The 175,000-square-foot building is large enough to seat 2,000 students and offers some of the most up-to-date technology on campus.
NEW BRUNSWICK -- When Daijiro Okada wanted his students to share their work with the rest of the class in the past, it would take time for the students to walk to the front of the classroom and show their notes on the projector screen, he said.
But now that Okada teaches in a classroom designed for active learning in the new Rutgers Academic Building, the professor of economics can remotely project students' work directly from their laptop to one of the classroom's 14 monitors in a matter of seconds, he said.
"The technology is fantastic," said Daiko, standing under four large monitors that hang from the ceiling in the the center of the classroom. "It's a whole different ballgame here."
Rutgers this fall opened the College Avenue campus' first new academic building since the 1970s, a $116 million, 175,000-square-foot building on the former site of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary.
With five large lecture halls, a dozen classrooms and seminar spaces, a tutoring center and a computer lab, the building is large enough to seat 2,000 students and offers some of the most up-to-date technology on campus.
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For Rutgers, the new building completes an expensive makeover of a block that once divided the two halves of the College Avenue campus. For students, it's a high-tech alternative to some of the university's aging, outdated classrooms.
"It's way better," said Grant Kelly, a sophomore from South Plainfield. "I'm not cramped for leg room."
From the street, the academic building looks like two different buildings, but it's connected by an underground hallway covered by an outdoor plaza.
Adjacent to the new $85 million honors college Rutgers opened last year, the plaza serves as a new thruway connecting Voorhees Mall to the student housing along Bishop Place.
Inside, it features five big lecture halls -- with extra leg room and cushioned scarlet red seats -- that seat about 275 students each.
In the two smaller, 120-seat lecture halls, the seats in every other row can be turned around, allowing students to easily work in small groups.
And in every room, even the eight seminar rooms that seat 20-30, students can share their work on the screens in the front of the room with one click on their laptop, tablet or smartphone. That feature is especially put the use in the two active-learning classrooms that each seat 90 students at 10 circular tables of nine.
Each table controls one of the 10 monitors that line the wall, and the professor stands in the center of the room under four large monitors.
In a recent course on global health perspective, groups of students researched the effects of Hurricane Matthew and quickly shared their findings on the screens, said Amy Lin, a senior from North Arlington.
The new technology took a few weeks for students to learn, Lin said, but it makes class more student-focused than the typical lecture.
Of course, that also makes it harder for students to remain anonymous or sneak into class a few minutes late, Lin said.
"You can't do that," she said. "You've gotta be on time here."
Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.