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Clayton State dedicates new University Center

The culmination of seven years of planning, construction and anticipation came last week when Clayton College & State University dedicated its signature building -- the University Center -- a building that is one-of-a-kind in higher education in the State of Georgia.

The University Center is a student center, a classroom building, an administration building, an office building and houses the technical and software support for the students’ and faculty’s 6,000 notebook computers. The UC is also home to the College of Information and Mathematical Sciences, the University System’s WebBSIT program, and more than 2,000 data drops.

The building also contains 21 classroom and seminar rooms that are wired for Internet connections and range in size from a 165-seat Lecture Hall to 35-seat classrooms, the University Bookstore and Dining Services, and numerous study and eating areas.

The $19 million, 131,000-square-foot building provides fast-growing Clayton State with space.

“Our enrollment has increased almost 40 percent in the past four years,” said school President Thomas K. Harden. “This building provides us with space; space for our students, space for people to work together, space to sit down and have a conversation.

“A university needs more than just classrooms. This building provides us, for the first time, with the kind of facility that our students need.”

M. Allan Vigil of Fayetteville, a member of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, and USG Senior Vice Chancellor for Academics and Fiscal Affairs Daniel S. Papp headlined the distinguished guests at the dedication.

“This is an academic signature building,” noted Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Sharon Hoffman. “It is the most wired building in the University System, with the most access for students.”

Three years in construction, the University Center is a four-story steel frame structure with masonry exterior walls, and features, along with thousands of Internet connections, state-of-the-art audio-visual technology in the classrooms, in keeping with the University’s reputation for expertise in the use of technology in education, and its pioneering Information Technology Project, wherein all students and faculty must have access to a notebook computer.