By Cody Dowless
Triton’s Call Staff
The University of Guam will soon see the addition of a new engineering annex as well as a renovated and expanded student services center.
The new additions are part of the Vision 2025 plan, which according to the UOG website, aims to prepare the campus to accommodate 5,000 campus and online students.
A separate engineering annex will be constructed adjacent to the Agriculture and Life Science building. UOG currently has a pre-engineering program whose courses emulate those required in the major colleges and universities. However, UOG students must travel off island to complete their degrees.
UOG Vice President of Finance and Administration Randall Wiegand said, “We have relationships with three universities who will seamlessly receive students who have completed the two year program. The universities are University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Iowa, and the Mapua Institute of Technology
The addition of the annex is a step in the direction of an eventual UOG School of Engineering according to the Vision 2025 Master Plan Executive Summary.
This prospect is already appealing to Trey Leon, an undeclared freshman currently enrolled in some pre-engineering courses.
“This excites me because we will have more resources geared toward engineering. It will allow us to have engineers from our own island rather than having them come from outside places,” Leon said.
The current student center will be renovated and expanded to serve as a one-stop-shop integrating all vital student services. According to Wiegand, this will include services like financial aid, student and career counseling, campus post office, bookstore, student government offices, admissions and records, as well as other services.
“We are trying to make it convenient for students to conduct as much business as possible in the student center,” Wiegand said.
Groundbreaking on the projects is set to begin in May of 2017, but this is tentative.
According to Wiegand, factors such as weather, availability of skilled laborers and materials all make it difficult to predict exact construction dates.
These upgrades to the university will be funded by a $21.7 million dollar loan to be given to the university soon.
Wiegand mentioned that several options for funding were meticulously considered, but they went with the loan.
“UOG was pleased with the results of the USDA involvement in the LG building and since they were the low cost option, so the University decided to go with USDA for the Student Success Center and the Engineering Annex,” Wiegand said.
Eventually, Vision 2025 includes International dormitories and a Triton Engagement Center. These plans have yet to be fully conceptualized, but will be implemented with the completion of the first phase.