Construction to add five classrooms to the Florida Gym began Tuesday.
The classrooms should be ready by fall semester for anatomy and physiology classes and labs, said Michele Dye, spokeswoman for the College of Health and Human Performance.
One of the basketball courts in the south side of the gym will be transformed into five classrooms and one storage room designed for lab-based classes in the Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology, Dye said.
There will still be two courts available for students to play basketball or other sports, she said. The project was approved in December 2007 and received $425,000 for construction from the Office of the Provost "before all the budget cuts," she said.
Dye said she didn't know if the extra classrooms and classes would call for hiring extra staff.
Mark Tillman, an associate professor in the Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology, said the 5,534 square feet of classrooms would allow the college to offer more course sections.
"It's definitely needed," Tillman said. "We have to turn students away every semester because we don't have enough seats for them."
He said during fall semesters there are usually three anatomy lecture sections that accommodate about 700 students, but lab space is limited. Adding more classrooms with sinks could allow for twice as many lab sections in the fall and classes could be capped at 25 students instead of 30, he said.
The ongoing construction will cut lab space in half for now, but Tillman said he hopes the "growing pains" will be worth it.
