The Center of It All
central ohio technical college, education, food, library, licking county, osu-newark, warner center,
Who says you can’t have it all?
When the John L. and Christine Warner Library and Student Center opened last year on the shared campus of Central Ohio Technical College and Ohio State University at Newark, it offered something for everyone. The 84,000-square-foot building contains about 25,000 square feet of library space, double the previous library’s footprint; a high-end dining area; bookstore; and student areas and common space.
With no physical barriers between the various entities – not to mention working fireplaces and other special touches – the entire facility is warm, inviting and open.
“It’s different in a lot of ways, and not just the integration of various services,” says Forrest Shirkey, managing director of campus dining. “We were able to create a nontraditional campus dining environment, a marketplace concept like what you’d find in the produce section of a grocery store. I’m quite proud to say that we have one of the best dining venues in Licking County, bar none.”
Open to the public, the dining area’s hours are daily from 7 a.m. to midnight, because of its configuration to operate in segments rather than be full-service during that entire time. From the coffee shop in the morning all the way through dinner and into the evening, Shirkey says that students and the general public have really embraced the concept.
“It’s incredibly innovative,” he says.
Over in the library, the focus is on study time, both individual and collaborative, says Susan D. Scott, library director.
“It’s very clear that the space itself was designed to be student-centered,” Scott says. “The library speaks to different learning styles, and I think that’s important. It can be a social place or a private place, which the students really like.”
The rave reviews validate the planners’ efforts to get everyone around the drawing table even before there were drawings, says Dr. John M. Berry, vice president for enrollment management and student life for COTC and director of student life for OSU-Newark.
“All the major constituency bases on campus were asked what they wanted to see in here, and that’s how the open-flow came about,” Berry says. “It really helped shape the vision for the building, and what we’re hearing from every one of these groups is that it met, if not exceeded, their expectations.”
While it’s easy to get lost in the accolades surrounding a successful project, for Berry it’s about the students.
“A young lady who was an incoming freshmen said to me that she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a student here and not have the facility,” Berry says. “The major vision was to have a space the students could call their own, do just about anything they wanted to do there, and that has played itself out very nicely.”
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Story by Joe Morris
