Crimson and Gold Connection; Jeff Steinmiller

Welcome to Crimson & Gold Connection, keeping you connected to the people and current events at Pittsburgh State University. Hello, this is Trent Johnson and thanks for joining us for Crimson & Gold Connection. Today our guest is director of the Jack H. Overman Student Center on the campus of Pittsburgh State University, Jeff Steinmiller. Jeff, thanks so much for joining us today. Talk about the rededicated Jack H. Overman Student Center on the campus of Pittsburgh State University. The project which lasted about 15 months was done in phases, so we did one part, opened it up, did another part, opened it up. So in fact, when we actually took ownership of the completed building in, I think it was July 9th, the building was open to the campus. In fact, we had a number of events in the building prior to our rededication, so the idea was we needed to do some sort of celebration. My grand ribbon cutting really wasn't that appropriate since everybody was still in the building, so the idea was we wanted to do some sort of production where we acknowledged the people who made this project possible, which were the students, or the ones who spent their fee dollars, $14 million to do this renovation and expansion of the building. You hit on my next question a little bit there at the end of that last statement.

The renovation of student center, how did that become a reality and kind of talk a little bit more in depth about the process of how it did become a reality? Well, it started a long time ago actually. We realized seven, eight, nine years ago that we needed to be looking at some sort of expansion. In fact, in the master plan back in 97, I think there was even a call for an expansion at some point of the building, but I think about seven years or so ago, we started talking about, do we really need to be looking at an expansion of the building? And so five years ago, the student center went ahead with the approval of the university, obviously, we hired a set of architects out of Wichita who had actually just done our previous renovation of our food court back in 2003 to come up with a master plan of what we needed for an expansion or renovation. So we hired them and it took about six months and we had meetings with different users of the building along with a lot of student input, student organization, student government, the programming board, which is now GAB, fraternity sororities, student leaders at large, students in general. What did they want to see in expanded renovated building? We had to come up with a program to kind of figure out where we needed to go and what we wanted to be for the campus.

It took about six months and they came up with some plans and we went back, looked at them, made changes, looked them again, changes again. Finally came up with a plan that we thought was workable for Pitt State. At that point, we along with two of the projects you may have heard of, the Center for the Arts and the Plaster Center, we're also looking for additional funding. So Dr. Steve Irwin, our vice president for student life, put together a proposal about creating a fee increase for the students, which they voted on and approved overwhelmingly. And that created $14 million for the students to go ahead and put forward to actually work on the expansion or renovation of the building. So at that point, once we got the money in place, then we were able to go out to bid to hire a permanent set of architects and we ended up hiring a different firm than did our master plan. Trainor and Associates out of Topeka and Lawrence and they came and took our master plan and listened to what we wanted, what our program idea was, and then kind of reconceptualized everything and what you see in the building now is what their final ideas were.

After all said and done with all that planning, what renovations were made to the Overman Student Center? A lot. We expanded 31,000 square feet and we renovated approximately 40,000 square feet. A significant improvements, one to me, to be honest, I think is the most significant was taking our student activities complex. The offices of the Campus Activity Center, which is where the professional staff reside. The Gorilla Activities Board, the Programming Board, and the Student Government Association. All those offices were buried in the basement, different ends of the building. If you wanted to get involved, it was difficult to figure out where you needed to go. I mean, you had to know where you were going to actually find those spaces. So we moved them into the addition on the main floor of the addition on what we call the Crossroads. It's a main street for students. So in order now, if you want to get involved, it is really easy to figure out where to go. So to me, that was one of the highlights of putting student activities in the forefront of what we do in the building. Other things that we did is we created a new ballroom. Our old crimson and gold ballroom served as well, but it was laid out.

Not in any ordinary shape. There were pillars, no clean lines, a site. We were limited in size of what we could do. The stage there was a unique shape. So we created a brand new ballroom in the addition. Much larger, divisible in the three sections, clean lines, a site. It's beautiful. And that gave us a lot more flexibility. And it's a bigger capacity. We took the old ballroom and re-converted it into programming slash meeting room space. We have a lot more meeting rooms. So the entire west end of the building, second floor is all meeting space. And it's really been a big help to us. Other things that we've done is we created larger lounges that we had before the jungle lounge was expanded, the grill lounge was expanded. We created a quiet lounge, a lounge where you go in and all you do is study, do whatever but you're quiet. We created a new lounge outside of our conference space. We created a new lounge outside of our ballroom, a new lounge outside of the main level. We had a new food service concept in the university club. And one of the most significant things is we created an easier pathway through the building.

We went north, south, east, west before you had curvy hallways. And usually in the past, when someone said, how do I get to the governor's room, I would tell the students to take them there. It's a lot easier to show them than it is to try to point out which way you need to go. So again, I think we've cleaned up the lines of sight and so to navigate the buildings a lot easier. What has the feedback been like from students now that they've had a few weeks to kind of figure it out and roam around the halls of the Overman Student Center? The response has been overwhelmingly positive. I think it blew the students away, whether it's just an average student or a student leader. It went far beyond what they anticipated it being. I mean, I heard things from students going, you guys did this right. They didn't hold back and you gave us something that we're proud of. And last year was a tough year being under construction. We had to give up a lot of space. But I think the students will tell you it was well worth it. And the faculty and staff and folks outside the campus who've been through have just can't believe how well it turned out.

And I'll be honest, it far exceeded my expectations. I didn't think it would ever turn out as beautiful as it has. Why is it important to have a state of the art student center? Well, you know, the student center is the living room of the campus. And so we're one of the buildings that students probably go through more often on a daily basis than any other building on campus. If I were to guess, I would say somewhere between 5,000 to 7,000 students walk through the building on a daily basis, just walking through. And so if you would ask admissions, what's one of the most important buildings that they take people on tours? It's a student center. Every other union in the state of Kansas as far as the region schools has been renovated significantly over the last 10 years or so. So it's important that when students come to visit our campus to see what we have to offer that we can say ours is just as nice if not the nicest one in the entire state. Again, our guest today has been director of the Jack H. Overman Student Center on the campus of Pittsburgh State University, Jeff Steinmiller. For KRPS and Crimson and Gold Connection, this is Trent Johnson.

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