Spring Break
New IEP house to open next semester for student housing, administrative purposes
Jennifer Scungio
Issue date: 3/8/07 Section: News
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![The current IEP house [above] and the old Chi Phi fraternity house [below] will form the Heidi Kirk Duffy Center once renovations to the former Greek building are complete.](http://media.collegepublisher.com/media/paper366/stills/c30fn72o.jpg)
The Texas Instruments House, former home of the Chi Phi fraternity, is scheduled to open this fall and will house about 40 students, said IEP executive director John Grandin.
Once completed, the TI house and the current IEP house next to it on Upper College Road will form the Heidi Kirk Duffy Center, which will be used for housing and administrative purposes for IEP.
"The house was in bad shape," Grandin said. "We completely gutted the building, and on the inside we're doing a 100 percent renovation of the building."
The basement of the four-story house will serve as the kitchen and dining area for residents in the IEP and TI houses.
The living arrangements of the TI house will be traditional hallway-style with common bathrooms, such as those in Barlow Residence Hall. Students will reside in either single or double rooms.
Additionally, the entire second floor of the TI house - to be named the Max Kade German Language Learning Community - will be dedicated to German-language IEP students to live in. Grandin said the Max Kade Foundation, which promotes awareness of German studies and funds scholarships, endowments and exchange programs, donated $200,000 toward the renovation of the second floor.
Grandin said this is the first time IEP has had a whole residential floor be dedicated to a specific foreign language.
"Students in the IEP program go abroad for a year to study and do a professional internship and to the extent that they can gear up their German language skills much more before they go, the more they'll get from that experience [in Germany]," Grandin said.
Grandin added he hopes to have German exchange students reside in the German language community.
"Students who aren't as proficient in language will have the opportunity to practice their German with people who have expertise," he said.
Grandin said during an IEP student's fourth year, each student is required to study abroad in a country that coincides with the language they are studying. There they are able to study and intern at a company that is relevant to what they are studying.
"I think this is a wonderful opportunity for our students because having this learning community is a good way of reinforcing what is learned in the classroom," German language professor Norbert Hedderich said.
Hedderich added that URI offers Deutsche Sommerschule am Atlantik, a German summer school where students not only take classes together, but also live together in a learning community.
"It's a great advantage if all the people living there will be majoring in German and they can support each other with the opportunity to talk to each other learning wise," Hedderich, who is the director of the summer school, said. "Hopefully there will also be some exchange students, which will be a good opportunity to reinforce their German."
Current IEP students like the idea of having a new house catered to their needs.
"The new house is going to be great," sophomore Justin Freeman said. "There will be new resources specifically on the German floor that will be great for students studying German to practice with other people."
Freeman, who is interested in living on the German language floor, said living on it will enhance his German language skills and will prepare him for when he studies in Germany the following year.
Programs that will be offered to students living in the learning community will include German language coffee hours, discussions, German television, a dining table specific for German speaking students and a German language film program.
IEP is a five-year program in which students complete a bachelor's of science degree in engineering and a bachelor's of arts in a foreign language.
Grandin said the languages that coincide with IEP include German, French, Spanish and Chinese.
"The purpose of the program is really to prepare students to be able to work globally in an age where business and technology is done very much on a global basis," Grandin said. "So the program is designed to keep URI students and America competitive in an age of tough global competition."
He added if enough interest from French, Chinese and Spanish IEP students were to arise, residential wings of the TI house may be reserved for those languages.
"We're polling students right now to see if they would like to do that," Grandin said.
Students that are interested in living in the new TI house can either pick up an application at the IEP house or get it online at www.uri.edu/iep. Students who want to live in the Max Kade German Language Learning Community can check off the appropriate box when filling out the IEP housing application.
