The Laura Spelman portion of Dr Tatum’s “Going for the Gold” Speech is below followed by a link to the entire speech:
When Professor Angela Davis comes to visit, we will use that occasion to hold an open house in our newly renovated Laura Spelman Hall – the new home of our Social Justice Fellows Program, under the leadership of Dr. Cynthia Spence – and the Yvonne Jackson Academic Study Center, the study resource center on the ground floor of Laura Spelman that will be available 24-hours a day with swipe-card access, another example of our effort to “go for the gold.” I mean that quite literally in that the Laura Spelman renovation has been done in accordance with LEED principles (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).
The Spelman College Board of Trustees made a policy decision in 2010 that all new construction or renovation projects would be done at least at the LEED Silver level, but with the Laura Spelman project we have built in enough sustainable design elements that we believe we will achieve LEED Gold in that building. I want to congratulate Director of Facilities Management Art Frazier and his team, under the leadership of Vice President for Business and Financial Affairs Danny Flanigan, for that success – as well as for the successful air-conditioning of McAlpin Hall this summer.
We want to continue “going for the gold” in the new campus projects we will be undertaking. Our next planned project is a renovation of Read Hall, working hard to raise the funds now with the expectation that we will be able to start that project next summer, to be followed by the renovation of the Rockefeller Fine Arts Building. These building projects will keep us busy for the next few years – yet another example of how we are pursuing our institutional goal of being “nothing less than the best,” bringing all parts of our campus into the 21st century.
