Campus Services dug alongside the south exterior wall of Callaway Memorial Center, as offices and classrooms (including a graduate computer lab) flooded multiple times in the past six months. Photo by Erin Baker.
DeKalb Water Main Breaks
Parts of DeKalb County experienced low water pressure yesterday as a water main broke in southeast Decatur.University Media Relations Director Elaine Justice sent an all-Emory email advising the Emory community to take “maximum steps necessary to conserve water,” but as of yesterday evening, Emory had not recieved any complaints of low water pressure, according to Campus Life Interim Assistant Vice President Andy Wilson.
Around 4 p.m. yesterday, DeKalb County Watershed Management had normalized pressure in most of the county, according DeKalb Communications.
Callaway Flooding and Waterproofing
Noticed some large mounds of dirt next to Callaway?Those 200 cubic yards of soil resulted from a waterproofing project needed for the Callaway Memorial Center, according to Karen M. Salisbury, the chief of staff and director of customer relations and support for Campus Services.
Parts of South Callaway have experienced “water intrusion,” or flooding, Salisbury said. These parts include S107, a graduate computer lab, and the S106 office suite, where the offices of three Center for the Study of Human Health members and James M. Cox, Jr. Professor of Journalism Hank Klibanoff are located.
Some of those offices and several classrooms have flooded three times since August, most recently in early January, Klibanoff wrote in an email to the Wheel.
The S107 first flooded in 2013, “underwent extensive and lengthy repairs, reopened, flooded again and remains closed,” Klibanoff wrote.
When her office was flooded in early September, the suite was filled with fans and blowers to dry the carpets, but nothing in her office was damaged, Human Health Visiting Assistant Professor Jennifer Sarrett wrote in an email to the Wheel.
In order to repair the problem, Emory dug down along the side of Callaway and is placing new drainage and coating the exterior wall with a special product.
The dirt will be replaced in the next few days, if weather permits, since the project has to wait until the wall is dry to close the hole.
Tree Removed from Quad
A longtime Quadrangle fixture that shaded Emory students for decades, the Black Oak in front of Callaway, was removed over winter break due to decay in its upper trunk, according to a Dec. 15 Emory press release.The tree had a long history. It was likely planted in the 1940s, and a decade ago it had suffered dieback, where peripheral parts of the tree are damaged or killed, due to soil compaction effects on the tree’s root zone, according to the press release.
It was scheduled to be removed at that time, but Facilities Management used new techniques to save the tree for several more years.
After inspection last May, the University decided to remove the tree, since its trunk had decayed significantly and would fail in coming years, according to the press release.
However, another tree was re-planted in its place earlier this week, according to Salisbury, which will provide a study spot for students in the coming decades.
New Login Process
Emory students now must login to all library licensed online content - ebooks, journals, databases - no matter where they are, according to Trisha Wilson, project manager with Library and Information Technology Services (LITS).Before, University members only had to login to these resources from off-campus, Wilson wrote in an email to the Wheel.
Now, faculty, staff and students must use their Emory usernames and passwords to access content both on and off campus.
The process was changed in order to create better security for the library resources, better data on how the licensed resources are being used and savings in cases where LITS has “more targeted groups accessing only relevant resources,” Director of the Scholarly Communications Office Lisa Macklin wrote in an email to the Wheel.
Room Reservation Changes
In order to reserve group study rooms in Woodruff Library and the Cox Computing center, students will now use the Student Digital Life (SDL) Resource Scheduler, according to a Jan. 12 all-Emory email from SDL Manager Tony Shiver. The Resource Scheduler shows all available rooms at a certain time and lets students submit bookings for regular study spaces, rooms with A/V technology and rooms with video conferencing capabilities.With the Resource Scheduler, students will no longer use their Office 365 email accounts. To learn more, visit the site.
