Augusta University celebrated the opening of its new Welcome Center. It is attached to the Student Center on the Health Sciences campus.
It will serve as a central point for visitors and students and will support recruitment efforts. Campus tours will now depart from the addition.
Dr Susan Davies, Executive Vice President for Enrollment and Student Affairs, told the standing room only crowd attending the ribbon cutting that the idea of the welcome center dates back to a consultant’s recommendation in 2019.
“Our presentation room in the Benet House only holds 15 to 20 prospective students and their family members, so opening this Welcome Center allows us to triple the number of campus visitors that we can have in each of our daily campus visits,” she said. “We sometimes had to turn prospective students and parents away. We just didn’t have enough room.”
University president, Dr. Russell Keen, told ABD the new welcome center will be a valuable tool to boost enrollment.
“We want them to feel like they belong here at Augusta University,” he said. “To make them feel like we care enough about them to think through the details and that this is going to be a projection of what their experience will be at Augusta University. It speaks of excellence, and it speaks of the spirit, of innovating and life-changing, lifesaving, education and care that they’ll have here at this institution and in our community.”
Keen added, while the new facility is based on the Health Sciences campus, it will serve all of the university’s locations, including Summerville, Forest Hills, and Christenberry Field House, and the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center downtown.
“This is our campus across the board, and the community is part of our campus,” said Keen. “So, while it sits on the Health Sciences Campus, in many ways, it’s the perfect location between the Riverfront Campus, the Summerville campus, and Forest Hills. When people come into tour Augusta University, they’re going to see all of it, and they’re going to know that the potential to take part in all of it belongs to each and every one of them.”
The center is dedicated to Dr. Gretchen B. Caughman, who championed the development of the new facility. She is a retired professor of oral biology and provost emerita, prompting Keen to note she was the last provost for the Medical College of Georgia, the only provost for Georgia Health Sciences University, and the first provost for Augusta University.
Although retired, Caughman said she carries Augusta University with her every day.
“I will always have a part of my heart deeply embedded in this university and in all that it can provide and the spirit that it provides to not every person, such as the inside, but the spread that this university has,” she said. “It’s amazing to see out all the tentacles, if you want to put it that way, that this university has throughout many of us, that it has such an impact. And that then comes back to the people.”
