UW-Whitewater Laurentide Hall & Mary Poppe Chrisman Student Success Center

Laurentide Hall, formally known as Carlson Hall, was renamed to be consistent with the other glacial themed names on campus after the Laurentide ice sheet which towered over the landscape for 75,000 years. The College of Letters and Sciences is honoring the campus’s glacial past by calling the newly renovated building home. The new space features faculty offices, research labs, conference rooms, a café and a video conference room. The project also incorporates sustainable design and improved accessibility for students.

This newly renovated educational hall consists of many innovative and sustainable upgrades utilized to modernize the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems of the hall. For instance, an energy efficient chilled beam cooling technology was implemented throughout the building. The building’s new office windows incorporate high performance window glazing, sunshades, and added insulation to the exterior walls. These intelligent designs provide a better indoor environment for the building’s cooling and lighting systems. Such designs further improve the building’s thermal envelopes, and reduce energy consumption. This project was unique because it was the first extensive renovation of a campus building where LEED guidelines were used in the reconstruction. This was a very economically green project as it had a recycling rate of 85%!

In addition to the hall is the Mary Poppe Chrisman Student Success Center. A three-story addition solely dedicated to student success with computer labs and collaboration rooms that can be doubled as classroom spaces. The facility also serves as the headquarters for Campus Tutoring that benefits students of all disciplines.