Construction begins on upcoming Student Success Center

Construction begins on Student Success Center

Students can look forward to easier access to mentoring and tutoring resources as well as potential future employment with the upcoming Student Success Center set for a Spring 2022 opening.

A groundbreaking ceremony on campus officially marked the beginning of the demolition of the Social Services building, in order to make way for the new Student Success Center.

With colleges like the J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences lacking a student success center, many people on campus had been advocating this project’s creation in order to provide a fair distribution of the University’s resources to all students.

“I’m excited as an academic advisor that will have a true space to accommodate our students,” said Fulbright College adviser Suzanne Wyatt.

This new space will be a 71,000-square-foot, $45 million, collegiate-Gothic limestone structure, located between Old Main and Memorial Hall, where the former Social Work building was. That building will be destroyed in a two-part demolition plan, beginning with the removal of paneling and other fixtures no longer up to code. The second phase will consist of removing the remaining structure.

The new building will offer a Fulbright advising studio, a life design studio, a STEM studio, as well as tutoring and classroom space. Other programs offered are the 360 Advising Program and the Accelerated Student Achievement Program (ASAP), both of which aim at assisting first-generation Arkansas students with counseling and resources to help them graduate on schedule.

“We’re particularly interested in first-generation students and ensuring they graduate with a degree,” Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz said. “The center will enable us to work on a better and bigger scale.”

Associated Student Government President, Jared Pinkerton said that the new center will create over 300 new job opportunities, many of which will be available for students. The center will also offer more resources for Supplemental Instruction.

“From the perspective of Student Government, we are always looking for ways to help students be successful,” Pinkerton said. “Students in this building will be investing in themselves.”

 The director of student success and associate vice provost, Trevor Francis agreed. Francis said, “you’re not going to have an excellent program in student success without students helping students.”

“We’re trying to make sure we reach and exceed graduation and retention goals,” said Francis, who led the ceremony. “Our overarching goal is to make more students graduate.”

The Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management, Mike Johnson, described the center as a “centralization of the overarching structure of what a student success center does, trying to create a consistency among students; trying to put scholastic, economic, wellness and all of those things into one building.”

With these new resources having a centralized location as well as new outdoor dining and courtyard areas, this new center “is a key part of the University of Arkansas’ strategy to advance student success,” according to a statement from the University. As Chancellor Joseph Steinmetz said, “above all this facility will allow us to embrace more students.”

 “We emphasize one student at a time,” Steinmetz said, “students are the unique individuals that have the hopes, dreams, and aspirations.”