By Isaac Deville, staff reporter.
A 12 year Delta plan is finally coming to fruition. On Oct. 11, right before a Board of Trustees meeting, a presentation about the Saginaw Center was offered at a banquet in room N-007. It is the last presentation before the project begins.
“It’s great to be included in events like this for the college, and it will be wonderful for Delta to have a new Saginaw Center,” says Lauren Smith, a Delta English professor. Now that construction of the center is so close, a recommendation will be made to the board as to the site of the building.
Larry Ramseyer, Director of Facilities Management at Delta College, calls the center “a culmination of two years of work of developing the new Saginaw center.”
According to Franklin Markley, Vice President of Paulien & Associates, the structure of the Saginaw Center will invoke educational thinking.
“Once you’re there, you know you’re in an institution of higher education,” Markley says. “Not just another building or site at a strip center that looks like the building next to it. This will look like a college, and that’s one of the key components. This will be integrated within the local fabric.”
Margaret Mosqueda, Vice President of Student and Educational Services at Delta, echoes these sentiments.
“First impressions last a very long time, so when students walk into a facility it’s very important that they feel that warmth and that sense of belonging,” Mosqueda says.
Markley stresses that this satellite campus will have innovative classroom layouts.
“An example is one of the laboratories,” says Markley. “There are different configurations of the laboratory. Most of the fixtures that are stationary like water and gas are around the periphery. The tables and benches can be moved. They can be moved in group style, or they can be moved to the periphery of the room to engage in experimentation.”
There are also all sorts of features available at the new center, according to Markley.
“If you want to understand the future of higher education look at what the younger students are doing in school. So a lot of the things you are going to see in the Saginaw Center are not so much built for the student of today, but for Generation Z,” says Franklin.
After discussion of the Saginaw Center, two writers were invited to the meeting to read their work in recognition of their Delta education. Former Delta student Chris Williams was the first to read.
“Delta means different things to different people. For some that’s a pathway to a career. For me, it’s a pathway to self discovery and learning that I have strengths,” says Chris Williams.
The next writer, Thomas Dunn, is a poet and student of Delta. He says, “I think [this event] means a lot of things. Like we’re celebrating student excellence. It is the culmination of a lot of hard work and a lot of dedication to get better at writing and the process of writing.”
Jean Goodnow, President of Delta College says the writers “demonstrated to all of us how important our mission is of serving our students here at Delta. It’s really what we’re all about. It’s why we’re all here, is to serve students like the two students that presented this evening. And that’s what the Saginaw Center is going to be, serving more students like that.”
