In an effort to focus on covering the needs of students, John Brown University recently announced a number of projects and renovations meant to better accommodate the community and to appeal to prospective students who regularly visit university grounds.
On April 19, JBU President Chip Pollard highlighted ongoing and future building projects during a town hall meeting. “We recently had the [board of directors] retreat, and the renovations have been approved in concept for a capital campaign,” Pollard said during an interview with The Threefold.
Capital campaigns are fundraising campaigns by colleges and universities to meet goals such as improving facilities and buildings, gifting scholarships and implementing programs to support students.
Some common areas around campus are already undergoing building and renovation. Students who visit Walker Student Center will notice that the old mailroom is being repurposed as an expanded commuter’s lounge for JBU’s growing commuter population. The space is meant to be a dedicated place for commuter students to hang out, eat, relax and study.
Other upcoming projects include a common patio area for the Sheridan townhouses and an ambitious renovation of the Mabee Learning Resource Center, located across from Walker Student Center. The LRC renovations will bring many upgrades and changes to the current layout, essentially converting the space into an “academic center” for students, said Pollard.
“There’s going to be an academic center on the first floor [of the LRC] that’s about academic support,” Pollard explained. “We’ll be bringing our Student Support Services, Writing Center tutoring and the office of diversity there.”
According to blueprints provided to The Threefold, proposed renovations for the first floor will also include a media center, a social gaming area and a café with an outdoor plaza. Some current features such as the Help Desk and the Writing Center will remain as accessible services.
“We are talking about moving the coffee shop down the hill up to more at the center of campus,” Pollard said. “Then, the library would be moved to the second floor where there’s a big open area to create a bigger reading room.”
The LRC second floor area will be mainly dedicated to the library, with brand new reading and study rooms available to students. The circulation desk and librarians’ area will be moved upstairs, and there will be a data center added to the space.
While these renovations will appeal to some students, specifically those who have previously expressed frustration at the lack of accessibility to some areas of campus, some renovations have not gone without criticism. As part of the proposed renovations, The Threefold Advocate newsroom will be relocated from the LRC, where the now-defunct communication department operated, to the Cathedral of the Ozarks.
“Anytime we make a change, it is hard,” Pollard said about some students’ disapproval. “We’re going to redo the space and try to make it as good as the spaces they already had.”
According to Pollard, the rationale also comes from the newspaper’s recent shift in supervision from the communication department to the English department. “In some ways, it makes much less sense for it to be over [in the LRC building] when the supervision is going to happen [in the Cathedral], so it will feel like [the newsroom] will be adjacent to where the faculty will be,” Pollard further explained.
The new Threefold newsroom is currently undergoing renovations, along with other areas on campus and is projected to be available by fall 2022.
Photo courtesy of Katelyn Kingcade