Accommodation additions Office of Disability Services opens second testing location

from ODS, page 1

Grace Lynch, a junior psychology major at JMU, said she uses the original ODS testing center when she can but emphasized that it’s consistently booked, making it difficult to find space to take a test. Lynch said, on average, she uses the testing center about three times a week.

“The center is helpful in my academic success when there is room available,” Lynch said.

Madyson Haas, a junior psychology major, shared Lynch’s sentiment about the busyness of the original testing location. She said although the testing center is helpful to have quiet, less distracting areas for test taking, it can often be overcrowded. Haas said there’ve been roughly 10 times over the past year where either the time of her class has been booked or the entire day has been booked, forcing her to take the test or quizzes earlier or later than the rest of her class. However, she said she thinks the opening of the second location will improve this issue.

“I do think the new center is helping a lot with how many people they can serve because the old center only fits 18 students, and this new location more than doubled that number,” Haas said.

Chris Kinney, associate director of ODS, said the new location includes more windows, less distractions and a quieter area that allows for a more positive testing experience. With this, JMU is working on upgrading the original space, too, by adding noise reduction devices.

Kinney said the discussion of expanding to a second location was originally initiated by Tim Miller, vice president for student affairs, but many people helped pull the project together, including electricians and facilities management.

The new location didn’t cost JMU much, Kinney said. Facilities management pulled existing materials from other places, like table dividers, he said, and added computers into the center that JMU already owned — “not a lot of money was spent overhead,” he said.

Kinney said ODS has also hired four more staff members to coordinate the new center with two shifts of part-time workers throughout the day.

ODS saw an opportunity over winter break to work on and finalize the expansion,Kinney said, and the new location was built in about a month, beginning in January and finishing Feb.

1. The new location officially began taking students on Feb. 6.

Bright said ODS works in demand for all accommodations, so as the student population keeps increasing, ODS administrators will continue to discuss expansion of additional testing centers. Once the current two centers reach overcapacity, then ODS will revisit the idea of growth, he said.

CONTACT Abby Chamot at chamotar@dukes.jmu.edu. For more coverage of JMU and Harrisonburg news, follow the news desk on Twitter @BreezeNewsJMU.