Do your parents keep nagging you to get a major that has a bit more direction than “undecided?”
Do you need help writing that 10-page research paper for one of your core classes?
Do you know what career options your chosen profession can offer you?
As of Sept. 7, students will only need to go to one place to resolve these problems-the Academic Resources Center. Formerly known as Childgarden, the day care located behind DeMattias Hall, the Academic Resources Center will act as a one-stop service for Saint Louis University students, to assist them in their search to discover what they want to be when they grow up.
The four SLU offices converging at this partially-renovated building are Academic Services, Career Services, Preprofessional Health Studies and Student Educational Services. Career Services, Preprofessional Health Studies and Student Educational Services have already moved and are seeing students, while Academic Services will join them on Sept. 7.
According to John Severson, the dean of Academic Services and to Associate Provost Ned Harris, Academic Services is scheduled to move at this later date because it is busy with students still registering and changing their schedules. Harris and Severson both commented that it would best accommodate the students if Academic Services remains in its current space in DuBourg Hall until schedule adjustments are over.
The availability of Childgarden “created an opportunity for [SLU] to bring these four departments together . in an attempt to better integrate [their] services,” said Harris. It will now be easier for students to make a connection with all four offices, said Harris. Instead of sending students all over campus to several buildings, one visit to the Academic Resources Center is all it takes. The creation of this center “eliminates these extra steps,” Harris said.
These four offices are all involved in the advising and counseling of students throughout their academic careers, “that’s our common thread,” said Kathy Day, director of Career Services. According to Day, the centralization of these student services will allow for more collaboration among the offices, along with a higher rate of referrals.
Now when Student Educational Services has a student who needs to discuss career possibilities, the student can be “sent across the hall, not across Grand Avenue,” said Assistant Provost Celerstine Johnson.
There has been a great deal of external and internal work done to the Academic Resources Center, leaving only relatively few repairs and adjustments to finish up. Having seen the building prior to its refinishing, Assistant Director of the Preprofessional Health Studies Karen Reyes said, “What they have done is phenomenal.”
One major challenge the three departments already settled in the Academic Resources Center have encountered is the open-ceiling arrangement. Noise travels swiftly among the offices and throughout the building, resulting in unintended, yet frustrating, distractions and interruptions. But the University has brought in interior designers to assess the situation and determine how it can be amended.
The Academic Resources Center is located at 3840 Lindell Boulevard, but please note that there is not an accessible entrance from Lindell Boulevard, rather, there are doors on both sides of the building. All the phone numbers, fax numbers, e-mail addresses and Web sites of the four departments have remained the same. Student Educational Services is located on the first floor and on the lower level.
Career Services shares the first floor with that office, while Academic Services and Pre-Professional Health Studies share the second level.
Though this move across campus will take some time to get used to for the students, as well as for the staff of the four offices, the move looks to be a success.
