A larger and more user-friendly student center and dining complex are part of a broader vision for the Livingston Campus
A new era on the Livingston Campus began November 28 when students, administrators, and public officials donned white hard hats and ceremoniously shoveled piles of moist earth to signify the birth of a 19,000-square foot addition to the Livingston Student Center, an effort in the making for 15 years and engendering debate on the university’s priorities for the campus in Piscataway Township.
The ceremony on the student center patio also highlighted a new vision for the Livingston Campus as a place of professional higher education and continuing education, areas central to the university’s mission of service to the state of New Jersey.
“We are extending a student center today. It’s badly needed,” said Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick, who pledged in his 2006 Annual Address to the University Community to break ground on the project ahead of schedule. “I also commend to you an even bigger dream … that the Livingston Campus lives up to the high standards of every other campus at the university.”
Plans to improve the student center also include the renovation of approximately 40 percent of the interior of the existing student center, which was built in 1986. Students on the Livingston Campus have been urging the university administration to expand the student center for more than a decade.
Jacqui Whitfield, external vice president of the Livingston Campus Council, recounted some of the struggles during her time as a Livingston Campus resident, including students protesting by closing down Route 18 and rallying at the Old Queen’s administration building on the College Avenue Campus.
“It is a personal and professional triumph to see the fruits of our labors over the past 15 years culminate in such an occasion,” Whitfield said. “It is vital to remove the stigma that has been attached to the campus for too many years.”
That stigma came from the lack of adequate meeting and study space, paucity of dining choices, and general dearth of student life at the center.
A new multipurpose room with modern sound and lighting systems, an expanded coffeehouse area, a convenience store, a collaborative learning center, and additional meeting and lounge space will eradicate those notions. The total cost of expanding and improving the student center is estimated at $15 million.
“There’s something special about the student center…it is central to the social life of the campus,” McCormick said. “It is central to making a campus a community. Where else would it happen if not the student center?”
In the short-term, a new dining commons is in the works as well; the dining hall and the student center will run a combined $40 million and are expected to be completed by the fall semester of 2009.
Looking ahead, McCormick said that the Livingston Campus has the promise to become a center for professional and continuing education, bringing together the disciplines of business, education, labor relations, management, and social work on the campus. Many of the university’s professional programs are already located there; they may be complemented by a hotel and conference center, market-rate housing, commercial space, and a high-tech, business-focused research park.
“The Livingston Campus has the potential to be the bright star within the great university of Rutgers,” said Piscataway Township Mayor Brian Wahler, an alumnus of Livingston College.