New school year brings new traffic booth locations, people and more at KU

photo by: John Young

Thomas Chalmers, right, and former KU chancellor Del Shankel reminisce about Thomas' father, former chancellor E. Laurence Chalmers during a reception held Sunday afternoon in Chalmers Hall following a ceremony in Marvin Hall in which the former Art and Design Building as renamed Chalmers Hall.

Today is the first day of school for KU’s Lawrence campus, and with this new school year comes a number of new things. From newly located traffic booths to multimillion-dollar new buildings to beaks on buses, here are a few worth noting:

Newly relocated traffic booths

There’s more campus access at one booth location and less access — actually, no access — at another. The traffic booth formerly at 14th Street and Jayhawk Boulevard has moved inward to Jayhawk Boulevard and Lilac Lane. So now anyone can drive onto Lilac Lane during the school day (though parking there is still by permit only).

The booth formerly on Sunflower Road at Sunnyside Avenue, next to the Prairie Acre, is gone. Instead there’s now a set of automated gates, located a bit farther up the hill on Sunflower Road, that only authorized university vehicles will be allowed through during the day, according to KU Parking. So even people with daytime Jayhawk Boulevard driving privileges will have to get there another way (myself included — I don’t get basketball tickets, but I do have a media parking pass, which is almost as good). KU Parking says those gates will open to drive-through traffic at night.

New name for Art and Design Building

KU scheduled some fanfare yesterday for the renaming of the Art and Design Building to Chalmers Hall. Read more about the last former chancellor to have a building named after him here.

photo by: John Young

Thomas Chalmers, right, and former KU chancellor Del Shankel reminisce about Thomas' father, former chancellor E. Laurence Chalmers during a reception held Sunday afternoon in Chalmers Hall following a ceremony in Marvin Hall in which the former Art and Design Building as renamed Chalmers Hall.

New deans

Two new deans arrived on campus this summer and are now presiding over the School of Social Welfare and the School of Architecture, Design and Planning. Meet Paul Smokowski and Mahesh Daas.

New paint jobs for KU on Wheels

KU on Wheels buses have bold new paint schemes. And beaks.

Paperless parking permits (and tickets)

KU Parking today launched its fancy new e-permit system — which includes license plate-reading cameras to scope out which cars belong in a particular lot and which will be getting ticketed.

New residence halls

A total of 700 students are at home in the newly completed Oswald and Self residence halls, which I got to tour last week. The $48.6 million project features two mirror-image dorms joined by a commons area open to all Daisy Hill residents.

A new home for the School of Engineering

The Learned Engineering Expansion Project Phase 2 building, LEEP2 for short, has its first classes today. The new $65 million building is now the centerpiece of KU’s engineering complex. My favorite thing about the new building: “light wells.” Full story (with explanation of what those are) here.

photo by: Richard Gwin

The new Learned Engineering Expansion Project Phase 2 building, 1536 W. 15th St., will open to its first classes this fall. The 5 million, 110,100-square-foot facility features collaborative study spaces and “active-learning” classrooms to foster teamwork.

New KU Common Book

It’s Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms.” There’s a marathon reading session planned all day Friday at Nunemaker Hall. More on that and other Common Book events here.

New lilacs (coming soon)

No one seems to be sure exactly how old the large, old lilac bushes along Lilac Lane were. But safe to say, they were old. KU tore them all out in recent weeks and plans to plant new bushes next month, which presumably will be there for decades to come.

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KU Today, our annual KU edition of the Journal-World, just published yesterday and is packed with some of these plus many more stories about other new things going on at KU. Browse the KU edition here, and as always, if you have a tip about something else new at KU, let me know via email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, via phone at 832-7187 or on Twitter @saramarieshep.