Monday, January 25, 2010
WAGNER OPENS STATE-OF-THE-ART DORM
By STEPHANIE SLEPIAN
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Contractors are still regulating the temperature and the flow of hot water, but students are already right at home in Foundation Hall, the first new dorm built on the campus of Wagner College in more than four decades.
“This is definitely the most modern building on campus,” said senior Michael Pinto, 21, a Huguenot resident and student government president who has been living at Wagner since he was a freshman. “It’s amazing just walking through it.”
Students moved into the $24 million, 200-bed residence hall last Monday even as workers were putting the finishing touches on the four-story building.
Seventy-five percent of Wagner’s 1,850 undergraduates live on-campus, while graduate students are housed at the nearby Grymes Hill Apartments.
“The past 10 years really marked a transition in the identity of the college,” said spokesman Lee Manchester. “Ten or 15 years ago, a huge majority of students were commuters from Staten Island and the other boroughs. Today, we have a vast majority from outside New York City. We needed more space.”
Wagner remains the borough’s only college with on-campus housing.
St. John’s University, which is Wagner’s Howard Avenue neighbor, also leases space at the Grymes Hill Apartments for students. At the College of Staten Island, groundbreaking for three dormitories planned for the Willowbrook campus was put on hold in 2008 when the school was unable to obtain financing for the project.
Foundation Hall — named for the Richmond County Savings Foundation, which donated $5 million toward the project — sits on the former baseball field on Campus Road, joining Harbor View Hall, Parker Towers Hall and Guild Hall atop Grymes Hill.
Construction on the 72,000-square-foot building began in 2008.
The work is expected to wrap up by month’s end with an official ribbon-cutting planned for March, according to resident director Chris Diggs, a Manhattan native who joined Wagner’s staff in December.
“There are still some little things here and there,” said Ms. Diggs, a former career counselor and resident director at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, where she earned her master’s degree in education. “They’re still trying to regulate the air balance and figure out how much hot water we need, but otherwise, it’s beautiful.”
The red and beige brick building features four-person suites with private bathrooms, double sinks and counter space for food preparation. Six larger Seahawk Suites have a common room. There are also four single-student rooms.
Each floor has two laundry rooms, two common rooms and a study room.
A cafe, which will brew Starbucks coffee and will have early-morning and late-night hours, is almost ready to open.
Although there are a few sophomores and juniors living in Foundation this semester, the building will be devoted to seniors participating in Wagner’s Senior Year Residential Experience.
SYRE is designed to prepare graduating seniors for life after Wagner and includes workshops on resume and cover letter writing, interviewing skills, apartment hunting, personal finance, test prep for graduate school admissions exams and negotiating job offers.
“This is more than a residence hall — it is truly a foundation,” said Wagner President Richard Guarasci. “Our seniors are living in a building that helps them transition to the next stage in their lives in the professions and/or graduate school.
“The building is designed to create living and learning spaces for students heavily immersed in internships and experiential learning. And they live in spaces closer in kind to those they will inhabit after graduation.”
That was the draw for Alexandra Klein, 22, a business marketing major from Kentucky who shares one of the Seahawk Suites with three girl friends, former volleyball teammates.
Magazines sit on their common room table, along with an empty Dominos pizza box. A colorful throw is draped over the couch and DVDs are stacked alongside the floor-to-ceiling windows that bathe the room in natural light.
“I don’t feel like I am living in a dorm room,” she said. “I feel like I am living in my own apartment.”
Advance highlights Foundation Hall opening
January 25, 2010
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