You might think the football team and coaches are the most excited people on campus about the new stadium, but Gaye DiGregorio and the staff at the Collaborative for Student Achievement have their own reasons to celebrate.
The Collaborative for Student Achievement, formerly known as the Center for Advising and Student Achievement, has vacated its spaces at The Institute for Learning and Teaching (on the Oval) and Aylesworth Hall for more space and more possibilities at the new stadium. The new office will be open beginning Sept. 5.
“It will be great to get all of our staff in one location,” said Gaye DiGregorio, executive director of Student Achievement. “We have a lot more space to serve students and tremendous classroom space that simply was not adjacent to our current locations. We’re really excited.”
Prioritized space
Including academic space in the new stadium was a priority for CSU President Tony Frank. He wanted the new space to serve all students during their CSU journey, and including an academic component in the building’s design was the key.
As a result, 80,000 square feet has been set aside for Student Achievement and classrooms. There are nine classrooms in all, with fall classes in foreign language, electrical and computer engineering, human development and family studies, computer science, microbiology, immunology and pathology, and more. The classrooms are the SMART variety, with movable walls, chairs and tables.
Helping students earn their degrees
As for the 45 staff in the Collaborative, the additional space at the stadium for meetings is a significant improvement in the process of retaining students and helping them graduate.
“The advantages to being here are university-wide services that we offer,” DiGregorio said. “We serve primarily first- and second-year students, so being close to the residence halls will be convenient. We see a large number of students, so having a bigger space that’s easy to find on the east side of the stadium is really great for us.”
The space formerly occupied in TILT by Student Achievement will be repurposed to serve the Student Disability Center (formerly known as Resources for Disabled Students.) Once renovation is completed, the Student Disability Center will officially open in the spring.
