Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
Join Dr. Ralph Ford, Chancellor of Penn State Behrend, and guests for conversations about interesting things happening in the Erie community.
Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
The New Erie Hall, with Ken Miller and Brian Streeter
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Dr. Ralph Ford, chancellor of Penn State Behrend, talks with Dr. Ken Miller, senior director of administration and student affairs, and Brian Streeter, senior director of athletics, about the new Erie Hall, a $28.2 million fitness, recreation, and wellness center that will open in January. Originally recorded Oct. 25, 2022.
Welcome to Behrend Talks. I'm Chancellor Ralph Ford and my guests today are Ken Miller, Senior Director of administration in student affairs, and Brian Streeter, Senior Director of Athletics. Welcome to the show, guys.
Dr. Ken Miller:Glad to be with you to be with you.
Brian Streeter:Glad to be here.
Dr. Ralph Ford:Well, our topic today is a really interesting one. There is a lot of interest in the community around this. And here on campus, it's the construction of the new Erie Hall. It is a $28.2 million fitness, recreation and wellness center that will open here on campus in January. But before we get to that, I'd like to talk a little bit about each of your backgrounds and how you ended up here at Penn State Behrend. And let's start with you Ken, first you got here in 1998, as a Residence Life Coordinator, how did you end up here? And tell us a little bit about your path.
Dr. Ken Miller:Well, I actually arrived in 1988. And so I'll take the 10 years if I can be 10 years younger. We will give it to you. Thank you very much. I came here right out of graduate school. And I had never, I'm sorry, had never heard of Penn State Behrend. But my then fiance, was born in Erie and her mother was born in Erie. And I called her over spring break because I was job searching. And I asked her about Penn State Behrend. And she said you need to talk to my mother. So her mother got on the phone. "Oh the Behrend Center, it's very lovely there." And so I applied. It was a ResLife job. And I applied and had a good interview and came to campus that summer. And John Lilley convinced me that we were going to get better, and we were going to get bigger, and that we had great plans for the campus. And the rest is history.
Dr. Ralph Ford:Well, you started you know, from those humble beginnings. Then residence life, you are now leading a portfolio of programs here on campus. So tell us what are the things you oversee? What do you do here now?
Dr. Ken Miller:Well, I have been very fortunate to be given more responsibility over the years. That it's been great to see the college grow. I oversee the Student Affairs portfolio, which includes student support services, like personal counseling, and the Health and Wellness Center, important services like Educational Equity and diversity programs, our International Student Program. And then also some important engagement programs, our student leadership and involvement, Center for Service leadership, Residence Life, and some other ones that are always interesting, like Student Conduct. But overall, the Student Affairs folks work with virtually every student during their career at some point. But I'm also fortunate enough to work closely with the Chancellor, as well as the Finance Office in terms of the college budget and our strategic planning, process, implementation evaluation. Lot of fingers in pies, as it were.
Dr. Ralph Ford:Things have changed a lot in 34 years.
Dr. Ken Miller:They really have all for the better, I think.
Dr. Ralph Ford:And now let's switch over to you, Brian. You joined us here about a decade later, I'll get this one right, 1997. After having great coaching and experience at places like Hobart and William Smith College. And you oversee our now 24 NCAA Division three programs. What brought you here?
Brian Streeter:we had the opportunity to know that we were going to grow there. We had the facilities to grow, and the direction to grow there. The growth of the campus was definitely ahead of us, and to be a part of that has been exciting. And that's probably been the best part of working with great people. We're fortunate that we have folks from the top to the lower echelon here on campus that work together. They work for their students. And I think we're all here for our students. That's the best thing. I don't see faculty members, I don't see administrators doing things just for themselves. It's really for the growth of the campus and the students. And our students are fortunate. They get a great experience while they're here on campus.
Dr. Ralph Ford:It's really a phenomenal program. But I want to go back, there's one thing that's always impressed me and that is that when you got here, I think within your first few years, there was one year you started 10 new sports. Is that correct? Is that the right number?
Brian Streeter:I think it was 6 to 8 to 10. And we just felt it was ... when you're going to start a new sport, you're gonna have problems. But why deal with one sport, just do it all the same time in one year. And we can handle all those problems. And really, problems work themselves out with one coach
Dr. Ralph Ford:Well, I love the philosophy of division three. So experience, another coach experience. And it really, they all mesh together and people supported what we were doing. If you do one at a time, then they think their sport is better than the other sport. And you know, in sixth grade, everybody's got to be on the same page. And we were fortunate to get coaches that are still with us now. I think that's probably the biggest thing. And then we look around, you know, Dr. Miller being here yourself, to all of us on this campus. We spent time here because it's a great environment to raise students from over four years. But families to grow and grow with part of the campus. And fortunately we've got a great staff of our 24 coaches that we have, and 14 full time coaches have been with us for more than 16 years. And some have been with us now. Coach Benim has been with us 32 years. So we're fortunate to have great people here that are true educators. In athletics, everybody wants to win and lose. But it's more than winning and losing. It's educating kids and giving them experiences. We want every team to win. But sometimes you can't win, but you might win as you develop your program, and have a great program for the students. let's just go a little further into this. And you know, what sets us apart versus say, division one and division two?
Brian Streeter:Well, the main thing is that our students choose to play. They aren't paid anything to play sports. They have a love for the game. And they play because of that love for the game. And when they don't love it, they walk away and somebody else steps in, but there's always an opportunity. Division three, level two, to get a chance to play and participate. In Division One, you don't have that. You're pigeon holed. It may take years to do, it may take four years before you get your opportunity. Division Three, you're going to have an opportunity, you're going to be playing enough people and the people you play against or other quality student athletes, I think that's the one thing you get in Division Three, we're fortunate here, over 75% of our students are three point or better. We've gotten many of our students, our top students in all our schools. So we've got great student athletes, that are great leaders. And great leaders on the field and on the court.
Dr. Ralph Ford:Another thing that I like to, you know, that I noticed is that we have a lot of students who wouldn't otherwise come here, because it's that unique combination of a particular sport and a academic program that they might not find
Brian Streeter:It's amazing. I don't know if some of these anywhere else. students choose to go to some of the private schools, private schools attract people because they give them money. We're not giving them anything, we're giving education. And we're giving them education, both as an athlete and as a student. And I think it really benefits our students they leave with at Penn State degree. I'm not putting down another college in the area, but a Penn State degree carries so much more weight. If you're in Texas, Michigan, California, people know who Penn State is. They don't know the other schools in the area. And I think a lot of times your private schools, they do a lot to buy kids to get them on their campus. And we're fortunate that we don't need to do that. We just talked about great professors, professors on campus here do super things with our students. The experiences students have, the internships they pull, during the years that they're here are just tremendous opportunities. And we're fortunate just with what we're going to be talking about today, the new facilities we have on campus are going to benefit us in the future, attracting more students.
Dr. Ralph Ford:So well, with that, let's switch the conversation. Let's talk about this large project here, the development of the new Erie Hall. And I think everyone who went to Behrend, or worked here knows about the old Erie hall built in 1952. It's kind of an iconic structure here on campus. But can tell us why did we have to build a new Erie Hall? How did we get here?
Dr. Ken Miller:Well, it's a bit of a process as many things are, and it it started with a recognition that the Junker center, while it was a great addition to campus, we outgrew it fairly quickly. You know, I think about Brian growing 6 to 10 sports in a year. It's all Brian's fault. You know, that is a tremendous accomplishment. And it led to a an increased need for more athletics and recreation space. So it's taken several iterations over the years, it actually began as a an addition to the Union building that we looked at it as maybe a small rec center. And as we studied that, we realized that wasn't going to provide enough room. So then we looked at the old Erie Hall and said, let's renovate it. Because it needed a lot of help. And let's expand it. And we had completed a feasibility study for that project. And actually, we're looking at the project for as part of the campus master plan process. And that's really when it came ... we kind of came to the realization that it's a better value to replace the building than it was to add on and try and renovate.
Dr. Ralph Ford:I didn't get the input from the campus community. So we knew we needed to create this space, but you know, students, faculty, staff, how do you get to, here's what it's going to be, here's the need, here's the things we'd like to have in there.
Dr. Ken Miller:Well, I think Brian got a lot of that feedback almost on a daily basis. With students, concerns about wait times for machines in the fitness room...
Dr. Ralph Ford:Well, it's going to be right in the heart of
Brian Streeter:Room space. Space became, you know, a premium over there. And with the athletic teams, we ran out of space with athletic teams and our club teams, many club organizations we have on campus. They all need space too, and we campus. And before we go on, and we'll come back to Erie Hall and just knew that the Junker center was maxed out. We were using it and people were practicing the one o'clock in the morning. Our OT starts at six o'clock in the morning. So it's just a nonstop and this just made a bold point with our students, that they needed something else. And that's where they came forward and wanted to see how can we expand Erie Hall. Erie Hall was old. It was rundown. It was the point where we'd have had to renovate the whole thing. Which is gonna cost too much. And this gave an opportunity to grow a new facility on campus. Which will be a tremendous asset when it opens. And I think it when Junker center opened, our enrollment went up. When this facility opens up, I really think our enrollment ... there'll be a push to help us get students here because they see another opportunity that they can have someplace to recreate on their own without having to be told what to do. Students like to be. They don't like to be told what to do all the time. And that's one thing that we'll having space now both in Junker and Erie Hall, you're going to have double the space to practice and play and enjoy yourself. what's going to be in there. Just a little bit of reminiscing about the old Erie Hall from 1952. When you walked in there, it was like a Hoosiers gym. So many of our alumni tell me that, and we know it was the place for social events way back in the day and the 50s and 60s plays a lot of people met their future spouses there. Really it is. It's a place that you look back, when we were told we're going to tear it down. Many alumni responded, they were just upset with it. They've gotten over that most of them come back seen it. So we've got two pieces of floor, and we still have floor for them. So if there's those out there that would like a piece of Erie Hall. We have some for them to have. And it's amazing. Every day somebody else calls and wants more wood to make something. It's a frame, a table, a bench. But the memories that Erie Hall gave, and Erie Hall was fantastic. We used it. I mean, we've had NCAA ballgames. And then we've had plays in there. We've had our wrestling come back, we had our first wrestling match a few years back when wrestling was getting back on campus. But it outlived itself. It just outlived itself, again, just got old, worn down. And I think the new opportunity we have in the future, I think is going to be tremendous.
Dr. Ken Miller:I can say that I have a very vivid memory. So we used to play intramurals in Erie Hall when it was just Erie Hall, there was no Junker Center. And we would play intramurals at
10:30 at night. I was much younger then obviously, but the NCAA the basketball games, were so intimidating in that building. You had students, the students would sit right off of the the sideline. And they would be right behind the bench, where the coach and the opposing team would be. And you'd have 200 students in that gym. And it sounded like 10,000. It was a really intimidating place to play. It was a definite home court advantage in there. So many, many athletic events in there like that. It was great. It was great experience.
Dr. Ralph Ford:And the other one too, that I'll add one more before we go on to the new Erie Hall. And that is the Clinton campaign came there twice when Bill Clinton was campaigning in 1994. I believe that's the year...or 92? If I get the year, right. They used it, but then when he came back for Hillary's campaign, they actually asked for that facility, they remembered it. And that was pretty neat, too. And he had a really cool event there. And it worked out perfectly.
Dr. Ken Miller:Well, we've had sold out concerts in there ... Train, the Goo Goo Dolls back in the day, before Junker. And 1000 people was about the biggest event we could have. Now we sell out the Junker center for concerts and events on campus. So it's definitely reflecting the growth of the campus and the need.
Dr. Ralph Ford:So let's switch to the new Erie Hall. What are we going to see in there? I know there's a lot.
Dr. Ken Miller:So I think the thing that we're delivering that the students asked for the most, was more options. And more options includes the kind of equipment that's going in there, but also the amount of space. The workout space is in different zones. And it's about three times as large as the Jageman fitness room is now. it'll have specialized areas for the heavy lifting, the Olympic bars, and those are located on the ground floor so they don't rattle the building when they get dropped. But students who are at different levels of fitness, and our overall goal is to lower the barrier to get students in the building. So there's a lot of technology in the building. If you want to come in, you're going to be able to record your workout on your Apple Watch. There's 40-some, 46 cardio machines, different types of cardio, but you'll be able to record your workout and track your data over time. Different kinds, different sizes of weights, different types of weights, weight machines, studio space, a dedicated spin room that we'll have classes for students, both kinesiology classes that Brian's faculty will teach, as well as, you know, non-credit get together kinds of classes. If you want to just do your own workout, you can Bluetooth connect to the bike. And so the students told us they wanted to see that technology. They told us they wanted a lot of options. They wanted the option to work out in a more public area but then have a little more private area for students are a little more self conscious. We give them that in this building. There are areas of this building that face the north and will be different, you know, you won't be seen. And and others that face the Union Building which are a little bit more visible. But there's options, and that's what they've been asking for. Options and Yoga? We'll have a yoga room? An aerobics room? elbow room.
Brian Streeter:There is a room that can be used for yoga and can be used for aerobics. You've got your course, you've got three or four big courts in there so you can play basketball but you also have two wooden floors. You also have all purpose-floors. So if somebody wanted to play floor hockey, which we used to do in Erie Hall and mark up the floor all the time and scratch it. Now they're going to do multipurpose facility rubberized floor that you can play on. They'll be a couple batting cages that we drop down from the ceiling that will benefit baseball and softball. There'll be a throwing wall that we're doing on the west end of the building that our shot putters and discus folks now can practice indoors and work on their spins and work on their timing of the spin. And for those two throwing events, if you don't have any place to practice during the winter months, you're stuck. Here they'll be able to work on their spins and release the ball hitting the target hopefully. If they don't hit the target, throw off the team I told the coach. No way.
Dr. Ralph Ford:There are windows but they'll have
Brian Streeter:But we'll have pickleball. Pickleball is a new netting. sport now. So we'll have six courts, they'll be lined for pickleball. There'll be three courts lined for badmitton. A new badminton club started up again this year. A lot of the foreign students that are here, they love playing badminton. And that was one sport to start with the club. And they see a need for that. So at least we're going to put three courts down to benefit them, and we don't have to put tape down on the floor for them. So many opportunities for the students. I think that's the greatest thing is that it gives the students their own space, if they want to have it to themselves individually or they want to work with somebody else as partner, they can. If they want to work with a group, they can. I think the spin room will be fantastic. You know, our teams are excited about this room, because a lot of our teams are looking for something like that. Other than their normal practice to give them a chance to go in and really work on endurance and build up some good endurance quickly using the bike. So just going to be like I said, it's going to be exciting when it opens up. It's going to be exciting, because for students looking at the college. It'll benefit our student athletes, but it's being built for our students, student athletes will use it. A good question came up yesterday in a meeting. It's going to both Junker and Erie Hall will complement one another. But they're going to make sure that both facilities are for our students to use. The Junker center cannot become an athletic facility, it's got to stay as a recreation facility. And, you know, it gives us more opportunity to do more intramural basketball. And to have more courts available to do that, instead of having three hours of basketball one night. You may have games scheduled at nine o'clock throughout the campus. And you can have 12 teams playing at the same time. And it just allows you to reach out to more students and give them opportunities.
Dr. Ralph Ford:I think it's the right philosophy. I don't think we want to say we've got facilities here that are just athletics or just for students. We have student athletes and you know this new Erie Hall anybody on campus students, faculty and staff can go use that right?
Brian Streeter:But I think that has point. Faculty staff and you got a lot of our faculty staff are looking for this. I think we'll see more staff members and faculty members taking part in it. We used to do an aerobics program and yoga program at lunchtime. We haven't done that since we closed nearly all. Now we just ran out of space in the Junker center. And with Covid too. Covid lost a lot, Covid is going to bring back people. Getting them, I wonder what they're doing, we all could be back in shape. It just gives you space to do it now. And you can do it in private. I think that's the biggest thing. More of our students are very self conscious of their bodies. And they want to have some privacy when they're working out. They don't want to be on display. In Junker Center, people were on display all the time. And I know a lot of the women that we would talk to just felt they were being gawked at, and we don't want that. And we will be able to prevent that here.
Dr. Ralph Ford:And that Jageman fitness room, I will tell you, other than to walk in and out, it's so crowded. So it will be nice for us to have some room to spread out. For people to, you know, truly have some some privacy. But do what they would like to do and not just be crammed into that space. So let's talk about that though. In Erie Hall, will there be athletic competitions like we currently see in Junker?
Brian Streeter:No, there won't be any. It only be if we have a problem with Junker, if the roof falls in, you know. And we have got to replace those other places. So if something like that happened, we could come to Erie Hall and play games there if we needed to. There's no bleachers though. So there's no bleachers in that facility, you have to bring in portable seats, which is fine, you could do that. It is for the students to use. And that's why
Dr. Ralph Ford:That's great, though, it's truly for our students to be using we want to try to maintain that. And some of our coaches already have an idea. So we can practice with them today and said, "No, you guys can understand, plan what you want. But it's gonna go in front of a person who's going to schedule that facility, and you're gonna understand that our students are going to have space on this campus. We don't want to limit the space to just the teams. But your coaches are going to be there some of them so you have some coaches in the new Erie Hall.
Brian Streeter:But one thing I didn't mention really Erie Hall and one thing it's going to do for wrestling. It gives rise to our wrestlers. They'll have a wrestling room now to practice in. It'll be a fantastic room that will give them a chance to grow their program, something they haven't had. We didn't have that before when they had wrestling 50 years ago, and we didn't have it five years ago. And we started up and we've been using the Fasenmyer complex which has been terrific to use short term. But this new wrestling room will be such a benefit to our coach and our program. And we really think that's going to take off. But again, that's all practice facility only. They'll still compete over at the Junker Center. he's recruited on campus that want to wrestle and some of these are juniors and seniors that either chose not to wrestle a couple years ago, but see the opportunity of someone coming in. You know, I love going to practice. They're sweating in the first five seconds of practice. He's just got them engaged and excited and the kids are excited. See the excitement of athletes that were competing last year, going through the motions, they're not going through any motions. Now now they're literally going through wrestling motions and excited to see the first match. I mean, I really think that these guys are gonna be fired up whether they win or lose, they're going to compete. And that's what we want to see when I see them competing. And they'll do well for us.
Dr. Ralph Ford:Ken, let's switch a little bit, there's something else that we're adding there that people might not normally associate with that facility. And that's our mental health staff. And they're moving there. So tell us about that.
Dr. Ken Miller:Yeah, the connection between a student's mental health and their physical health is really, really strong. And students who may suffer from depression or anxiety, really benefit by engaging in exercise and recreational activities where they're engaging with others. So we purposely planned for our personal counseling center to move to the new Erie Hall to really foster a stronger connection between mental and physical health. And so they'll actually have access to one of the studio spaces where they can do group work, or they can do mindfulness work, other type of activities to get students comfortable with the building and comfortable with, you know, really dealing with the stressors of college, which is, which is huge. And so we're very excited about that. We were in tight quarters in the Reed building. But the staff are very excited about moving on into Erie Hall, but they're going to do so without Sue Daley. So Sue Daley is retiring in January. Sue has been here since 1992, I believe. And so she's going to wrap up her career at the end of the semester. We're really sorry to see Sue go. And we're in the process of filling that position.
Dr. Ralph Ford:While she has left a large legacy. And a really great one.
Dr. Ken Miller:She has been a huge asset to the college. And when she came on board, there was one counselor, and that was
Dr. Ralph Ford:And now she and her staff are the new staff will her. have their own space there, but also have its own separate entrance as well, too. So that's a why did we do that?
Dr. Ken Miller:We did that to give students privacy and to give them the option to enter the personal counseling office. And that reception area, from a private entrance, we felt like that was important. And it will help in the connection. One of the main sidewalks in front of Erie hall that pedestrian traffic will route students right by the personal counseling office. So you'll know where it is. It won't be hidden. And I think that's one of the the elements over the past probably 10 to 15 years, one of the elements of the college that has really changed significantly with students is that that stigma of getting help when you're stressed or when you're anxious, has really reduced. Students are much more comfortable asking for help much more comfortable seeking assistance and accepting assistance. And that's very encouraging. And I think we'll be able to enhance that with the new billing.
Dr. Ralph Ford:And as we've seen in the last few years, the need has just grown throughout the pandemic. And all that we've gone through, it really has switched to the costs. Not trivial to make this happen. It didn't happen overnight. In fact, it took many years of planning. We don't have to quantify all those years, $28.2 million, run through the, you know, how do we get there? How do we fund this? That's often misunderstood as well. And why would we make such a big investment like that?
Dr. Ken Miller:Well, I think it took a lot of advocacy. We generated a lot of data. Brian and his team helped us understand just how cramped and difficult it was to actually use the Junker Center, particularly in the winter months. For the average student between January and March, when you've got the winter sports that are competing and practicing, then you have the spring sports who want to practice and compete outside but can't. So they're all competing for the same space. So intramurals and informal rec kind of suffer in that. So again, we had looked at an expansion of Erie Hall. And then we looked at the deferred maintenance and the major maintenance needs of that building. It just didn't make sense. And as we were looking at the campus master plan process, it became evident that a new building would would build the case. But the students had identified additional recreation space as their top priority probably nine years ago, 10 years ago. And the students were the ones that win their own student facilities fee. This is a fee that is used for non-academic facilities because those typically take the longest to build or improve. The students helped guide the use of that money. And they identified recreation space as a high need. And they also voted that we should bank most of that money towards a larger projec,t and just spend some on an annual basis, so students can see a return on that fee. But their perseverance and their willingness to really be disciplined about banking that money, I firmly believe made this building possible than at$28.2 million. Their contribution is about 40% of that budget. It is the largest gift among the commonwealth campuses at the university for facility fee. And it is a gift because that money could go anywhere. But it's also the largest percentage of a project like this for the Commonwealth Campuses. And it's really a leadership gift that the students have made, and really led to this led to this happening.
Dr. Ralph Ford:How forward thinking because they don't have many of them. It's their dollars, but they're not going to be here to benefit. How did they take that?
Dr. Ken Miller:You know, I remember, when the Student Government Association, every campus could choose whether or not to self tax basically, and have this fee and our SGA president at the time, his name was Ben Gilson. So shout out to Ben. Ben addressed the student senate, and he was talking about his support for for a fee. And said, I wish someone had done this for us 10 years ago. And here we are 10 years later. And the students are going to see the benefit of that generation of students foresight to choose to do the fee and then guide where it's going to be used to benefit students the most.
Dr. Ralph Ford:Now, let's talk a little bit about just where this building sits. And I will say, when you drive into campus, and you just look at the entrance now it's fundamentally changed, right? It has changed the look of campus.
Dr. Ken Miller:Well, when we were working with the planning team and Sasaki had partnered with Weber Murphy Fox. Weber Fox is a local architectural firm who's done a lot of work on campus. Sasaki is from Boston. We saw the opportunity that the site presented and the the former Erie Hall was kind of hidden, it was brown, it was non distinct. You kind of came in, you really weren't quite sure what you were looking at. In fact, the sign faced the other way. And the facade on the front, it looked like it was in 1952. But we knew that with this building site, when you were coming into campus, and you'd see the the library and that's gorgeous. And then you come in you see the Metzgar building, and that's gorgeous. We wanted folks to be driving up to that building. Wow, and see that rec center. And I think we got it. I think the the position of that building is such that you can't miss it on your way in. It'll be a striking addition to the campus and just a ton of curb appeal.
Dr. Ralph Ford:I'll tell you, well right now, but I could do without that pink color that it has. It's a big pink building. But the siding goes up soon, right?
Dr. Ken Miller:Yeah, the framing for the siding it has started. That's just waterproofing.
Dr. Ralph Ford:It's just yeah, it's quite the interesting site.
Dr. Ken Miller:The number of students who think that's what color the building is gonna be like. No, we're not that aggressive on colors.
Dr. Ralph Ford:Well, let's just talk ... there's part of the old Erie Hall that is going to end up in the new Erie Hall building. And that is, Brian, you mentioned earlier, we've got pieces of the floor. You still have many that you're giving out and we saved the floorboards. But it'll end up in a special way in the new building too.
Brian Streeter:It'll do the sort of the walling that will be
Dr. Ralph Ford:I was going to say that you're going to use it done that way. You'll have Erie Hall will making up part of the wall art. You'll walk in and you'll see them bring and incorporate the old building to the new facility. I think it's important because it's going to bring back your alumni. The alumni are gonna love this facility, they're going to take part in it, those that have been gone for 10 years, when they come back on campus, they're going to take advantage, they're going to be there, they're going to want to use the facility. But the wood, the wood, just remember, it's just a nice piece of remembrance to have it there. We've joked also about taking the wood and using it other places. Even using in the Junker center. We've got enough wood that we can do some flooring in our Junker center for our basketball coaches for something different. You know, you want to keep the history of Erie hall. It's so important, especially to the older alums, you know. And we're most of us, we got here in the college group during that time. We've been here, but prior to that, and you know, 1992, back to when they started, it was still pretty small campus. And Erie Hall was a key component of this college, you know, tearing that down and rebuilding it. But when you see what's out there, like you said, when you drive in the campus, it's going to be a while. When you see the three facilities we have, people are going to want to be here. They're going to want to know what's that, and they're going to see that you can see people working out you'll see people up in the windows working out. And it just is going to be a real warm feeling to come on this campus and see activity in that facility which will be beneficial as we recruit students. to recruit student athletes as well too.
Brian Streeter:But they don't recruit anybody. All of our students, student athletes. It's going to be a wild wild facility to have, because kids are going to know what's important, that recreation is important to us here. That's probably the most important thing. That's a thing to worry about after Covid. Covid hit at the right time, right? We're tearing down Erie Hall, but once Covid was over and students are back here. There are many times we'll go to the gym and students will be standing in the hallway with basketballs wanting to shoot. And there's just no time until 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock at night. And that you feel bad for him. And they understand. They've all been really understanding. But I think they're excited about the new building opening up. And we hope to have it open in January, early January, when we hope for the opening up the night. I think there'll be a little bit later. But we've adjusted our schedules. We've got our coaches, classes prepared to open a little later in January. But when it opens, it'll be used all the time. I mean, it's going to be great. It's going to be terrific.
Dr. Ralph Ford:So Ken, tell us, are we on schedule? What's the schedule look like as of today? What's our best estimate for opening of this building?
Dr. Ken Miller:I think you're going to be somewhere between the 9th and the 16th of January would be my guess.
Dr. Ralph Ford:We can live with that.
Dr. Ken Miller:We can live with that. Unlike the Junker Center. The Junker center was supposed to open in January, and I think it opened in April.
Brian Streeter:Yeah, we were a couple months behind there, here just a couple of weeks. There's a lot to go in there in the way equipment alone. It's going to take us a week to put all the weight equipment in that facility. So that alone would talk to the company this morning about scheduling January 2 is our moving date for weight equipment. We'll talk to the contractor and see can we at least have that window that they can start doing that because that's when we open we want to be ready to go. We don't want to be tripping over stuff. We need to have things in place for everybody. So the company we have the working with with the weight equipment, right now loves hearing January 2. They think that date they can make and I said well, let's shoot for that unless you hear something else. We expect to see a truck here on the second and here we go.
Dr. Ralph Ford:Many trucks, many trucks. Well, gentlemen, we are coming to the end of our show. Anything you'd like to add before we close?
Brian Streeter:I think students should be excited about what we have coming up. Alumni should be excited about the building they have on campus. Great addition to this campus, it'd be great for faculty, staff students to use.
Dr. Ken Miller:Can I just say that all boats rise. It is a it's a great facility for the entire campus. I think it's a huge improvement over Erie Hall. It served us so well over the years. It really did. But it was time and and this is going to be a wonderful replacement of the building. I think everybody's gonna be pleased.
Dr. Ralph Ford:Thank you. I am Chancellor Ralph Ford, You have been listening to Behrend Talks. My guest today were Brian Streeter, our Director of Athletics and Dr. Ken Miller, Director of Student Affairs and Senior Director of Administration. Thanks, this has been a wonderful talk, guys.
Dr. Ken Miller:Thanks for having us.