By NANCY DOCKTER
Leader staff writer
The joint-education center is ready for a 50 percent construction completion “walk-through” next week and is on schedule for occupancy in January 2011.
The 46,239-square-foot facility is being built adjacent to Little Rock Air Force Base with $9.9 million in federal funds. Another $5 million, raised through a sales tax approved by Jacksonville voters, will pay for other essentials to complete the center.
They include classroom desks, chairs and overheadprojectors; upgrades to parking lot security with lights, cameras and telephones; landscaping; construction of a frontage road off Vandenberg Drive, where the center is located, and lengthening of the turn lane coming from the base to ease traffic flow.
With the new facility’s capacity to simultaneously serve 800 students, “it is going to be a major traffic jam” at the entrance to the center off Vandenberg, said Nancy Shefflette, director of Arkansas State University-Beebe (ASU) at Little Rock Air Force Base.
The new facility will replace the existing joint-education center located on base, which became difficult to access after base security tightened following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The old center had other problems that made it less than ideal as a teaching facility. Housed in an old dormitory, its classrooms were long and narrow, and hallways were cramped. And because it has not been brought up to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, whenever a student enrolled who couldn’t walk the stairs, the class was moved to the ground floor.
Yet, the center has been serving 1,000 to 1,500 students at any one time, Shefflette said. Established to provide off-duty educational opportunities to active-duty airmen, the center’s priority is to them, but classes are also open to airmen’s spouses and dependents, retired military, civil servants who work on base and members of the community.
With 9/11, class enrollment dropped off considerably; ASU-Beebe lost two-thirds of its students, she said. With fewer students, course offerings have declined because of difficulties in meeting minimum-enrollment requirements.
Even though the new facility is going to be much smaller than the two dorms that comprise the existing center, Shefflette foresees enrollment increasing once it opens, because of ease of access as well as its better design. After all, she notes, it has been designed “from the ground up to be a higher -education facility, rather than re-purposed dorm rooms.”
The new center will have larger classrooms with proportions more fitting teaching than sleeping space so class sizes can almost double. There will be computer labs, as well as physical-science and life-science labs.
And, classes, now offered only on late afternoons, evenings and weekends, will expand to an all-day schedule if an adjunct faculty is available to teach during those hours, Shefflette said. “There will be more intensive use of the new facility.”
Because of the problems with the existing center, it was just a matter of time before there would have been a push to build a new one, but restricted base access after 9/11 “absolutely” is what jumpstarted the effort that led to Jacksonville voters deciding to tax themselves to raise money for construction of a new center off base, Shefflette said. It was the leadership of Gen. Paul Fletcher, former commander of the 314th Airlift Wing, and Tommy Swaim, former mayor of Jacksonville, that made that happen, she said.
“They put their heads together to build a facility to serve both types of students. Without their leadership, we would not be looking at this opportunity in 2010.”
The $5 million gift from the people of Jacksonville to the air base was unprecedented in the history of the Air Force. Because of the unique gift and other ways that the Jacksonville community supports Little Rock Air Force Base, the city was honored last week as a recipient to the prestigious Abilene Trophy from the Abilene (Texas) Chamber of Commerce. The award is made to recognize a community nationally that is most supportive of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command.
“It was a new paradigm,” Shefflette said. “No community has made such a substantial donation to this type endeavor. It is because of the high value the people of Jacksonville place on education. This center is a really big deal for Jacksonville. People will be really happy with their investment.”
ASU-Beebe, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Park University, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville and Webster University will offer classes at the center.
