Collaboration and design: Hands-on the future
Working on the renovation project has pushed students to feel a greater sense of unity with the Green Hope community.
Green Hope junior and interior design student Sophie Meekins (‘25) believed that the project was a valuable experience. “It is a great way to expand our skills by learning how to work with clients and seeing the amount of work and detail that goes into a room transformation,” she said.
The interior design students contributed to making the renovation project a reality since the beginning of the spring semester. The students provided multiple different mockup designs for the librarians to review before the renovation. “It was difficult to choose from so many different mockups which is why we ended up combining different elements we liked from each one instead of just choosing one favorite because when we were going through all of them we found that they were all great in different ways,” Ms. Hladik-Brown said.
Ms. Dry added, “A part of our decision was also because we were trying to stay within a budget that we had. There were a lot of cool features that we would love to do, maybe eventually we can, but we had to figure out what we could do that was really cool through using students’ ideas while sticking within the budget.”
After the librarians decided on a combination of features, the students repainted the room in a week. Impressed by the students’ work, Ms. Hladik-Brown said, “It’s been really cool to just see the process, even when the painting alone was done I feel like the room has been transformed and we have gotten many compliments on the work the students have done.”
Ms. Hladik-Brown added that she learned a lot about the interior design process from watching the students work together to renovate the room. “The amount of work that goes into it is something that was cool to learn. Seeing the mockups that everybody made was really cool and just how different people could tackle the same assignment in really different ways. It was really cool to see.”
When asked about her favorite part of the process, Mrs. Morrow said, “It’s hard to choose just one aspect! However, if I had to pick, I’d say it’s the transformative nature of the project. Watching a dull or outdated space be revitalized with fresh paint, decor and creative design elements can be incredibly satisfying.”
