The University Park Plaza (UPP), for those who don’t know and have yet to figure it out, is located in the same plaza as Bank of America, Pizza Loft, Pier 1 Imports, Geronimo’s, and the NSU Bookstore. Located on University Drive and SW 36th Street, UPP is home to classes like physics and astronomy, and this semester, most of your non-STEM classes.
I don’t blame any of you for not knowing about the classrooms in UPP. Browsing for courses one semester, I saw that astronomy was located in UPP, and I hadn’t known then that some classes were over there. Then I thought that maybe that’s where professors taught obscure classes with few students. Like astronomy. Like higher-level math courses. Like basket weaving.
More recently, after discovering that four out of six of my classes were in UPP, a student stopped me on my way to class and asked me, “What and where is the University Park Plaza?” In a rush, I said it was near the bookstore and probably — not definitely — next to Geronimo’s.
Placing classes in UPP presupposes that all students know where it is ― and that they can drive or trust in the Shark Shuttle or like to walk, when it’s actually inconvenient, unsafe and unfair.
For students who drive, having classes in UPP is a struggle because of parking. Students have to give up whatever parking spot they have — good or not — and get lucky enough to find a space in the UPP parking lot that’s either close to where their class is or is so far away that they might as well have walked from the Don Taft University Center.
If you’re a student like me who doesn’t drive, then there’s the Shark Shuttle, which may or may not work depending on your schedule. Yes, there’s a Shark Shuttle app, but what about students who also work — on and off campus — or who have barely any time between classes to coordinate when and where to catch the shuttle to go to their other classes?
The Shark Shuttle page on NSU’s website says, “The service operates on a 20-minute headway. Although traffic conditions may cause the NSU Shuttle Bus Service to arrive slightly early or late, please allow yourself enough time when traveling via the Shuttle System.”
So you either hope to god that the shuttle comes with enough time for you to arrive at your class and that it comes exactly when your class ends, or at most five minutes after, or you just walk since it doesn’t make sense to wait more than 10 minutes for the shuttle to come.
Walking to and from UPP isn’t bad, especially for day classes. I can make the walk at a leisurely pace in about 15 minutes — 10 minutes at a brisk pace. But imagine that a student has a class in UPP that lasts from 6 to 10 p.m. Imagine walking SW 36th Street in pitch black darkness, because the road is poorly lit, on a path that’s more an imitation of a sidewalk than an actual traversable walkway. Add to that the people who like to speed and that drivers are also affected by the darkness and poor visibility, and you have the perfect formula for a lawsuit.
“Well, take the shuttle,” you might say. Please see above.
Technically speaking, UPP isn’t even “on campus,” if one says that the main campus includes all administration buildings, graduate school buildings, Parker/DeSantis/Mailman and adjoining buildings, the Alvin Sherman Library, the athletic buildings and the UC. But, yes, UPP is actually “on campus” since NSU owns parts of the plaza. Just look at the “Nova Southeastern University” plaques on the buildings.
Also, it’s true that students have had classes there in the past, so this is really nothing new. Classes for nursing, one of NSU’s major programs, is located almost exclusively in UPP. But, for grad students, the distance between Rolling Hills and UPP is significantly less than the distance between the rest of the campus and UPP. It only makes sense that all undergrads go to class in the same places that are firmly “on campus.”
My first two semesters at NSU, I had a mixture of biology classes, philosophy classes, literature classes and math classes. While some were online, not a single one was located in UPP.
Flash forward to the winter 2016 semester, and all of my literature classes, as well as my one philosophy class, are 10 to 15 minutes from the main campus in UPP.
I’ll compare the locations of biology and literature classes because, for one, I used to be a biology major and took bio classes, and, two, these two subjects will clearly demonstrate the changes in classroom location. According to Course Wizard, for the winter 2016 semester, four out of 137 available BIOL classes are in UPP, while four out of the 15 available LITR classes are in UPP — 12 classes if you don’t count online classes, meaning that percentage-wise, one-third of lit classes are located in UPP. For fall 2015, only three out of 133 available BIOL classes were in UPP. No LITR classes were in UPP.
So one can say that the number of bio classes located in UPP over the past two semesters is about the same, while there’s been a more noticeable increase in the number of lit classes located in UPP.
It’s more fact than legend that more NSU students are biology majors or other science majors — it seems that any random person you stop on their way to lunch in the UC is a bio major — which means that more classes, and classrooms, are needed to accommodate science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) majors.
The classrooms in UPP are also slightly smaller than those in Parker and DeSantis, so it follows that smaller classes — which are typically not STEM classes — are located in the appropriately-sized rooms, leaving the larger classrooms for larger classes.
Odds are that it’s because of larger class sizes in NSU’s STEM majors and an increase in the number of sections offered that force other majors to the outskirts of campus.
But an easy way to counteract this is to offer some science-based classes, as is done with lit classes, online, or to hybridize classes with labs and have just the lectures online. As per Course Wizard, 11 BIOL classes in fall 2015 were completely online, while nine BIOL classes are online for the winter 2016 semester. Clearly, it’s possible for STEM students to take and pass online classes in their majors. Otherwise, NSU would not offer online classes for them at all.
For someone like me, who has a 6 to 10 p.m. lit class in UPP, it’s disheartening to discover that for the first term of the winter 2016 semester, approximately 25 classes are in DeSantis from 6 to 10 p.m. While some might say, “Well that means there probably isn’t room in DeSantis,” I call shenanigans, and, on top of that, there are just three classes in Parker from 6 to 10 p.m. for the first term of this semester. Three. And yet we’re shoved in UPP like there isn’t room on the actual campus. I’d much rather walk to and from Parker at night than from UPP.
And it’s not like the non-STEM majors take up a lot of room; along with our small number, a lot of non-STEM courses are either online or are located in the UC or the library, anyway.
It should be a university’s priority to make classes as pleasant as possible, and that includes getting to the class. Having classes in DeSantis or Parker or even the UC or the library is a much better option than UPP, especially at night.
For the few of us who aren’t one of NSU’s more popular majors, some of the reasons we chose NSU are because of the great atmosphere and location, the smaller class sizes and the caring nature of administration and staff. But it’s beginning to feel as if the silent minority is being pushed to the wayside, figuratively and literally.
