Category: Campus Construction

The Campus Construction Beat is covered by reporter Coleman Conner.

Posted on

PatWalker

Pat Walker renovations bring new and improved resources to campus

By Coleman Bonner 
The Razorback Reporter 

Completed renovations at the Pat Walker Health Center have officials excited about the easier access to services related to sexual assault, mental health and other important services. 

The renovation included a 20,000-square-foot addition that offers a new home to several services as well as improved space for services already offered. The expanding health center added three classrooms, student study areas, a new home for the Women’s Center and larger space for Wellness & Health Promotion and Administrative Services. 

A major development of the finished renovations is a resource center for sexual assault victims and services. The Garland center, across the street from Pat Walker, was rented for extra space for the wellness center during the renovations and has since been transformed into the full-time home for the sexual assault services, with the wellness services being relocated back to the Pat Walker center. 

While 18-24-year-old college-age women are three times as likely to experience sexual assault as all other women, according to a study by the National Crime Victimization Survey, only 20% of female student victims report the incidents to authorities. RESPECT, or Rape Education by Peers Encouraging Conscious Thought, and STAR, or Support, Training, Advocacy and Resources, provide the university with services aimed at helping victims of assault as well as providing information on statistics and advocacy throughout campus.  

“They are there for victims of sexual assault but also for preventing it. Anybody who is impacted by it we hope to have the support that they need,” said Mary Alice Serafini, associate vice chancellor of Student Affairs and executive director of Pat Walker. 

“We also hope to help talk about things that impact the occurrence of sexual assault and one of those things is alcohol.” 

To prevent assaults, an NCAA CHOICES grant was used to create an RSO, Razorbacks Offering Accountability Resources. ROAR pairs multiple organizations throughout campus, including services offered through Pat Walker, and aims at offering options for students wishing to avoid drug and alcohol peer pressure. The goal of ROAR is to “create student-led initiatives, including, public service announcements, bystander intervention, alcohol awareness week and sober spring break,” among healthful activities that reduce alcohol misuse and abuse behaviors among a variety of student populations. The program is a campus-wide effort to help UA students make better decisions regarding alcohol usage. 

Another development is the expanded counselor-in-residence services. Two counselors live and have offices in Reid and Gibson halls, which offer direct access to counseling services for students living on campus. 

“A counselor-in-residence is a doctoral student in the counselor education program with advanced training in counseling, helping skills and crisis situations. Some of the issues a counselor-in-residence can help with are adjusting to college, anger, stress, grief, relationships, roommate problems, and time management, to name a few,” according to the UA website. 

Within the last five years the Health Center has expanded its hours to offer evening availability, part of Pat Walker’s constant mission to improve accessibility to students, Serafini said.   

“We constantly look at patient flow and patient access and we want it to be as easy as possible for people to access any of our services and if were getting into overload for one aspect then we look how we can balance that out,” Serafini said. 

The counseling center was also transformed with group therapy rooms, a multi-purpose classroom, new office space and a larger waiting area.  

“That’s why I love my job, nothing remains the same and things change all the time,” said Serafini,  

Another motivation behind the center’s renovation was to have services available to help students with whatever they may need, medical or not.   

“We’ve always felt that we were educators in addition to technicians and so if you see a provider here, real often you’ll get some education not only about perhaps a medical condition but how to navigate taking care of your good health,” Serafini said. 

With studies done on the health centers impact on student retention and graduation rate, Serafini said one of the main goals of Pat Walker moving forward is to have an impact on student’s lives post-graduation. 

“We want to have an impact that goes well beyond earning your degree,” Serafini said. “We really want to help people build themselves to be strong and known how to access resources as they need them so that’s part of the lifetime thing I’m always focused on.” 

Posted on

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.”