Vice president of university services Tonia Salvini gives a tour of a refurnished residence hall room on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015 at Pocahontas Hall on the campus of Haskell Indian Nations University. The residence halls received new flooring and other fixtures. Also pictured are Wanda Trujillo, a college resident assistant, and Jim Tucker, director of student housing.

Haskell Indian Nations University is coming off one of its busiest summers in a long time.

This semester, Haskell students and staff are enjoying the results of nearly $4 million worth of improvements to campus facilities completed — or almost completed — over summer break.

“It was like a major vortex on our campus,” said Tonia Salvini, vice president of university services.

More than $800,000 from U.S. Department of Education Title III funds for student retention efforts went toward new furniture and flooring in Haskell’s residence halls and Curtis Hall, said Stephen Prue, executive assistant to the president. Curtis, the dining hall where most of Haskell’s 805 students eat three meals daily, now boasts a shiny dark wood-laminate floor, purple booths, new tables and chairs emblazoned with the Haskell Indian mascot.

Another $2.9 million in federal Title III dollars was put to use specifically for technology.

One of the biggest tech upgrades happened in the residence halls — for the first time, all halls now have Internet access in the rooms.

There’s no buildingwide wi-fi because the walls are too thick, Prue said. But common areas have it, and students can get routers to enable wi-fi within their respective rooms.

Another major technology improvement is the reconfiguration of Parker Hall to allow for a 75-student lecture hall there, Prue said. The new lecture classroom accounts for $921,000 of the Title III technology sum because it required changing the structure of the building, in addition to adding technology inside. The lecture hall is expected to be complete this month.

“That’s a big deal for us,” Prue said.

Other projects enabled by the technology funds include new computers in Tommaney Hall (the library), a new audio system in Coffin Sports Complex, “SMART” podiums and projectors in Blue Eagle Hall and computer refreshes campuswide, Prue said.

Vice president of university services Tonia Salvini gives a tour of a refurnished residence hall room on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015 at Pocahontas Hall on the campus of Haskell Indian Nations University. The residence halls received new flooring and other fixtures. Also pictured are Wanda Trujillo, a college resident assistant, and Jim Tucker, director of student housing.

Needed maintenance

On top of the Title III retention and technology funded projects, Haskell also is completing a batch of needed maintenance projects.

Those include installing a new heating and cooling system in the Stidham Union, which Prue said would be closed until spring for the undertaking — a difficult job to retrofit in a 1965 building.

“They are having to invent an HVAC for it,” Prue said.

Kiva Hall is getting new windows, new flooring and foundation repairs; Blue Eagle Hall is getting a new heating and cooling system; and Curtis Hall required mudjacking to repair the foundation before its new floor and furniture were put in, Prue said.

Long process

Haskell — the only federally run four-year university in the country — is required to go through often lengthy federal processes to modify buildings and secure funding for projects.

Prue said many of this summer’s projects have been in the planning stages for several years — particularly the Parker lecture hall. He credited Haskell President Venida Chenault, who started working on them before she became president, and several other administrators with pushing them through.

“The procurement process can be a little bit slow in the government,” Prue said. “We’re seeing a lot of the projects we’ve been working on finally come to fruition.”

Students give thumbs up

Residence halls are an important part of getting students engaged at college, socially and academically, Salvini said.

In the residence halls, the freshmen men of Blalock Hall are living with some disruption, as workers complete renovations there, more extensive than the other halls.

In addition to new flooring throughout, Haskell is replacing Blalock’s original 1977 bathtubs plus other original furniture and bathroom fixtures that still remained.

In historic Pocahontas Hall, home to freshmen and transfer women, students say they like their new room furniture as well as the plush — and also purple — new couches, chairs and tables in the common areas. The inner courtyard also has been cleaned up and freshly painted, and awaiting installation of outdoor tables and chairs.

“I like the furniture,” said Masi Tallman a freshman resident from Collinsville, Okla., and Cherokee tribe member who was typing an assignment one afternoon last week in the hall library. “It’s nice to hang out here.”

Hall president Cielo Charles, a freshman from Boise, Idaho, and Shoshone-Paiute tribe member, agreed.

“I love it, the girls love it,” Charles said. “I know Pokie (the hall’s nickname) has helped a lot of girls get out of their comfort zone.”