The steering committee for the Mandel Center for the Humanities will advise Provost Marty Krauss on the allocation of space inside the new Mandel Center building, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe wrote in an e-mail to faculty last Monday. The e-mail also stated that Krauss has "tentatively decided" to move the Environmental Studies Program, the Center for German and European Studies, the Ethics Center, the African and Afro-American Studies department and the Classical Studies department into the building. According to the e-mail, if these groups move in, there would still be 10 to 15 offices to be assigned in the Center, which is scheduled to be completed fall 2010.

According to both the e-mail and an interview with Krauss, these decisions are not final and the steering committee will play a role in the final decision making process.

Originally, the main purpose of the committee was to plan the programming for the Center. In addition to committee chair Prof. Ramie Targoff (ENG), who is overseas on sabbatical, the members of the committee are Profs. Stephen Dowden (GRALL), Eugene Sheppard (NEJS), Bernard Yack (POL), Michael Willrich (HIST), Sarah Lamb (ANTH) and Jonathan Unglaub (FA).

Dowden, chair of the Humanities Council and the steering committee, explained that Jaffe and Krauss decided to charge the committee with the extra responsibility after meeting with the chairs of the humanities departments on Oct. 14.

The final decision still rests with the provost. "I for one am very happy about this; now we have a process," Dowden said.

"I'll listen very carefully to what their recommendations are; I already have been," Krauss said. When asked why occupancy was not originally part of the committee's responsibility, she said that it probably should have been.

"Obviously it became clear that they wanted to have a role in recommending who should move in to the building based on the programming that they're intending to develop," Krauss said.

Dowden said he expects to call meetings to gather input from junior faculty in particular, as well as graduate and undergraduate students. "I think [Krauss] will listen to the committee," he said.

Dowden added that he had asked all humanities chairs to go back and discuss the issue in their departments.

Floor plans for the Mandel Center are now posted on the University's capital projects Web site and in the lobby of the Olin-Sang American Civilization Center. Krauss said that the ground floor will house classrooms, while the first and second floors will house faculty offices and each have a conference room, a kitchenette, space for student workers and two large areas for administrative staff, she added.

The third level will have a roof garden and a reading room while the remaining offices on that floor will be occupied by the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies.

Dowden had previously said that the humanities chairs "are really strongly interested that [the center] have only humanities, but humanities in the broadest sense," which he characterized as the "humanities and the humanistic social sciences." In a previous interview he said he did not think Environmental Studies met that description.

Environmental Studies is located in the Friedland Life Sciences Building, which will be torn down this semester. The Center for German and European Studies is located in an office in Olin-Sang, and the Ethics Center is located in the Abraham Shapiro Academic Complex, while AAAS and Classics are located in the Rabb Graduate Center.

Jaffe states in his e-mail that "each of those entities is inherently interdisciplinary and naturally connected to the activities of the center."

Krauss said those were the groups that expressed interest in moving in her initial conversations about the issue. She also said that limited money impacted the University's ability to renovate existing buildings.

"Environmental Studies is homeless," she said. "Right now they're being housed in [the] Bassine [Science Building], but that was temporary, so I need to find a more permanent home for them." She went on to say that there are different options. "This was one. I explored that with them. I know there are other options."

AAAS chair Prof. Wellington Nyangoni said his department expressed interest because it provides better facilities.

He said that the offices were not well maintained, that there had been no repairs and that there were leaks.

"If they moved me upstairs and the facilities are better than this, I'll move," he said. "If they renovate here I would stay here."

Director of Environmental Studies Prof. Brian Donahue (AMST) said that the program did seek a more permanent location, "so we were interested in any place where we could be together and the Mandel Center seemed like one good possibility, so we were willing to consider it."

He added that it seemed like "some aspects of what we do could fit there pretty well because we're very interdisciplinary, . but on the other hand we're interdisciplinary between science and social science and less the humanities, so it may not be a perfect fit."

Ethics Center Director Dan Terris said that the center had no complaints about its current location and would be satisfied with either staying or moving.

He said that all the centers in the building have been growing, "so it's natural that we're all bumping up against each other a little bit.