Last year while many members of our community were away from campus, the Student Center team, building, and services underwent some big changes you may not have noticed. The Campus Center Project continues to progress towards completion in late Summer 2022, and at the same time the team behind the building is growing and changing in preparation for the exciting road ahead. Here’s what you may have missed about the Student Center’s reach beyond the Student Center: 

The Exhibition Hall  

The Exhibition Hall, one of the new facilities built in phase one of the Campus Center project, has been open for a more than a year. This 46,000ft2 building, located across from the ISYE building and next to the Student Center Parking Deck, is built to serve the meeting and conference needs of the entire community. In its short history this facility has already become a magnet for campus events like Midnight Breakfast, resource fairs, and the vaccine clinic.  

Many services have been housed in the Exhibition Hall temporarily while the Student Center is closed for renovations, so the community can look forward to the opening of four new meeting spaces and full use of the 12,000ft2 Midtown ballroom space once the transition of services to the Student Center is complete and final work is done on the rooms. Those spaces will be open to the community for reservations starting in Spring 2022. More about the spaces that are available for use now and those coming in Fall 2022 can be found at this link. 

The *NEW* Student Center 

Watching from over the fence line, the community will see the new and improved Student Center and Stamps Commons take shape over the rest of this academic year. Construction is currently on schedule to be complete next summer, so the building is expected to be open to welcome students and the community once again in Fall 2022. Registration for hard hat tours of the Student Center is now full, but more spots will be available in Spring 2022.  

When it opens, the completed Student Center will include eight new meeting rooms, as well as a small theater with 165-retractable seats, 297-seat performance theater, and the bowling and billiards areas of the new Tech Rec. Each room in the new Student Center is named after one of Atlanta’s major streets, chosen by student vote. Reservations for all spaces within the Student Center will be open to the campus community in Spring 2022. Until then, the community can explore these future spaces online by following the links on this page to find renderings, capacity information, and more.  

New Buildings Means New Team Name 

With the completion of the Campus Center project, the portfolio of spaces managed by the Student Center team will include five buildings and portions of the campus’ outdoors. This growth in scope precipitates a clarifying change in name for the team of more than 100 people that manage it. Now called the Student and Campus Event Centers team, this unit will continue to focus on providing high quality spaces for the community to gather and life-shaping opportunities for our students to grow and develop.  

“Our overall mission has not changed,” say Dr. Lindsay Bryant, senior director of the team. “We are still here to help build a strong sense of campus community through our wide variety of services. The Student & Campus Event Centers team will continue to do this daily with the students, faculty, and staff we serve in our spaces.” 

The community will start to see the new name appear in the coming months, but contact information for those in need of assistance remains the same.  

The Pavilion 

Nestled in the greenspace between the Instructional Center and the W02 Student Center Parking Deck you’ll find a collection of smaller buildings that include the Rising Roll Café, Burdell’s and DePoe Optical, and both the Student Center and Student Engagement team offices. In addition to these community must-haves, the space around the Pavilion features some of the best outdoor seating on campus. When the Student Center renovations are complete, all Pavilion services except for the café will move into new homes in the Student Center. More details about what will be installed in the Pavilion after that, including a new and improved Paper & Clay (campus creative studio), will be available in Spring 2022.  

The Historic Academy of Medicine 

Not everyone in the community knows about the team’s historic gem of an event space, located at the edge of campus in Midtown. The Historic Academy of Medicine, located at 875 West Peachtree in Midtown, has long been an important part of the campus events scene at Georgia Tech, serving as long time host for retirement dinners, the Annual Women’s Leadership Conference, and more. The historically renovated space is also often recognized for its role in many movies, such as Zombieland 2, Selma, and the Accountant.  

While known for its historic charm, the team at the Academy - as it is affectionately known - have worked hard over the past year to help the community see the space as the hip and modern location it can be. With a hands-on approach to working with the event hosts, the Academy team can turn the space into the best possible environment for any number of events. Much about the building’s event services have all been updated to make the space more accessible to students and accommodating to campus and private events of all kinds. More details about the Academy’s event spaces and service can be found on this webpage.  

The Georgia Tech Post Office 

While its permanent home in the Student Center is closed for renovation, the Post Office and the Postal Services team have operated out of a space on the second floor of the Exhibition Hall. Despite being in a smaller space, the team has continued to provide service to the entire community - thanks in part to their transition to High Density Mail. They were honored with Georgia Tech’s 2020 Giant Leap Award for this improvement in space efficiency and mail management.  

High Density Mail operations will still be in place after returning to the first floor of the Student Center in 2022, meaning that those with mailing addresses will continue to receive mail at the service counter instead of a mailbox. Students can find more information about updates to mail services on the Post Office website.  

West Village 

As part of Georgia Tech’s transition to self-operated Tech Dining, West Village has seen significant changes to the second floor of the dining commons, where all-you-care-to-eat style dining has been implemented. Those familiar with the old space should take a moment when they first visit to understand the new traffic patterns that will take them to any - or all - of the five new dining concepts. The new concepts brought on through the switch to Tech Dining include Ginger & Spice, The Leaning Tower of Tech, White & Gold Grill, and more. 

Diners may also notice another substantial change for that building: the transition to real dishware. These dishes, glasses, and flatware are now run through a dish return like those in the other dining halls. Those who eat in West Village should be mindful that all dining-related dishware and waste must now be brought to the second floor for disposal. The change to real dishware should greatly reduce waste in the dining space.  

Despite the spread of the Student Center’s programs and services across campus, their mission and vision to bring the community together still holds. Every facility and program advances a sense of community on campus in its own way, led by the committed members of the Student and Campus Event Centers team. Now with a network of support distributed throughout campus, that team hopes to better serve the needs of the Georgia Tech students, staff, and faculty of today and tomorrow. More information about the team and the facilities they manage is available at studentcenter.gatech.edu.