The third floor of Indiana University Northwest’s Hawthorn Hall was once filled with quiet halls, storage rooms, empty conference spaces and offices. It was a place where students came to meet with a professor or advisor and promptly left.
Now, the third floor is bustling with energy. Students fill the newly transformed Student Success Center, collaborating in private or group study rooms, grabbing a cup of coffee and snacks or discovering new resources at the help desk.
Since opening earlier this spring, the Student Success Center hasn’t been a place students need to go, but a place they want to go – a hub to study, gather, chat, meet with advisors and tutors and access campus and community resources.
“We feel like our students are unique,” Director of Student Success Kate Bennett said. “They’re today’s learners, not yesterday’s learners. And we believe today’s learners should have a cutting-edge, welcoming space to gather, study and be students. That’s the idea behind the Student Success Center.”
The unofficial opening of the Student Success Center occurred in January, and it didn’t take long for students to begin utilizing the space.
While there have always been many great resources across campus, the Student Success Center centralizes those resources. It’s home to two open communal spaces, eight study rooms of various sizes with technology and whiteboards in each, a testing room, the Math Center, the Writing Center, a refreshment room, a reception desk and a resource navigator.
Senior Spanish and sociology double major Fatima Berumen has worked at the center’s reception desk since just after it opened. Take one walk through the center, and nearly every study room will be filled at any point in the day, Berumen said.
“Since many students commute to campus, it’s important to have these spaces to just communicate with each other, make new friends or just meet with each other outside of classes,” Berumen said. “It’s nice to have somewhere in common that we can all use.”
Throughout most of her undergraduate career, Berumen said coordinating meetings with her classmates was tricky. Sometimes they’d meet in the library, other times in the Arts & Sciences building or they’d simply meet remotely.
Now, she sees a variety of students and groups choose the Student Success Center as the first place to meet.
“We realize that students on our campus have specific needs, and we’re pleased to have a space that can meet all of their needs in one centralized location,” IU Northwest Chancellor Arrick Jackson said. “The Student Success Center took years of planning and many coordinated efforts to finish. Walking through and seeing the students utilize this space daily makes all that work worth it.”
The idea for the center was formulated years ago, with funding originally coming from the INVEST (Inspiring, Valuing, and Empowering Success Together) grant, which has aided projects aimed at improving student success through academics, infrastructure and professional development.
Funding from the Anderson Foundation helped finalize construction, add essential signage and furnishings.
Meeting the needs of today’s students
The Student Success Center is one of many student-centered projects developed by IU Northwest over the past several years.
Other projects include creating the Crimson Corner Game Room, the RedHawk Refuel Food Pantry and STEM Center, renovating classrooms to facilitate active learning, faculty training on teaching practices, redesigning first-year experiences, developing the RedHawk CARES program and so much more.
These efforts have been proven to lower DFW rates among students, increase retention and boost overall student success. Time will tell how the Student Success Center will aid those efforts.
For now, Bennett is happy seeing students utilize the space to its fullest potential, whether it’s working together in the study rooms, getting tutoring help or simply chatting with friends to pass the time between classes.
“We wanted to create an open, welcoming space,” Bennett said. “That’s exactly what we got.”
