NKU's Griffin Hall busy putting high technology to work for students

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. - Now that its dedication ceremonies are over, life is getting back to a more normal level of activities at the new $53 million Griffin Informatics Center at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights.

More than1,900 students take classes and seminars inside the sprawling five-story building that is energy efficient with the eastern half of the building filled with almost three stories of glass. From the outside, various colored lights and light poles can be seen strobing different colors of lights throughout the day.

Griffin Hall is the new home to the NKU College of Infomatics, a college where computers and high-tech information technology is the watchword across a number of traditional disciplines from health care to journalism, to film and video to business technology.

The building is built from the ground up to support computers, networks and information sharing across conference rooms, classrooms and study areas. It's all interconnected with Wifi and hundreds of thousands of feet of digital computer cable running through the walls and in between floors and rooms.

In a film and video class, we observed as a few dozen students watched videos or looked at pictures on individual but networked computer work stations sharing the latest video making software. Professor Chris Strobel, who runs the class, was one of many who helped design Griffin Hall.

Strobel says students can work individually, collectively with small groups of students, and they can share their work with an entire class, or with the entire building. He says the key is the building's immense flexibility. They will be spending a lot of time figuring out how to make the best use of the technology Griffin Hall offers.

Media student Daniel Griffin says he was amazed at how much he and his fellow students have to work with, as he was preparing an NKU news broadcast for a class. "It's a world a difference being in Griffin Hall when you compare it to the classrooms we used to have elsewhere on campus."

Downstairs includes an digitorium that has 60-foot tall video screen and more than a half dozen 'Opera boxes' on the second floor, where smaller classes can see a video presentation with others and then start working on their own specialized projects without leaving their box space.

Upstairs, there is a full TV studio and control room along with a two-story performance space where actors and other performing artists can have their presentations saved on video or audio.

Elsewhere, informatics specialists are hard at work crunching computer code. These are the labs where NKU has already produced a mobile application for smart phones that help those who use the TANK bus service. Just this week, the lab unveiled a new mobile application to help people performing CPR and area fire departments quickly find people suffering from cardiac arrest.

A graduate student working on computer programs says she's had to go all the way to New York City to get the kind of courses and education she's now getting at NKU through Griffin Hall. She is already working for Griffin Hall and interacting with technology businesses and helping them with their technology needs.

The Kentucky legislature came up with $35 million to help build Griffin Hall. The rest of the money came from private donations, which NKU hopes will continue to support and expand the kind of high technology education that Griffin Hall now offers.