New buildings will improve campus experience
Improved college front door access, more classrooms and bigger labs are coming

Design work has started for the construction of four new campus buildings, identified as priorities in UCC’s Development Plan.

These new buildings will better serve several of the programs on campus that are now bursting at the seams.

The Regional Allied Health and Sciences building is the first priority and will help the nursing, health and dental programs as well as provide up-to-date labs for most of the sciences, replacing the small and cramped labs that are now being used by a record number of students.

The second priority is the Industrial Arts and Technology building which will bring together the Automotive, Welding and Fabrication and Construction Technology programs, as well as a new Diesel Technology Program into a 46,000 square foot training facility.

And to improve visibility and access to incoming students, a new structure near the current Administration building’s present location will house Student Services including registration, advising, financial aid, job placement and the testing center. This new building, listed as the third priority in the plan, will also house Administration Services.

“The student is number one, and we talk about the student being number one,” said Beverly Brandt, Vice President for Administrative Services. But for new students trying to find where they need to go to register, “number one” may not be how they would say they feel. “We want to bring students forward to the front of the campus and make it the entrance,” Brandt concluded.

Architects have been selected and have started working on a conceptual design of the new buildings.

For the interior of the new two-story Student Services/Administration building in the front of the campus, the architects have planned a campus visit in January to interview students to see what the students want as part of the design process.

The architects will also be interviewing those who work in student development. They’re going to watch how students go about getting registered and how they go about getting financial aid and watch what the students do for a whole week in January,” said Brandt.

The conceptual design will then go to the UCC board in March.

“The architects have talked about the [current location of the Administration Building as becoming] a living room for the campus, a place where students can come in to register and hang out and feel like they are at home,” said Brandt. “The whole bottom floor would be registration, counseling, everything that is about student intake. The first place a student comes will be the front door of the campus.”

Instead of adding onto the back of the current Administration Building, the new building will be closer to the roadway and will have additional parking on both sides. A new fountain will be located in the back of the building.

“We asked the architects to put themselves in our students’ shoes, ‘What would make you feel comfortable?’ The architects thought outside the box and thought about going back to being students themselves. They wanted something that felt like home so their language was the ‘living room of the campus.’ When [students] come into register they [won’t feel like they are] being kicked from this building, to that building, to that building to the next building,” according to Brandt.

Brandt also indicated that a team of student development leaders will visit other community colleges to help them get a better idea about how things are done elsewhere. “Student development leaders really know what they want. They will be looking at what can be done to create the best possible intake for students.”

The architect has proposed that the board room, president’s office and most of administration presently located in the current Administration Building be moved to the second floor of the new front door building.

Half of the funding will come from the legislature and the rest will come from a bond for this building. “We know what our priorities are so now we are going to formulate with our board and see what our other possible funding sources are as well,” Brandt said.

The space vacated by moving Student Services out of the Campus Center to this new building will be used to expand the student activities area and possibly add more dining space.

“We might just shift everything over a little bit or create something funky down there that will appeal to students as well. Its hard on a community college to really have a campus life, because most of the students have families and jobs, and were going to work on that [and make it feel more] like home to them,” Brandt said.

Brandt indicated that funding has already been secured for the Allied Health and Sciences Building, “We have a pretty good feeling about the Industrial Arts Building being funded. This [Administration] Building was our third priority in the legislature and we feel really good about that.”

The campus has not seen the construction of a new building for many years. Most of the science and health labs are nearing 40 years old and are inadequate and don’t meet current standards, according to Brandt.

“We have the opportunity, being the regional health trainer here in southwest Oregon, to do really great things with this new building and having current technology, so when our students graduate they can go out and get jobs. Our science students, when they transfer to a four year university, we want them to have the best opportunity for learning,” she said.

“Its exciting; these are not little buildings. It will be fun to have a new face on campus and to have some new spaces that are energy efficient and respect the environment and still respect our culture here on campus,” declared Brandt.

The cost of the buildings is presently estimated to match the projections of the Campus Master Plan. “The architects now are meeting the stake holders, administration, faculty and, later, the students to see what the fit will be in those buildings, and they have really good ideas. The faculty has all worked together, and they have a really good idea about what needs to be in the buildings,” said Brandt.

For some time there has been a shortage of storage space. [These new buildings] will have nice labs with flexible rooms, so we can pull walls and have a large class or a small class. Many students tend to gather together to study in study groups. Part of the priority for those buildings is where we can have seating areas so students can study together,” said Brandt.

What would the new building be called? “It’s not going to be the Administration Building; it’s going to be the front door. When you are making [the process] about the students, what would you call it? I don’t know; I challenge everybody to give me a name” invited Brandt. “If anybody has a suggestion I would certainly love to hear it, because right now it is the Administration Building, and that’s not going to fit anymore,” said Brandt.

“All these building are really about the students’ learning. We are trying to get the most current teaching and learning facilities for our students so they can be competitive in the market place. We have a great faculty, and they do a fine job teaching, but we feel the experience will be even better for the students with more up-to-date facilities,” Brandt emphasized.

After the construction of these new buildings, Lockwood Hall, Wayne Crouch and the science building will all be renovated and made available with up to an additional 21 classrooms and office space for faculty and other campus needs.

The Mainstream is a student publication of Umpqua Community College.