With the recent reopening of Hewitt Hall this semester, the University’s Facilities Services office now turns toward its next construction project in Mahar Hall.

In spring 2025, the history department and the social sciences departments, including anthropology, criminal justice, economics, human development, politics, psychology and sociology, were all moved to other available spaces across campus ahead of the building’s closure over the summer.

Throughout the summer, professors were given the task of moving out of Mahar, which came with some difficulty.

“It was a bit of a challenge, but the [university] campus had movers to move things,” Dr. John Kane, professor of economics and director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching in Penfield Library, said. “The hard part was to deal with the elevator [in Mahar], which made it difficult for professors who wanted to move their own things to their new offices.”

Mahar Hall is not just closing because it is another building to check off the seemingly never ending list of renovations that SUNY Oswego has. Mahar’s elevator particularly had been a sore spot for students and faculty alike, with constant lengthy interruptions in service, impacting class availability and location, and professors’ abilities to host accessible office hours and events.

Dr. Kane concedes that “campus has been congested for a while” due to the many large and long-term construction projects as many of his colleagues in the economics department moved to the similarly aged basement of Lanigan Hall nearby.

Another department from Mahar that has been moved to the basement of Lanigan Hall is the anthropology department. Dr. Alanna Ossa, chair of the anthropology department and newly-named director of the School of Humanities in the University’s College of Liberal Arts, Sciences and Engineering is optimistic about Mahar’s future and for what her department can do despite their current limitations.

“We’ve worked it out okay, there hasn’t been much in terms of surprises,” Ossa said.

Many other professors and students in the department are excited to see what will happen next with Mahar Hall and the improvements that can be made.

“Mahar has been in need of updating, with a bunch of deferred maintenance projects, for a long time,” Kane said. “It’ll be nice to see it updated and to have more than two electrical outlets in rooms, with everyone having laptops now.”