Talbot Hall will undergo $5.9 million renovations set to start in 2015. The renovations will happen to the KNSU-FM radio station, Bob Blazier Television Station, Mary Danos Theater, replacement of the roof and expansion of the lobby.

Mike Davis, assistant vice president of facilities, said the $5.9 million would be divided into three parts: Broadcasting $800,000, Mary Danos Theater $1.5 million and the leftover funds will be used for replacing the roof and expanding the lobby. Davis said they have hired Eskew+Dumez+Ripple of New Orleans as the architect firm, but the contractor bid will not be picked until January 2015.

Lance Arnold, chairman of broadcasting and faculty adviser for KNSU-FM and NTW-TW, soon to be known as KNSU-TV, said with the increase of student interest in video production, he is ready to move the television station into the twenty-first century.

Arnold said, “We have been working with the Nicholls Athletic Department, but we don’t have the facilities and our studio is inadequate for a lot of their needs.”

He said there are plans to turn the studio virtual with ground-to-ceiling green screens.

“This will allow us to create any type of studio and background we want to use, ” said Arnold. The broadcasting department will also purchase state-of-the-art equipment, such as cameras and lights, to accommodate the virtual studio green screens.

The adjacent room to the television studio, room 107, will lose its L-shape after they clear the wall between the classroom and Arnold’s current office. Arnold’s office will move to the smaller editing computer lab between the classroom and studio. Once room 107 is expanded, a double monitor computer lab will be available for television student to use for editing productions. Minor improvements to KNSU-FM will include new carpet and a fresh layer of paint on the radio station’s interior walls.

Davis said the expansion of the lobby was added to the list of things to improve because of a safety concern for students using the front doors of the building. Because of the temperature difference inside and outside of the building, the glass doors are covered in condensation. The condensation leaks to the ground, and stays there. The cemented floor gets slick, causing a slipping hazard for students walking inside the building. Davis said the plan is to extend the front entrance past the set of outside staircases to include them in the building’s interior structure. The doors will remain glass, but they will be out from under the roof allowing for a dry walkway to the entrance of Talbot. Students will also be able to enter Talbot using an outside door, which would keep foot traffic in the theater lobby to strictly performance times.

Director of the Nicholls’s Players, Anna Broussard, said the upgrades to the Mary Danos Theater are greatly needed.

“I had some small input into what things I would like to have changed, for instance, the lights and sound,” Broussard said.

The popular consensus about what should be the first thing to go, Broussard believed the chairs should be taken care of first, because they are old and really ugly.

Davis said he does not see problems arising in this construction project that plagued the construction of the John Folse Culinary Institution building, which is currently behind schedule.