World Class Facilities (final story)

Humanities and Social Studies Center

World Class Facilities

The Humanities and Social Sciences Center Atrium taken at sunset from outside on the east side of the building.

Essential to Grinnell College’s exceptional liberal arts education is a facility that encourages collaboration, creativity, and inquiry among the entire campus community. In the Humanities and Social Studies Center (HSSC), the College community finds an atmosphere of intellectual excitement central to the pursuit of knowledge, wherever it leads.

Bringing non-fine arts humanities and social studies together in one building, the HSSC houses 39 technology-rich classrooms and inquiry labs and 145 faculty offices.

The intentional design both honors and preserves the history of Carnegie Hall and Alumni Recitation Hall (ARH), while looking toward the future.

Built to create an environment of multidisciplinary collaboration, the HSSC includes dedicated research spaces that are grouped into five interdisciplinary neighborhoods and provide students, faculty, and staff from various disciplines opportunities to meet, discuss, and discover.

This energy-efficient facility is the greenest building on campus, designed to use only 45 percent of the energy used by a similar-sized building that meets today’s building energy code.

We invite you to take a virtual tour of this wonderful, innovative new building. Recent graduates Saketan Anand ’21 and Abby Leonard ’21 lead us through the HSSC and share some of the many amazing features the building has to offer.

“The case study classroom is magnificent. Students sit in tiered semicircular rows facing two large screens on which different high-resolution images can be projected at the same time. I can lecture in the well of the room or move seamlessly to a discussion in which all the students can see and respond to everyone else. This classroom is a pedagogical dream come true."

—Monessa Cummins, associate professor of classics

“Our classrooms used to limit the ways I could help my students learn with one another. In the HSSC, the classrooms have supported what I want to do with my students; and more than that, they have shown me new ways for us to learn together. And the HSSC is much more than the classrooms; after this year of isolation and distance, it is the perfect space to bring us back together in community.”

—Erik Simpson, professor of English and Samuel R. and Marie-Louise Rosenthal Professor of Humanities

“Having access to a transformative facility is essential for academic work. The HSSC is invaluable in supporting creative teaching and learning experiences and serves as a catalyst for new ideas and approaches.”

—Xavier Escandell, associate professor and director of the Data Analysis and Social Inquiry Lab (DASIL)

“I love studying here and know that anytime I come here, I will find a friendly face. It’s a great place to run into friends, classmates, and professors. It gives me a great place to study, opportunities to ask questions, and have interesting conversations in general. I learn here, just like I do in the classrooms.”

—Abby Leonard ’21, biology major, Oak Park, Ill.