The Office of the Arts and the Office of Human Resources will receive new space in the Bernstein-Marcus Administration Center at the end of this semester in the area previously occupied by the Admissions Office, which is now located in the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Admissions Center, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Peter French wrote in a campuswide e-mail Thursday. Currently the Office of the Arts occupies space in the Slosberg Music Center and the Office of Human Resources rents space in Stony Brook Office Park on Turner Street. The decision to rellocate the two offices was made by President Jehuda Reinharz with input from Provost Marty Krauss and French, Vice President for Capital Projects Dan Feldman wrote in an e-mail to the Justice. The renovations are expected to cost less than $150,000, he wrote.

The Office of the Arts began in 2003 through a two-year grant, Director Scott Edmiston explained in an interview with the Justice. He explained that the purpose of the Office of the Arts is to integrate the arts into the life of the University and to increase participation in arts programming. At that time, it was not clear if the Office would have a short-term consulting role or exist as a long-term office. For this reason, he said, there was no ideal space for it.

Initially, it was part of the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences, "but I really wanted to be with the community, and so the Music department was kind enough to give up their music library," Edmiston said. The Music department moved its library to the Goldfarb library.

"It was kind of perceived as a temporary thing that I was being housed in the music library," Edmiston said.

After the grant ran out in 2005, he said, the University decided to have a permanent Office of the Arts as a result of the efficient work done by the Office. The Office also received money to hire Program Administrator Ingrid Schorr. At that point, the Music department also had to give up a practice room in the Slosberg Music Center so that Schorr could have an office space, he said.

"I loved being here in the music building, and I will miss hearing the students practice, but ultimately this was a short-term solution that needed to be addressed-the Music department should have this space back, students need practice room," Edmiston said. said. He added that he had expressed interest in a more permanent space to the administration about a year ago.

"Gaining extra practice space in Slosberg is imperative, and while the addition of a single practice room helps, it is by no means a solution to the problem," Aimée Birnbaum '10, a Music major in the performance track, wrote in an e-mail to the Justice.

Of the four practice rooms located downstairs in Slosberg, she wrote, one is consistently used for private lessons. "The situation is extremely inconvenient because if you need to use a practice room while classes are being held, there are only three available," Birnbaum wrote.

The move will allow HR to be more accessible to the Brandeis community, Vice President for HR and Employee Relations Scot Bemis said.

Bemis said that HR moved to Turner Street in summer 2007 from the Gryzmish Center because there were few areas for confidential conversations and more space was needed for additional staff members.

"Although [Turner Street] is easily accessible [by] the shuttle there, and we expanded our hours to allow people to come before or after work, . we still heard an occasional grumble that 'it was so much easier when you were up on campus to just walk over there during lunch,'" Bemis said.

The move "puts us back in the midst of campus," he said. "It's also easier for us to keep a pulse on the community, to gauge morale. You get so much from just being able to walk around and talking with [staff members] in passing. . We lose that a bit being down there."

"It's important to me to stay on lower campus because I do interact with Music department, the Theater department, the Rose Art Museum, the Fine Arts department, Student Activities, the Undergraduate Theater Collective and I interact with the administration as well," Edmiston said.

In addition to two offices, Edmiston said he would have access to more meeting space in the new location. "Even though [Bernstein-Marcus] is not a building necessarily heavily trafficked by students, we hope that students will stop by . and talk to us about what's going on campus and how we can be of help to them in keeping the arts prominent in the University's identity.