The main floor of Andersen Library is looking different these days.

A much larger area has been provided for the Student Success Center, which contains the UW-Whitewater honors and undergraduate research programs.

In May 2011, it was decided the Student Success Center needed much more space so a glass wall was taken down and the entryway was relocated. This formed a place that Honors Program Director Marjorie Rhine hopes will turn out greater than the sum of its parts.

Rhine said she believes the conglomeration will bring about piqued interest among members of one of the programs to branch out into the others and broaden their horizons and that it was “fundamentally important” to do so.

“This project is really important to me specifically because I’ve been directing the honors program here for about six years now and the program had begun to attract more and more students to meetings,” Rhine said. “We wanted to have different kinds of events here. We were getting cramped in our old quarters.”

Rhine added the honors program had hoped to bond with the undergraduate research program and “give the program a real strong home base.”

Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Catherine Chan said she was excited for the undergraduate research program to have actual space for students to work together, have workshops, meet with professors, host guest speakers and hold a new course called Research Methods and Ethics.

“[The course] is an introduction to the different techniques and backgrounds of doing research,” Chan said. “The hope is for students to be able to do independent research earlier and better, to get them ready for doing more independent research in the near future. I hope that students use this wonderful facility to enhance their experiences at UW-Whitewater.”

Photos By Jenny Dupuis