by Riley Bauling
Daily Lobo
Student Jo Fanelli starts most of her semesters at UNM with a walk around the communication and journalism building to chat with professors she knows from her years of taking classes in the department.
With the department's building under construction, that wasn't an option this semester.
"It is kind of strange," she said. "The first day I was just used to stopping by and saying hi to all my professors."
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Most communication and journalism faculty members don't have offices right now, said John Oetzel, department chairman. However, thanks to the Women Studies Program, he has an office in Mesa Vista Hall along with the academic advisor and department administrator, he said.
The department will have three offices in Mesa Vista until it can move back into its own building, he said. The estimated completion date for the building is March 21, he said.
In addition to the three offices in Mesa Vista, the University set aside four offices for the department at the beginning of the semester, he said.
Two of those offices are in Hokona Hall, but Oetzel said he won't find out where the other two will be until the end of this week or the beginning of next. For the time being, faculty and instructors will alternate between working out of those four offices and their homes, Oetzel said.
Dennis Herrick, a communication and journalism lecturer, said he has split time outside of the classroom between the lounge in the basement of the SUB and his dinner table.
The SUB's atmosphere hasn't interfered with the privacy students expect when meeting with a professor during office hours, he said.
"The kitchen table is substituting for a lot of offices," he said. "I'm trying to adjust by holding three hours of office hours in the SUB on the bottom floor lounge. I've been surprised how you can have a private conversation in a crowd, but it's certainly not ideal."
Finding out where to meet professors has been a guessing game for Shannon Kunkel, a communication and journalism senior.
"It's all still sort of a mystery," she said. "I haven't gotten a room number from one professor, and the other one has two different offices at two different times."
Ashley Schmick, an advertising student in the department, said one of her professors set up office hours at Irysh Mac's on Yale Boulevard to cope with the lack of an office. The rest of her professors said they would accommodate students by meeting them at different places around campus, she said.
"It's not really that big of a hassle," she said. "A lot of them can meet you anywhere on campus, so that's actually a lot more convenient sometimes."
Oetzel said one of the biggest difficulties was finding classrooms for the 120 classes the department teaches each semester.
"Of course there have been unexpected things come from out of the process," he said. "We had to try and find some classes last minute, so that's why they're all over the campus."
Mario Hidalgo is a student in one of those classes in Johnson Center's computer lab.
"There are a lot of people going in and around Johnson Center, so that's been the only real inconvenience," he said. "It's just kind of loud."
The new building will be worth any difficulties the department has to deal with now, Oetzel said.
"It's going very well," he said. "It's been hectic trying to reschedule everything, but the end result is going to be well worth any heartache in the short term."
