLab in Walker Hall. Pictured front, left to right: Mike Love, President of Nurture by Steelcase; Krista Terry, director of RU’s Technology Learning Center; Lennie Scott-Webber, chair of the Department of Interior and Fashion Design; President Kyle; Provost Wil Stanton; and Sean Cocorran, Director of Steelcase’s Educations Solution Group. In the background, Charles Cosmato, assistant director of the Technology Learning Center and Richard S. Alvarez, RU chief financial officer.