Unrelenting growth offers abundant opportunities

Colin Hannifin
Columnist

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When I first came to VCU in the fall of 2008, I wasn’t sure what to expect, even after receiving advice from my older brother, who had enrolled three years earlier. While I have found many things to respect and appreciate about VCU, I’ve found one defining characteristic of the university that sets it apart from others: growth.

VCU has attempted to expand almost all aspects of the university from student enrollment to the respective campuses and its national profile. Since the fall of 2001, enrollment has increased from about 25,000 students to more than 32,000 students; a growth of more than  25 percent in just 10 years.

To match this growth, the university has been marching forward with its “VCU 2020” plan. Adopted in 2004, this strategic plan outlines VCU’s growth throughout the next decade, with approximately $1 billion to be spent on new facilities alone. In my three years, I’ve seen endless construction around the Monroe Park campus, most notably the opening of the state-of-the-art Cary Street Gym. Construction continues, with the skeletons of new dorms and parking garages stretching over the city and the promise of even more in the years to come.

In line with its intent on expansion, VCU continually strives to raise its national profile through reputable academic success. The art program is the best public school art program in the nation and among the top five when private schools are taken into account. The VCU School of Medicine is well-respected across the nation for its trauma center and cancer research, just to name a few of its flagship programs. The engineering and business schools sport programs that are rising to be among the best in the nation. The College of Humanities and Sciences sports dozens of majors, each one uniquely difficult, demanding and respected. But perhaps nothing has done as much to raise VCU’s stature as the men’s basketball team’s improbable run to the Final Four this past year.

All of these developments are shifting the perception of VCU. No longer do non-Richmonders respond with a blank stare when I tell them I go to “VCU.” They’re learning that VCU means something.

This recognition has massive implications for current and new students alike. Come to campus in the fall, and it is impossible to miss the crowds that cascade through the Commons or stream into Shafer. In-state tuition has increased by more than 20 percent since 2010 to cover the loss of federal stimulus funding and our cost of growth. And while it’s easy for individuals to feel lost in a university that seems to be expanding in every imaginable direction, this growth has more positive effects on students than negative ones. While the tuition increase is regrettable (and more complicated than most people realize), it is still among the lowest in Virginia. But most of all, this growth means one thing to the current and prospective students of VCU: opportunity.

Opportunity at VCU is nearly unlimited, no matter what academic field you are in. As a growing school, with numerous programs that are rising in stature, there are plenty of places to make your mark and help shape this university for the better. There are many unique programs to be found at VCU and an unmatched breadth of diversity. Only VCU has programs like the da Vinci Center, a center focused on innovation, or the Brandcenter, the nation’s top graduate school for advertising and marketing.

These are the best known of VCU’s academic programs, but far from the only ones. There are countless opportunities here in the middle of Richmond; it’s just up to us students to go find them and make them ours.