Neeves gets a facelift and the future of renovations at NGU

Neeves gets a facelift and the future of renovations at NGU

Joshua Boulet, Features and Entertainment Editor

Over the summer, Neeves Academic Hall received significant renovations to just about every part of the top floor. The office spaces were moved inwards, the lobby was moved outwards and several departments were merged into a unified space.

I spoke to Rachael Russiaky, vice president for Student Services, to learn a bit more about it.

She was hired recently from a university in Illinois to be part of Gene Fant’s larger plan of reorganization and changes for the school. Her colleague Rich Grim had just been hired by NGU and she was encouraged by him to take the position as well.

The main focus of the redesign was to facilitate the new purpose of the building: to house Student Accounts, Financial Aid and Academic Records. She described issues regarding Financial Aid and Student Accounts being so far from each other.

“What was happening was a lot of ping pong effort,” she said. Many returning students may already be familiar with the issue: the office of financial aid was in Hayes Ministry Welcome Center about half-way down the hill. The office of student accounts was in Donnan Administration Building at the top of the hill.

If a student thought they needed one office but is told that they needed the other, that sent them on another walk across campus.

This motivated and shaped the renovation; Neeves is one of the oldest buildings on campus and it had been a while since its last face lift. Since the scale of the renovation was focused on moving the three offices together, the second and first floors of Neeves remain untouched.

With the help of some money from currently unspecified donors, NGU hired Equip Studio to renovate the building. The firm did most of the designing, but the school did make sure to highlight the windows that surround the top floor of the building.

In the previous iteration these windows were almost entirely facing offices. Nice for the people in said offices, but not quite as striking as the wall-to-wall windows that can be seen in the lobby area for the current iteration.

Practically speaking, the offices themselves work the same as they did before. Though they exist inside the same building, they remain distinct from each other with distinct roles. Which office performs which tasks may be a mystery, but students don’t need to even consider that question anymore.

A financial aid visit is rarely fun, but at least students can no longer mix up whether they need to go to financial aid in the first place. The new secretary and a work study greet the students at the door and direct them to the office they need.

While Neeves is just a building, Russiaky still wanted to highlight hers, Fant’s and NGU’s student centric approach. As of my conversation with Russiaky, there are no announced plans for further renovations. Conversations are happening and there are a few ideas, but none that can be disclosed today.