<p>Hey, I'm curious but I see you posting a lot on this board. I don't know if you said this before or whatever, but are you a student at Northeastern?</p>
<p>My son has not yet decided where he is going for the next four years. Though we have been living just 35 minutes north of Boston for over 12 years, we've never thought that he would attend a college in Boston one day. </p>
<p>I was in the NEU campus with my son last Friday. I must say that the NEU campus is very impressive. The speech from the dean of CAS made us believe that NEU is a good school as well. However, I noticed something while we were touring the campus:</p>
<p>1.Most NEU buildings are very new and modern. The CAS (my son will be majoring at Econ.) building (i.e. Lake Hall), however, is just an old New England warehouse. The girl took us into the Hall from the back/side entrance. The stairs is the industrial metal kind and about 3 feet wide. The hall way is about 3 feet wide too. I don't know whether the building is only for the administration purpose, but the conference rooms and professor's offices are in that building too. I also noticed that there was a computer room (for student) next to the conference room where we were giving the sales pitch. I was totally shocked by the old computer equipments/PCs they have in that room. I know that each university is good/emphasized at some majors and pouring lots money in those programs. My impression was that in NEU, CAS probably is on the lowest of the list in turns of spending.</p>
<p>2.On Friday late morning, as we were walking through the campus, there were three girls wearing Bikini lying on the lawn in front of the dormitory. I might be old-fashioned, but I thought the better place to do this was on the balcony, next to a pool, or at beach. Anyway, I was wondering whether or not these girls are co-op students because, at the same time, most of the students were busy going to buildings for classes. After seeing this, I started having the doubt about NEU is a good place to learn academically while there are many co-op students living around the campus. </p>
<p>Im glad to hear that you and your son were impressed by the campus. The university has spent over a half a billion dollars on campus improvements over the last few years. Now to address your questions:</p>
<ol>
<li> The CAS Building (Lake, Meserve, and Holmes)
The facility is in fact an old factory building. It is quite a maze and is not in the best of shape (esp. compared to the new buildings on campus). However, the building is only used for administrative purposes. Your son will not be having any classes there. CAS students basically make use of two facilities: </li>
</ol>
<p>(1) Shillman Hall. This is a state of the art classroom building that was built a few years ago. This is what Shillman looks like:</p>
<p>There are also some new classrooms in the West Village buildings which CAS also uses.
In short, you son will take his courses in some really nice classrooms. Just about all of them have comfortable tiered seating with the latest technology. </p>
<p>As for Computer Labs, there are several across campus, including the huge computer lab on the first floor of the Snell Library. All the labs have state of the art equipment. There are also a number of Cyber Cafes around campus that your son can use and most of the campus has wireless internet access. I doubt that anyone uses the computers that you saw in Lake Hall. They are probably just being stored there until the university can discard them. By the way, all the faculty get new computers every three years, so it is doubtful that even the faculty would use them.</p>
<p>FYI, there will be a new campus master plan released later this year which is expected to add an additional 2 million square feet in building space to the campus (new dorms, academic and research facilities).</p>
<ol>
<li> Girls Wearing Bikinis on Campus</li>
</ol>
<p>Since these students were on campus in the morning, it is highly doubtful that they were co-op students. Students who are on co-op would be working downtown during the day at one of the various companies in the program (Fidelity, John Hancock, etc.). The three girls that you saw probably did not have any classes that morning. However, most students who enjoy sunbathing go to the park along the Charles River or to Back Bay Fens which is huge grassy park near campus (usually there is usually a text book in their hand). But dont worry; Northeastern is a very serious academic institution.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the images, even though a few were broken. As for the girls in bikinis, you should see UVa! UVa is an extremely prestigous, academic institution, and the dorm quads were full of girls sunbathing. It was almost hard to walk! I actually interpreted this as a really relaxed, happy student body. Every kid looked like they were having an amazing time. So, I'd take those girls more as an indication of being representative of a relaxed and fun student body, but you certainly can't make any assumptions about the academic experience from them.</p>
<p>Girls in bikinis are the norm at every campus every where. We work in construction and at a prestigous University. Our workers have to sign something saying they won't look at the girls..yeah right.</p>
<p><strong><em>Look what I found</em></strong>*</p>
<p>Hey guys, as mentioned above, the university will be submitting a new masterplan to the city this year. The new plan is expected to add about 2 million square feet of additional building space to the campus at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. This is on top of the half billion that university already spent on campus improvements in the last few years. The new master plan is expected to include several new luxury style dorms, a new indoor football/athletic stadium, and several new research and academic buildings. Here are some preliminary sketches that were created by NEU's masterplan architect that I found on their website (be sure to use the scroll button on the bottom of each sketch/design): </p>
<p>The proposed new buildings are in yellow and blue (note: all we need to go through a city approval process with community input). The football /athlectic stadium is the light blue building with the rounded roof towards the backside of campus.</p>
