The Eastern Michigan University Student Center has been
part of campus for one year. Can anyone remember what they
ever did without it?
The Student Center celebrates its first anniversary today
(Nov. 6) with a full day of prizes, activities, free food
and special promotions. Look for birthday cake and prize
drawings in the first floor dining room from 10:30 a.m.
to 3 p.m. and free Taste Fest food samples from 3-5 p.m.
DJ Jerrod will set the tone with tunes from 11 a.m. to
1 p.m., and visitors can make a craft, take a spin on TCF
Bank's prize wheel or take advantage of specials at the
EMU Bookstore or Savage Geckos.
 |
A YEAR AGO: The EMU Student Center celebrates
its
first anniversary today. This was the scene
during
last year's grand opening as the campus
community
flooded through the front door to take
a tour. |
The Student Center has become a hub for student activity
— in so many ways McKenny Union wasn't — that it hardly
seems fair to compare them.
"It's surpassed expectations," said EMU Student
Center Director Carlos Costa. "It's been extremely well-received
by students, faculty and staff, and also by the community.
The number of events we're hosting is up 52 percent over
what we used to do at McKenny and the number of people
attending events is up about 70 percent."
To get an idea what the Student Center has come to mean
to the campus community, just ask someone to talk about
the place. Then listen to where they put the emphaiss.
It's either the student center
or the student center.
Students have claimed it as their own, from the crowd
playing Guitar Hero at Savage Geckos to the ones poring
over books in a quiet stairwell lounge on the second floor,
to junior Kelly Traczyk, who recently butted heads
with Red Cross blood drive volunteers over her right to
use her favorite couch. Yes, she understood they were holding
a blood drive but it is, after all, the Student Center.
Traczyk transferred to EMU this year from Ferris State
University, where she said the student center there had
no TVs, no lounging areas and no food. Traczyk spends time
at the EMU Student Center every day that she's on campus.
"I really like the lounging area; it's a good, cozy place
to study," Traczyk said. "It's better than the library.
It's not so formal."
Where McKenny was basically a 9-to-5 building, the Student
Center is used — and busy — from 7 a.m.
to 1 a.m., and its computer center is open around the clock.
The key to the building's success is the mix it offers — activity
space, shopping, study space and food, Costa said. The
three-story view of the University Park doesn't hurt, either.
On any given Thursday night, you might find a major event
happening in the grand ballroom, another in the auditorium
and activity in every one of the third-floor meeting rooms.
So far, Costa says, the building's growing pains have
mainly involved too much of a good thing. With so much
foot traffic, the services housed in the new building have
had to adjust to being a lot busier than they used to be.
"It's just an amazing facility," said Jim O'Connor,
a regional manager for Follett Education Group, which runs
the EMU Bookstore. "It has a very well-thought-out traffic
pattern. It's just an amazing gift to the EMU community."
O'Connor, whose territory includes college campuses in
six Midwestern states, said he was skeptical when he saw
plans that put the bookstore on the lower level, far from
the parking lot at the upper level. What he didn't anticipate
was the way the new facility would change walking and parking
patterns around campus.
"There have been some really pleasant surprises," he
said. "The traffic flow was exactly as EMU and the architects
envisioned, and what a great vision it was."
For more information about Student Center anniversary
festivities, call 487-1157 or go to www.emich.edu/studentcenter.
