BUILDING WITH A SENSE OF PRIDE

How values drive design at a historically Black university.

BY LAURENCE B. ALEXANDER

UAPB Student Engagement Center

AMR ARCHITECTS When we started meeting with students and faculty almost three years ago to brainstorm what a new student engagement center might mean for the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, we didn’t start with names of spaces or the dimensions of rooms. We started by generating a list of words to describe how students, faculty and the administration wanted to feel and how they could experience and engage with the building. Pride, engage, connect, community, gather, welcoming, visible, cultural and inclusive — these were the words repeated most often. As we looked back at our campus master plan, we questioned which potential building site might be best. Continuously referencing the list of inspirational words, we also reminded ourselves of our core values and how these could be intertwined: student focus, excellence, integrity, engagement, diversity, globalization and accountability. The more we reviewed the list and thought about how we serve the needs of our students of a racially, ethnically, culturally and economically diverse student population, the more we realized we needed this building to uphold and enhance our campus culture and community.

We decided to locate the new student engagement center along Watson Boulevard. There it will serve as the northern terminus of a central promenade that provides a main pedestrian thoroughfare running north/south through the center of campus. It will also unify gathering spaces adjacent to the most commonly used student buildings, including the John B. Watson Library and the L.A. Davis Student Union. This move will eliminate a few smallscale parking lots and two dead-end convenience drives to provide students with a much more pedestrian-focused campus that will allow for higher levels of connection.

As such, our campus planning strategy doubled as an opportunity to further build upon our campus climate to foster success. We know our students perform better when they feel connected, supported and safe. We produce students who become pillars of their families, churches and communities. We want to instill in them the values of pride, connection, community, globalization, diversity and inclusion. We believe this new construction project is the opportunity to make sure these values read prominently within our campus.

With these ambitious goals in mind, we’ve started working through the initial design schemes. The exterior of the building has covered outdoor spaces lining both the long north and south elevations. In making this building the end of the promenade, it will also have a central lobby that will serve as a welcoming space for both students and visitors alike. The east end of the building is divided into four levels. The first floor, with a central east/west axis, will have mostly student service spaces, including two food service concepts, a student success center, a career services office, a graduate studies and professional development office, an office of international programs and studies and student health services that include both physical wellness and counseling offices. Locating these services on the first floor allows interacting with them directly as they approach the more recreational spaces located on the upper floors. The second floor of the east end is predominantly a large multipurpose room and a large game room for students, with back-of-house support spaces. The third floor includes a wellness center that will have new equipment and a large walking track wrapping the space. An administrative development and meeting center is located on the fourth floor. On the east end of

the building, we focused on large communal spaces and provided increased glass and transparency in areas that students will congregate to increase and enhance the visibility to and from the rest of campus. The west side of the building will house the Performing Arts Center, phase two of our project, giving the campus a space large enough for 1,100 students to gather. Special attention has been paid to make sure the stage is large enough for Handel’s “Messiah” and the aisles are enlarged to accommodate strolling, ever mindful that this building will need to help our students become globally connected and relevant while also staying very culturally and community oriented.

We, as a campus family, are very excited to share publicly what we’ve been working on as it starts to shape the future direction of our university. We take a tremendous amount of pride in the impact our students make in the world. We steadfastly and diligently focus on building and reinforcing the values we strive to instill in them and have let those values be the guiding force in this exciting new project.

Laurence B. Alexander, J.D., Ph.D., is the ninth chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

WE PRODUCE STUDENTS WHO BECOME PILLARS OF THEIR FAMILIES, CHURCHES AND COMMUNITIES. WE WANT TO INSTILL IN THEM THE VALUES OF PRIDE, CONNECTION, COMMUNITY, GLOBALIZATION, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION. WE BELIEVE THIS NEW CONSTRUCTION PROJECT IS THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE SURE THESE VALUES READ PROMINENTLY WITHIN OUR CAMPUS.