Brown and White Vol. 133 no. 18

              The Brown and White Vol. 133 No. 18
Friday, November 10, 2017 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Iacocca dining hall gets first update since ’80s
FACULTY MEMBER
ACCUSED OF SEXUAL
MISCONDUCT
By MADISON PETERSON-PORTA
B&W Staff
In 1986, Lehigh bought sev-eral
buildings and 742 acres
of land from Bethlehem Steel
Corporation. That land became
Lehigh’s Mountaintop Campus,
the site of Iacocca Hall, which
houses the College of Education
and the biological sciences depart-ment.
The Wood Dining Room, located
in Iacocca Hall, originally operat-ed
as Bethlehem Steel’s cafeteria.
The room was filled with dark
wooden fixtures, ’70s-style colors,
outdated furniture and perpetual-ly-
closed heavy curtains.
The curtains hung around the
solar controls, which were used
for presentations. Since there
were no blinds, the curtains had
to be physically shifted into posi-tion.
On Nov. 3 those curtains were
finally reopened after renovations
were made to the dining room.
This is the first refurbishment of
Wood Dining Room since Lehigh
bought the building in the ’80s.
“Iacocca Hall needed to be
updated,” said Mary Kay Baker,
the director of conference and
special housing services at
Lehigh. “The room needed a more
sophisticated look to the space
to bring it into the 21st century
and become a Lehigh venue, as
opposed to Bethlehem Steel.”
The dining room hosts a variety
of engagements, from conferences
and Lehigh department events to
private celebratory events like as
weddings.
Since 2015, Lehigh’s department
of conference services worked
with Unique Venue consultants
on the development of a new plan
that would accommodate changes
to Iacocca’s Conference Center.
EwingCole, a Philadelphia-based
architecture and engineer-ing
firm, completed the project
for Lehigh. EwingCole won the
bid process to work on the updat-ed
Wood Dining Room, beating
several other companies who sub-mitted
bids.
The company’s vision was a
match for Lehigh.
The project renovation team
included EwingCole, conference
services, facility services and
Sodexo staff.
“The team worked together to
achieve the best design impact for
the established budget, (which was
decided by Conference Services),”
project manager Kristine Dwyer
said. “EwingCole was very good to
work with throughout the project
development and construction.”
University architect Brent
Stringfellow said the dining room
renovations allow the room to
have a modernized finish with
plenty of open space.
Michael Ioannou/B&W Staff
Iacocca Hall, pictured in this March 9, 2016, file photo, was originally used as part of a research facility for Bethlehem Steel Corporation
before it was bought by Lehigh in 1986. The Wood Dining Room located in Iacocca Hall went through its first refurbishment this year.
By EMILY WARD &
KLAUDIA JAZWINSKA
Editor in Chief and Managing Editor
A faculty member has been
accused of “sexual and other inap-propriate
conduct,” according to a
statement emailed to the universi-ty
community by the Office of the
Provost.
The faculty member has been
placed on paid leave and will
remain on leave until the inves-tigation
into these allegations is
completed. During this time, the
faculty member will not be permit-ted
on Lehigh’s campus or in its
facilities.
The Office of Communications
and Public Affairs had no further
comment.
“A lot of people nowadays like
styles from the 1950s and 1960s,
and we made that the central
theme of the room,” Stringfellow
said. “One of the major changes
we included was a presentation
wall. In the old room, before the
changes were made, doors from
the kitchen opened directly into
the dining room and we wanted
to fix that. Now with the new
wall, there is a better functioning
space.”
Upcoming projects for Lehigh
include a renovation to Chandler-
Ullmann Hall.