New Year, new building
National-LouisUniversity set to debut Lisle digs
by Kathy Cichon, staff writer
This story originally published at http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/sunpub/lisle/ 

When students and staff at National-Louis University return to campus Jan. 3, they will notice more than a few changes.

They will find a whole new building.

This week the university's west suburban campus moves from its Wheaton to a brand-new facility in Lisle. The campus, at 850 Warrenville Road, is a drastic change from the Wheaton building — the old DuPage County courthouse.

"It's been a wonderful site for us," said Chris Anderson, vice president for public affairs at National-Louis University. "But it's very difficult to renovate it and upgrade it."

As part of the university's strategic planning process three years ago, several decisions were made about the institution's downtown Chicago and suburban facilities. Among those was the decision to move from the 110-year-old building at 200 S. Naperville Road in Wheaton, which the university purchased in 1993. Students, university officials learned, wanted a more user-friendly campus — with close parking.

The result is a $7.3 million investment to create a new, state-of-the-art campus in the Corporetum complex in Lisle, just off the East-West Tollway (I-88) and across from the Morton Arboretum.

"They can look forward to a very accessible and conveniently designed educational facility," Anderson said.

Planning for the new facility provided a unique opportunity for the university, Anderson said. The university was able to survey the students to find out what they wanted in their campus.

"They really wanted it to be closer to the highway so it was easy to get to. They wanted close-in parking," Anderson said. "But the main thing they told us was they didn't want an institutional office building."

When the campus was designed, curved walls and angled braces were added to make the facility more inviting.

"It's not just a straight rectangular hallway," Anderson said. "There's a real visual interest as you're walking to the classrooms."

The new site houses 42 classrooms, computer labs, a library, conference rooms, a public cafe, student lounges and a welcome center. Six distinct student lounge areas will accommodate both wireless and wired computers. Classrooms will be equipped with high-tech LCD projectors and screens, as well as computer ports to accommodate laptops.

"They just hit the nail right on the head as far as planning it," said Margaret Berg, interim director for career services and university alum. "It's comforting to know the administration listened to what the community was asking for and the students, faculty and staff were asking for. And they did it."

Many of these amenities were not possible at the Wheaton location, which would be expensive to maintain and impractical to renovate, Anderson said. In fact, one-third of the historic building went unused by the university because it was the former jail — the bars are still on the windows. The brick walls of the courthouse made it difficult to wire the facility for more modern technology. That's not a problem at the Lisle campus.

"Everything's really adaptable, and we're able to upgrade as new technology comes on the horizon," Anderson said.

It's the little things, Berg said, that have staff members excited about the move, such as better climate control and classrooms equipped with podiums with features such as LCD projectors and DVD players.

"I love the idea of coming in with my disk and plugging it right in," said Berg, who is also an adjunct professor.

With the building able to serve students well into the future, the university signed a 15-year lease for the new site.

"In another 15 years we can look and see if it makes sense for our students to stay there," Anderson said.

Currently there are about 1,800 students attending National-Louis's west suburban campus, but university officials expect as many as 2,500 by the spring. The Lisle campus will offer upper-level undergraduate and graduate programs in the College of Arts and Sciences, National College of Education and the College of Management and Business. Academic service areas will house the university's Center for Positive Aging and Gerontology as well as the nationally-renowned Reading Recovery program that trains Illinois teachers in early intervention for struggling readers.

The 119-year-old university was a national pioneer in developing multiple campus locations beginning in the early 1970s. In addition to the West Suburban campus, National-Louis has a flagship urban campus at 122 S. Michigan Ave. in the Loop, campuses in Evanston, Wheeling and Elgin, as well as Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia, Washington and Poland.

While there are parts of the Wheaton campus Berg will miss — like the ringing of the clock tower, which "added character" — she looks forward to being in a "beautiful" building with up-to-date technology readily available.

"I'm more excited about moving to Lisle than I am sad to be leaving Wheaton," Berg said.

Reading program travels with National-Louis to new site

When National-Louis University opens the doors to its new campus Jan. 3, Illinois Reading Recovery also will call the Lisle facility home.

Dr. Tina Lozano, director of Illinois Reading Recovery and professor of reading at National-Louis, thinks the move's timing is ideal. "The new site will give us room to grow just as Reading Recovery teacher leaders and advocates in Illinois and across the United States celebrate the program's 20th anniversary," she said in a recent statement.

To celebrate the program's 20th anniversary and to provide professional development for active teacher leaders, the Illinois Reading Recovery program at National-Louis University will sponsor the 14th annual Illinois Reading Recovery institute Jan. 13 and 14 at the Chicago Marriott Downtown. Gay Su Pinnell, the first president of the Reading Recovery Council of North America, will present a keynote address Jan. 14.

At the end of the 2003-04 school year, the start of its 20th year, this scientifically-based national early literacy intervention had served more than 1.4 million first-graders in the United States. Since 1988, Illinois Reading Recovery has helped more than 90,000 young, initially failing children learn to read and write. Last year Reading Recovery served approximately 7,400 Illinois first-grade students.

Reading Recovery is a short-term literacy intervention for first-graders, based on the belief that all children can learn to read with appropriate instruction.

National-Louis University and the Illinois Reading Recovery Center provide the literacy education for Reading Recovery as a series of graduate courses. Lozano teaches classes for teacher leaders who, in turn, teach teachers in local districts as National-Louis adjunct instructors. In the current academic year, 110 new Reading Recovery teachers are training in Illinois school districts. These teachers will join a professional network of 730 experienced teachers in 512 schools and 207 districts throughout Illinois.

Reading Recovery selects the lowest performing first-grade students without regard to race, ethnicity, language or cause of reading difficulty. Annual evaluations document its success with all subgroups identified in the NCLB standards. Within 12 to 20 weeks, about 80 percent of all children who complete the program attain average or above levels of literacy performance as measured by standardized reading and writing assessments.

Twenty-three universities serve as Reading Recovery teacher leader training sites in the United States. In 1997, National-Louis University worked with the Reading Recovery Council of North America and the Illinois State Board of Education to take over as the designated University Training Center for Reading Recovery in Illinois, with the exception of a site in Champaign-Urbana which is affiliated with Purdue University.