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© St. Petersburg Times, published December 26, 2001
SEMINOLE -- When St. Petersburg College students return to the Seminole campus Jan. 7, they might be pleasantly surprised to find the Technology Learning Center a lot roomier, particularly in the Information Commons area.
Because a number of staff and faculty members, including Provost Jim Olliver, moved to a new, 85,000-square-foot University Partnership Center last Thursday, the students will now have more room in the Information Commons in the TLC, which houses 120 computer stations.
Also, they will no longer have to see a guidance counselor in a room the size of a broom closet in the Information Commons. Guidance offices are now located in the UPC. Additionally, the students will be able to take placement tests, eat lunch and even go to the bookstore, all in the brand new building.
And, a portable classroom once shared by the student activities office and the bookstore will soon house other things.
"We will probably do away with three or four portables of the 10 we have," Olliver said. "The new UPC building has 27 new classrooms. That more than doubles the number of classrooms we now have."
The main occupants of the new building are the UPC's district offices. They moved from the Allstate Center in St. Petersburg last week.
Through the University Partnership Center program, students at the various campuses of St. Petersburg College can study for 30 bachelor's degrees and 14 graduate degrees from 12 colleges and universities across the United States without ever leaving an SPC campus. Since the fall of 1999, the number of students in the program has skyrocketed from 300 to 1,500. Of the 2,000 students on the Seminole campus of SPC, said Olliver, 500 are UPC students, while the other 1,500 are working on associate degrees.
The provost said he didn't expect a large influx of new students next month. "We won't have an explosion of new students until next fall," he said. That is when four-year degrees will be offered by SPC.
The move to the new University Partnership Center will be a boon for most faculty members on the Seminole campus.
Until now, 13 full-time faculty members were scrunched up against one wall in the Information Commons area of the Technology Learning Center, which opened for business in August 1998. "You can see what the faculty has had to put up with, " Olliver said as he showed off the area where each faculty member has worked with only a small desk, computer and two-drawer file cabinet.
Eight of the faculty members teaching SPC students are now housed in the new UPC, while the other five will move to one of the portables on the Seminole campus.
"Those five will have to be in a portable until 2003," said Olliver, 53, who has been provost of the Seminole campus since 1996. "Then, they will move into office space in the new joint-use library on campus."
The city of Seminole and St. Petersburg College agreed on a joint-use library in May 2000. A groundbreaking is anticipated for the spring of 2002, Olliver said.
Also included in the three-story UPC building is a state-of-the-art digital auditorium that seats 190, and with extensions, another 160 people; new classrooms; the eCampus that Olliver also heads (where students take courses online); two science labs; and a videography studio. Eventually, there will be a small cafe, in addition to an area with tables and chairs.
"We believe the future is going to be with developing video and other multimedia applications for the Web," said Olliver. "This new facility will be just wonderful."
With the addition of 212 new computers, collaborative space where faculty and students can work together on projects in the UPC, and the amenities of the 24,000-square-foot Technology Learning Center, the Seminole campus is the most technologically advanced of SPC's 11 branches and the first designed specifically to encourage the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, Olliver said.
Next March, the SPC administrative information systems and support systems -- which include such things as grades, transcripts and other computer operations for the entire college system -- will also move to the Seminole campus' new University Partnership Center.
Landscaping and a covered walk from the Technology Learning Center to the UPC will be completed shortly.
-- Information from Times files used in this report.
Contractor: A.D. Morgan
Cost: Just under $13-million; another $2.8-million earmarked for furniture, computer equipment, networking and more
Ground broken: August 2000
Opened: December 2001
Area of UPC: 85,000-square-foot, three-story building just north of the Technology Learning Center
Acreage: Seminole campus sits on 102 acres, purchased by St. Petersburg College in 1971.
As college faculty members move to their new digs, the Technology Learning Center gets more space for students.