Acoustical suggestions:

A significant part of my project was focusing on acoustics of the classrooms and figuring out the best way to improve them. I studied three rooms: Slocum 228, Weaver 101, and Hunter 201.

The main problem with the classroom in Hunter is that it is all hard, flat surfaces. These are the absolute worst acoustical properties for a room to have. An easy fix could be putting up curtains around the sides of the room that would cover the lab space. This would allow for easy access to the lab spaces but would also provide an easy cover for them that would absorb more sound waves and improve the acoustics of that classroom.

In Weaver, an easy fix could also be thick curtains. Right now the classroom has shades for the windows but they do little to nothing for the acoustics of the space. Their only use is to block sunlight. Getting thicker, cloth curtains would block out sunlight while also absorbing more sound. Another improvement could be adding a wall-to-wall carpet on the floor. At the moment, the room has a rug that only covers the middle of the room. This leaves a lot of the floor uncovered. Adding the rug would add more sound absorbing surface as well as help mute the creaking floor boards that are common in the old buildings.

In Slocum, the space already has a carpet that covers the whole floor although it is very thin and does not help nearly as much as a better carpet could. By replacing the thin, worn carpet with a thicker and fluffier carpet would improve the sound quality of the room drastically. The window shades in this room are identical to those in Weaver so they have the same problem and purpose. By replacing the thin shades with thick curtains the room would have more sound absorbance. In most of the Slocum classrooms, blackboards cover all the walls. This means that hard walls surround the whole room. Something that could be interesting to try is installing sliding sound absorbance panels in front of the chalkboards. The sound absorbance panels would really transform the space in an acoustical sense. The panels would really add a whole new level of acoustical improvement to the classrooms at school and having the sliding feature would make sure that the blackboards would always be easily accessible.