By Gabrielle Martin, News Editor.
Plans are in action for Delta College’s new satellite facility in downtown Saginaw. Students and faculty alike have high hopes that building the new facility will offer that Delta’s current facility in Saginaw – the Ricker Center – lacks.
Students at the Ricker Center would like to see more services for the students.
Byron Poindexter, who is hoping to pursue a career in either social work or criminal justice, would like to see a library, computers, bookstore and an area for students to just hang out and study. Harmony Braech, an accounting major, would like to see services such as the student food pantry offered at the new Saginaw location.
Gregory Teter teaches at the Ricker Center and is the Criminal Justice Program Coordinator. He agrees that there could be better services for the students who take classes at the satellite facilities of Delta College.
“As far as the testing center and some of the services for students goes, we aren’t quite as well equipped here,” he says. “I think they’ve done a pretty good job of trying to keep the center with the same services; but it’s almost impossible to have the same services when you’re talking about libraries and testing centers.”
Having the exact same services at the new Saginaw facility as offered at the main campus is not entirely feasible. However, Larry Ramseyer, Director of Facilities for Delta says the new facility will be between 35,000 and 36,000 square feet; whereas the Ricker Center is only about 20,000 square feet. This means that Delta will be able to add some of those services that students and faculty would like to see as well as other additions. For example, the college hopes to strike up a partnership with the Hoyt branch of the Saginaw Public Library to offer a library service to students taking classes in Saginaw.
“The Ricker Center right now, it has one large gymnasium/cafeteria space. What the new facility will have will be a small learning resource area. It will have some of the components for students to access information that the LLIC has,” Ramseyer says. Ideally, there will also be a few “hoteling offices” where staff members from different student service offices can rotate out of. For example, there could be a person from financial aid, admissions or career services at the facility rotating out of those offices.
“The project received recommendation from the governor as the number one community college project in his budget recommendation in February,” says Ramseyer. Delta’s hope is that the state will fund half of the project, leaving the college to fund the other half of the $12 million project.
These funds will come from the college’s plant fund reserves. Out of Delta’s budget, each year, $1 million is placed into the plant fund reserves for future projects. Other projects funded through this fund include the 1997 library and science wings renovation and the 2013 F-wing project. The cost of both of these projects was split 50/50 with the state as well.
“The legislature has to put together an appropriations bill to approve the project for planning. Once they do that, we can complete the final planning,” says Ramseyer. That final planning includes choosing the location for the facility. In April, the Delta College Board of Trustees voted to place the new satellite facility in downtown Saginaw. Ramseyer says a consulting team has been looking at various sites throughout that area.
“We’re narrowing it down and focusing our final details and review on a smaller number of sites. We’re focusing on about four sites that we’re looking at further review on,” he says. Ramseyer was not at liberty to say where those four sites are.
Ramseyer also hopes that by having a facility in downtown Saginaw, the college will have a more dominant presence in the community and a better view of where the students are coming from. Currently, the Ricker Center has around 650 students; however, Ramseyer hopes to nearly double that number over the next decade.
“We think in 10 years, our goal would be to have the enrollment in Saginaw be 1100,” he says. “We’ve projected that based on the unserved population now- the number of high school graduates that aren’t going into higher education, we believe if we’re located in downtown Saginaw [we could] attract more of those students to attend.”
While a larger student body at the new Saginaw facility is one of the college’s goals, at least one student at the Ricker Center says the smaller student body is rather nice.
“The teachers have more time to help students because there’s fewer students so there’s more help for each one,” says Braech.
Poindexter hopes the student population at the new Saginaw facility grows; however, he’s also hoping for something else.
“We just need more popularity and a mixture of culture. Mostly, it’s black people because we’re comfortable here,” he says.
Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is when construction on this new project will begin. Ramseyer says this all depends on when the state approves funding. The ideal time to do construction is during the spring/summer semester; however, having all of the planning finalized by spring 2016 is a little bit of a stretch so Ramseyer says construction will more likely start in spring 2017.
“That would push start up to the fall of 2018,” he says. “Now, the President would like to see it earlier than that.”
