A student center serves as the "living room" of a campus community. It is a primary location for student interaction and for welcoming the entire campus community of students, staff, faculty, alumni and guests.
St. Thomas’ current student center, Murray-Herrick Campus Center, had its origin in 1960 when Murray Hall opened as the first student center at the College of St. Thomas, serving a student population of 1,882. When the college began admitting women in 1977, the undergraduate enrollment increased to 2,527, and two floors of residence-hall space were added to Murray Hall. In 1989, with undergraduate enrollment at 4,344, Herrick Hall was built adjacent to Murray Hall adding a larger bookstore, more meeting rooms and office space, a meditation room and a board room for the college’s trustees. The newly combined space was named Murray-Herrick Campus Center.
Enrollment today is almost 6,000 undergraduate students, more than three times the population that the original facilities were designed to serve. Food-service resources are a major reason for the need for a new student center. The student dining facility in Murray-Herrick Campus Center is outdated in seating capacity, preparation areas, serving areas and mechanical features. In addition, the number of alumni and other university functions for which catering services are needed has increased greatly over the years, and updated capabilities are needed to meet the demand.
Student centers are a distinguishing attribute of higher education in the United States. Over the years, nationwide, student centers have grown in size and function, greatly contributing to a sense of community that inspires loyalty to and pride in their institutions. Today’s state-of-the-art student centers are the gathering places of the modern university. Their variety of services and amenities contribute greatly to the attraction of prospective students.
Almost 50 years after Murray Hall first opened, St. Thomas has outgrown Murray-Herrick Campus Center in its current configuration and capacity. A new facility is needed.
The new student center will be built on the northeast corner of Summit and Cretin avenues on the current sites of parking Lot H and O’Shaughnessy Hall. Here, at the campus crossroads, students, faculty and staff members, alumni and guests will mingle in a building that will house dining facilities and the wide range of co-curricular programs, activities, events and student services that characterize a vibrant university.
It will include residential dining services, retail dining options, a ballroom, a bowling alley (back on campus after decades) and other recreational facilities, athletic facilities, an art gallery and a large formal lounge. Meeting rooms, student-leadership space, and an area for student clubs and organizations area will share a floor with lounges, Student Affairs offices and Campus Ministry offices. Other elements housed in the building will be auxiliary-services offices and other areas for socializing.
Several attractive features will create a place for the entire St. Thomas community to meet and interact.
O’Shaughnessy Hall, the 1939 athletic building that now anchors the west end of the lower quadrangle, will be razed to make room for the new structure. The new student center, with a prominent entrance facing the lower quad, will be the new "bookend" on the west end.
Current plans call for the swimming pool that is in O’Shaughnessy Hall to be replaced with a new pool and associated facilities, either in a renovated McCarthy Gymnasium building on the St. Paul Seminary campus or near the new student center on the north campus (see Aquatic Center section below). The third-floor gymnasium in O’Shaughnessy Hall will be replaced with a new gym added to the north end of McCarthy. Other athletic facilities displaced by the razing of O’Shaughnessy Hall will have new homes in the new construction. These include an expanded weight room, a fitness/aerobics center, a training room, locker rooms, coaches’ offices, classrooms and meeting rooms.
Summary
The new student center will provide many advantages to the St. Thomas community. It will provide a welcoming environment in which students and others will enjoy time spent, whether for academic activities, co-curricular activities or leisure. With new and larger spaces for student government, clubs and organizations, it will provide better opportunities for St. Thomas students to develop as responsible citizens and effective moral leaders. It will keep St. Thomas competitive in recruiting and retaining students as other Minnesota and regional institutions add state-of-the-art facilities. Finally, it will make the campus more attractive as a summer conference venue.
Construction on the new student center is anticipated to begin in May 2010.
Since it was built in 1939, the O’Shaughnessy Hall swimming pool has served as the home of St. Thomas’ varsity teams. The 1941 Aquinas yearbook observed, "'Fourteen months after O’Shaughnessy Hall with its swimming pool opened,' said one of the Aquin [student newspaper] columnists, 'St. Thomas won its first State college swimming title.'" That is a testament to the success that modern athletic facilities – along with the hard work of dedicated student-athletes and coaches – can bring.
O’Shaughnessy Hall has served the athletic needs of St. Thomas students, coaches and professors for almost 70 years, but with plans for a new student center on the corner of Summit and Cretin avenues moving forward, O’Shaughnessy Hall will be razed.
Prospective St. Thomas students expect – and look for during campus visits – high-quality athletic and recreational facilities. Many of them come from high-school athletic programs that feature state-of-the-art facilities. In order to improve the recruitment and retention of both competitive student-athletes and students who are active for fun and fitness, St. Thomas will replace the O’Shaughnessy Hall swimming pool with an impressive swimming complex, either in an expanded and renovated McCarthy Gymnasium building on the St. Paul Seminary campus or near the new student center on the north campus.
While most athletic facilities lost to the razing of O’Shaughnessy Hall will be replaced with new construction near the student center, the renovation and expansion of McCarthy could include the aquatic center and coaches’ offices and locker rooms for softball, men’s and women’s swimming, and men’s and women’s soccer.
The project will feature an eight-lane, 25-meter-by-25-yard pool with a diving area. (The current pool is six lanes by 25 yards and lacks any accommodation for diving.) A pool of this size will allow not only competitive intercollegiate swimming and diving, but also vastly increased student and community use. Twin Cities swimming clubs already have shown interest in purchasing "pool time" from St. Thomas during off hours, and students will have many more options for physical-education classes and recreational water sports. Construction could begin as early as 2009.
A further addition to the McCarthy Gymnasium renovation will be a basketball court to replace the O’Shaughnessy Hall gym that will be lost. This will be added to the north end of McCarthy and will feature a wood floor. It will accommodate multiple recreational or intramural basketball games simultaneously or a variety of other athletic activities. This new facility to replace the 1940s-era third-floor O’Shaughnessy gym will be a welcome addition for everyone on campus.
In anticipation of parking spaces in Lot H being displaced when construction of the new student center begins, a parking ramp will be constructed at the southwest corner of Cretin and Grand avenues, where the university’s tennis courts are located.
The student center itself will replace up to 200 of the 400 displaced spaces, with a one-level garage beneath the building. The new parking structure will be a five-level 700-car ramp, with one level below grade. This will result in a significant net increase in spaces on campus.
The façade of the structure will contain alternating sections of brick and limestone-colored precast concrete that will resemble the Mankato-Kasota Stone that is prevalent in St. Thomas’ architecture. There will be an elevator and primary stairwell at the northeast corner of the ramp, closest to Cretin and Grand.
The softball and soccer fields, which are located just south of the site, will not be affected.
Plans call for ramp construction to begin in May 2008 and for the ramp to open by the spring of 2009.