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A big chunk of the Renick University Center’s first floor has been closed for renovation since April of last year. If you’ve been wondering what the remodeled space was going to look like, you can now come take it all in. The RUC fully reopened on Monday last week, showcasing a host of improvements, including a lot of U-M-themed branding, a fireplace, plenty of spaces to hang out and study, and new homes for several key campus offices, including Career Services and the Student Advising and Resource Team, or START. Director of Facilities Planning and Construction Emily Hamilton, who oversaw design of the project, says one of the goals was to make the east end of the building, which faces the campus’ large surface parking area, feel more like a front door to the university. “Now, you walk in and it just feels like a more fun place to go to school,” Hamilton says. “It’s more open. You immediately see lounge and hangout spaces. There’s a fireplace and a big ‘Hail to the Victors’ on the wall and some very recognizable colors. You know where you are when you walk in the door.”

Indeed. The maize and blue and other U-M touches are the driving force behind the aesthetic overhaul. In addition, Hamilton says there were a lot of meaningful changes to the building’s floor plan so some core student services could be relocated to a more convenient location. A couple of the biggest changes: There’s a new shared suite for START, which is moving down from the RUC’s second floor, and Career Services, which was located in Fairlane Center North. In addition, the One-Stop office has a much more open floor plan. The renovated first floor is also gaining several smaller meeting rooms, as well as a large meeting room for hosting tour and orientation groups. To do more with the same amount of space, Hamilton says the team drew on newly adopted compact space guidelines for offices, made considerations for office sharing where it made sense, and stocked communal spaces with moveable furniture so they could easily transition from meeting rooms to lunch rooms. The design team even chose barn door-style office entry doors to eliminate the space that’s needed for conventional inswing doors. 

During the design phase, Hamilton says some staff were initially a little anxious about the smaller offices. But now that they’ve seen them in person, people seem totally fine with the smaller footprints. “This is the first time we’ve designed a project with this post-COVID office philosophy in mind,” Hamilton says. “In fact, right now, we’re working on moving the College of Education, Health and Human Services into the Administration Building, and we gave them a tour of the RUC to give them a sense of what the space would feel like. They really liked it, and so I think having this project as an example is helping allay people’s fears about what shrinking your office size actually looks like.”

The Career Services staff is particularly enthusiastic about its move to the heart of campus. Jennifer Macleod, the senior professional development program manager for Career Services, jokes that they’d grown used to correcting students, who assumed Career Services was already located in the RUC. Now that Career Services is actually here, she’s hoping for a lot more drop-in traffic from students. Moreover, the shared space with START will make collaborating even easier. “We’ve done a lot of programming with START over the years and there’s a natural back-and-forth between our two teams,” Macleod says. “A student might be working with us on career coaching, but there is a lot of planning of academics that goes into that, whether it’s changing a major or exploring different majors. So that’s when you need to help students connect with their START advisor, and now, we can basically just walk a student down the hall. Any time you can remove a barrier like that, they’re more likely to follow through and get the help they need.” Similarly, Macleod says it’ll be huge to be able to take students who might be struggling with, say, the stress of a job search, directly up to the staff at Counseling and Psychological Services, which is located on the RUC’s second floor. 

Not surprisingly, students are already laying claim to the new hangout and study spaces. Grad students Devraj Amin and Theekshana Vishnu Kumar, who were studying in one of the new lounge areas on Wednesday last week, say they’ve already sought out their favorite spot a couple times. “The furniture is very comfortable and it’s very cozy and classy,” Kumar says. “Everyone enters from here, and when [students] see this place, I think they’ll get more interested. It looks very appealing and eye-catching. I think this will be one of the hotspots to sit and study or hang out. It might be one of the coziest places now.” 

The renovation at the RUC is part of an ongoing multi-phase effort to transform the building, the neighboring Mardigian Library and the space between the two buildings into a central hub for campus. You can read more about this and other major design projects that are in the works in our most recent story on the comprehensive campus plan. 

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Story by Lou Blouin, Cayley Catlett and Ben Vertin. Photos by Annie Barker