Marlene Mayo struggles to find her office as she paces through the halls on second floor of Tydings Hall. She walks into the wrong room twice before finally finding the workspace for the Center for East Asian Studies, where she is the coordinator of the group's certificate program.
"I think this is the right place," she says cautiously as she walks in.
It is unlabeled in the foyer of a few offices for professors in the government and politics department. The office, once located in Preinkert Field House, had been reduced to a few empty desks stuffed into corners with unplugged telephones and computer parts scattered across them. In the new location, there are no bookshelves, or even books for that matter. Mayo doesn't even have a key.
The center had recently been forced to move into these quarters to make room for the school's Arabic flagship program, a move symbolic not only of a cubicle crunch, but also of Arabic's rapid growth on the campus.
Only a little more than a decade ago, the university didn't offer a single course in Arabic. But since Sept. 11, there's been an increased focus on the language and culture of the Middle East, said Jim Harris, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities.
A Persian studies center opened two years ago, and most recently the flagship program was founded to train professionals and graduate students in advanced language skills, giving it major applications for government workers in the FBI and CIA.
"The world we live in since al-Qaeda hit the twin towers is one of which the Middle East is of paramount importance," he said.
After receiving a half-million dollar grant from the federal government, the program built its own library and doubled in size since originally opening a year ago. It has extended its facilities into two offices formerly occupied by the East Asian studies center, as the Arabic program has expanded into a nationally recognized institute.
"We give people an opportunity to learn Arabic in a meaningful way and to relate the topic to a wider context," said Alaa Elgibali, director of the program. "We need to keep it at this level, expanding access to authentic materials."
Left behind in this growth, however, faculty in the East Asian studies center have seen little faculty support, and were recently denied a federal grant for that very reason, Robert Ramsey, the program's director, said.
Meanwhile, with limited access to her official office in Tydings Hall, Mayo runs the center's certificate program that allows students to be recognized for their studies of East Asia out of a lounge in the history department.
"How can we operate effectively if we don't have space, if we don't have a secretary?" Mayo asked. "We simply cannot impress our peers, foundations or the federal government if we don't have these things."
But space has always been an issue for the College of Arts and Humanities, which faces some of the tightest office crowding across the campus.
In Susquehanna Hall, multiple English professors share offices. The Driskell Center for African-American art operates in a makeshift holding in the Cole Field House. The university's branch of the National Foreign Language Center operated as far as Washington before they were able to move on the campus.
"We're struggling to catch up to the space we need," Harris said. "We're only keeping ahead of it by being creative."
Contact reporter Ben Slivnick at slivnickdbk@gmail.com.
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