13 minute read
The More Things Change
After Half a Century of Expansion and Renovation, UCM Still Feels Like Home
By Jeff Murphy, ’80, ’95
From my University High School graduation in 1976 to covering the University of Central Missouri as a journalist in the 1980s, then serving the institution professionally for more than three decades, UCM and its many different facilities have impacted me as a student, employee and alumnus. As I transition into retirement from the Office of Integrated Marketing and Communications, it is gratifying to share information about the progress UCM is making through various buildings and grounds projects while also offering personal anecdotes that, for me, transcend bricks and mortar.
Harbert Collegiate Golf Center
As a newspaper reporter in the 1980s, I covered Easter egg hunts for children in need and an annual Teddy Bear Jubilee that brought collectors from across the United States to the old lodge at Pertle Springs. The festival of bears was started by Warrensburg native and UCM Theatre alumnus William “Bill” Boyd, ’55, as a fundraiser for the Good Bears of the World organization, which donates teddy bears for first responders and grief counselors to use.
Pertle Springs was a popular spot for student and community gatherings in the ’80s. I spent many summer weekends with my daughter at the Pertle Springs pool, and was defeated shamelessly by every friend who ever played golf with me at what was then known as Keth Memorial Golf Course.
Fortunately, today there are a lot of university members, alumni and friends who are much better than I at golf, and many of them have claimed the Mules National Golf Club at Pertle Springs as a great place to engage in their favorite pastime. It is also the location where some of the best collegiate competitors in the nation perfect their skills as members of Mules and Jennies Golf. Efforts to better serve these students and other golf course users received a significant boost during the 2023–24 academic year when Rand, ’85, and Kelly, ’86, Harbert donated the lead gift for the construction of a new golf center at Mules National Golf Club.
UCM launched this building project on Sept. 22, 2023, and on April 20, 2024, the community celebrated the opening of the Harbert Collegiate Golf Center. Located on the west side of Traditions Restaurant with a view of the beautiful, well-manicured golf course, this 2,100-square-foot, single-story building is the pinnacle of such facilities in NCAA Division II collegiate golf programs. Amenities include lounge space for both the men’s and women’s golf teams, offices, restrooms, a recruit lounge/meeting room, a laundry room and a large outdoor deck. Take a virtual tour of the facility.
Skyhaven Aviation Center
For someone who built a nearly 35-year public relations career by sharing stories about UCM, Aug. 28, 2005, was a memorable day. During my Sunday morning ritual of thumbing through The Kansas City Star, my eyes turned to the weekend issue of Star Magazine. On the cover was a photo of a 15-year-old boy wearing a headset and a beaming smile while seated in the cockpit of a UCMowned single-engine Cessna 172 airplane. Experiencing flying for the first time, this young man was part of the first Aviation Youth Academy Summer Camp, a Kansas City-based program that partnered with Kansas City Public Schools and the university’s Max B. Swisher Skyhaven Airport to expose 20 underrepresented youth to aviation careers.
While this article reached thousands of metropolitanarea readers, it highlighted one of many examples of events that have taken place at the airport since it was donated to UCM in 1968 by former Warrensburg resident, entrepreneur and businessman Max B. Swisher. Such events have not only introduced young people to aviation but have also provided opportunities for pilots from Missouri and beyond to utilize resources at the state’s only university-owned communityuse and educational-use airport. From its humble beginnings as a place where private pilots took off on grass runways, this airport has continued to improve and expand.
A milestone at the airport was reached in 2021 with the campus celebrating “50 Years of Aviation Excellence.” This observance recognized the university aviation program’s growth from 25 students and a fleet of four Cessna aircraft to nearly 500 students and more than 24 airplanes on property that now features vastly improved runways, taxiways and hangars. But there was much more to come.
In September 2023, a significant step forward was celebrated at the airport with a ribbon-cutting ceremony commemorating the opening of the 10,000-square-foot, $5.1 million Skyhaven Aviation Center. This facility was the result of a vision that became a reality, thanks to $2.8 million in donor support, $1 million in state funds and remaining funding from UCM.
Replacing and expanding the role of the old administration and terminal building that was constructed in the 1970s, the Skyhaven Aviation Center includes amenities such as a pilots’ lounge, lockers, a bathroom with shower, and a quiet room to serve local and corporate aviators. It also features shared space with a dispatch station, a break room, airport staff offices, a conference room, a work room and 30 private “pods,” or small meeting rooms where Aviation students can visit individually with flight instructors. Adding to this project, Missouri legislators appropriated $850,000 for UCM to build self-service fuel facilities that will operate 24 hours a day.
The airport will continue to play an important role at the front and center of Johnson County aviation, serving the community and preparing the next generation of professional pilots and industry leaders.
Watch a video of the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
James C. Kirkpatrick Library
As a university student in the late ’70s, trips to the Ward Edwards Library on the north side of campus were an important part of my university experience.
Whether as a place to meet up with classmates to work on a project, to spend hours combing through card catalogs or to stand in line with other students for rented textbooks at the beginning of each quarter, the library often beckoned my attention.
By the end of the first decade of my employment at UCM, Ward Edwards’ role at the university began to change. The Board of Governors approved the construction of a new library on the south side of campus to replace the building completed in 1939 and bearing the name of librarian Ward Edwards, who had operated the university’s library out of other campus buildings until enough funds were raised after the 1915 fire.
The new library would be named for James C. Kirkpatrick, a former newspaper man who served for 20 years as Missouri’s secretary of state, the longest tenure to date for that office. He was also a 12-year member and former president of UCM’s governing board.
Kirkpatrick was part of the groundbreaking for the new library in October 1996 but died a year later at age 92 before the building was finished. He did not witness the official dedication ceremony on March 24, 1999, or the “book brigade,” which was a human train of volunteers who transported books hand to hand down a line they formed on the sidewalk from Ward Edwards to the new location. The act was largely ceremonial, as professional movers were ultimately needed to load and unload an estimated 836,000 books and other bound materials.
Decades after the James C. Kirkpatrick Library (JCKL) opened, a new milestone occurred on Nov. 28, 2023. Demonstrating the power of philanthropic support, UCM celebrated Giving Tuesday, a global day of philanthropy, with the library’s rededication. This was a day when members of MuleNation came together to raise support for the Central Annual Fund and to check out state-of-the-art renovations made at the library last fall. These included modernized study and collaborative learning spaces, new study nooks, a wellness room and soft furnishings made possible by a gift of $975,000 from the Koch Family Trust.
The trust was established by Oliver T. Koch and Mary G. Koch in 1990. Oliver graduated from Central Missouri State Teachers College in 1941 with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. During their lifetime, the couple supported student scholarships and the Kirkpatrick Library Construction Fund.
UCM alumna Ashley Perrin, ’11, an Interior Design graduate, served as lead designer on the renovation project with Odimo, an architecture, design and consulting firm. She also returned to campus during the academic year as a guest speaker for the [Shirley] Kleppe [’67] Foundation Visual Arts Visiting Artist Endowment series coordinated by the UCM Gallery of Art and Design.
Donors continue to support JCKL as the library serves the academic needs of the UCM community, with more than 200,000 square feet of floor space and more than 1.3 million physical and online books, documents, journals and media resources. The facility serves as a hub of scholarly research and houses the McClure Archives and University Museum, a designated Blue Star Museum and Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area.
While I never got to use JCKL as a student, professionally I have made good use of its vast resources in search of information for articles or reports I was writing, to attend training sessions with colleagues in the facility’s meeting rooms or to seek out a quiet spot to conduct an interview.
Hough Education and Counseling Center
The gymnasium on the second floor of the Lovinger Building became a place where I learned the value of patience and how to keep a bench seat warm as a sophomore on the University High School (UHS) Colts basketball team. Two years later, the gymnasium was the spot where a major announcement was made during the allschool assembly. A day when many tears were shed by my teachers and classmates, it sealed my fate as a member of the last senior class to ever graduate from UHS, which closed in 1976.
My transition to college was easy, as I was already familiar with most of the buildings on campus, and many of the educators I studied under as a student continued their service to the university outside the high school classroom. The men and women I admired and respected as a student later became friends and colleagues through my work at the university. The lockers that lined both sides of the hall on the ground floor of Lovinger — a relatively new facility when I attended high school — remained for many years like ghosts from the past.
Fast-forward to 2024: the same area that once housed a wood basketball court, bleachers and a stage has been reimagined and has undergone significant renovations to create a state-of-the-art mixed-use educational facility that will help the College of Education continue to be a leader in counselor education in Missouri and beyond.
This renovation was made possible by a generous gift from UCM alumnus Greg Thurman, ’74, of Franklin, Tennessee, in honor of his nephew, Mike Hough, ’93 and ’98. Hough earned three bachelor’s degrees from UCM in Biology, Chemistry and Secondary Education, followed by a Master of Science in Education, Secondary School Administration.
He also earned education specialist and doctoral degrees as part of a career that has included serving as an adjunct professor at UCM, a chemistry teacher at Lee’s Summit West and Knob Noster high schools, a middle school principal in Holden, Missouri, and currently as superintendent of the Holden R-III School District.
The university community celebrated the new center with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Oct. 24, 2024. Alumni like me no longer recognize the Lovinger gymnasium, which has been completely converted into an area that includes counseling rooms, a play therapy room, multifunctional space, faculty offices and a welcoming lobby.
Faculty and students work alongside school-based practitioners and engage with communitybased clinicians and counselors to better understand how trauma-informed care can be practiced through play therapy, which can then be integrated back into the classroom. The center also offers individual and group counseling services to the community as well as free services to UCM students.
Humphreys Building Renovation
During my sophomore year at University High School, the Humphreys Building — the site of the original Training School to prepare generations of Missouri teachers — became one of my favorite spots while I was enrolled in a driver’s education course. Although most of my classes were on the first floor of the Lovinger Building, as an eager young man who was only months away from his 16th birthday, I was focused on becoming a licensed driver.
While I was mostly oblivious to all of the great programs that were taking place in the Humphreys Building, I learned the rules of the road on the automobile simulators there. This was followed by more advanced lessons in one of the ’70s-era Chevrolets available to our class at the highway safety instructional park south of campus. (Sometimes I even won the mad dash to drive the Camaro!)
While the primitive driving simulators have long disappeared and many changes have taken place within Humphreys over the past 50 years, this facility continues to be one of tremendous importance to UCM. With the words “Education for Service” etched into the building’s north exterior wall, Humphreys is home to students in areas that embody the spirit of that longstanding UCM motto.
To better contribute to the education of students in areas such as Criminal Justice and Criminology, Safety Sciences, and Military Science and Leadership, an extensive renovation project is underway. The project will modernize resources and address $21 million in deferred maintenance needs.
As renovation began in December 2023, faculty, staff and students were relocated from Humphreys to other buildings on campus. The first phase entailed asbestos abatement, and additional work to follow includes modernizing classrooms, open collaboration areas, faculty open office areas, the UCM Counseling Center, the Reserve Officers Training Corps program area and a new esports facility.
Action taken by the university’s Board of Governors made it possible to take advantage of the summer 2024 schedule to renovate office suites used by academic departments in Humphreys. An additional $9.95 million installment of funding for the Humphreys renovation project is part of the state’s fiscal year 2025 capital appropriations. This installment, along with prior funding, constitutes 100 percent financing by the state of Missouri for the $39.8 million project, scheduled for completion in 2026.
These five capital projects, started or completed in fiscal year 2024, exemplify the university’s strategic forward movement to meet ever-changing needs, and the master plan adopted in 2023 provides a detailed roadmap for the future. As always, the generosity of UCM alumni and friends is essential to driving the facility renovations and innovations that enhance both the student experience and the role of the university in our larger community.
As a new member of UCM’s emeriti family, I treasure the fond memories of my alma mater and workplace and look forward to celebrating more project milestones in the years to come.
