Clackamas Community College will break ground on a new Welcome Center at its flagship campus in Oregon City at 4 p.m. March 13. This building will house the college’s student support services and will serve as the college’s “front door.”
The Welcome Center will house advising, counseling, education partnerships, financial aid, registration, testing and placement services. The college is intentionally creating a space where students can have most of their questions answered in one sitting rather than moving to different offices or between buildings.
The college is also remodeling the existing Bill Brod Community Center to provide a facelift for admissions, student government, career center, disability resource center, multicultural center, and the veterans center. The improved community center will create better study spaces for students as well as easy access to the Cougar Café.
The 21,000-square-foot Welcome Center will be completed in the spring of 2021 with the community center refresh being conducted during summer, and total completion fall 2021. Project cost is estimated at $15.7 million.
Tara Sprehe, dean of Academic Foundations and Connections, says the new Welcome Center will “change the way we serve students here at CCC.”
“We know that students currently must navigate between places to have their questions answered,” she said. “And we know there is not enough access to study spaces or opportunities to easily collaborate and connect with students, faculty, and staff. We hope these construction projects will solve these problems for students.”
The community is invited to join the groundbreaking, which is the last of the projects included in a $90 million bond CCC district voters approved in November 2014 to update and expand college classrooms and labs and modernize equipment to meet industry standards. Passage of the bond also resulted in CCC receiving $32 million in state matching funds.
For more information about the college’s bond projects, visit www.clackamas.edu/bondinformation.