Rao focuses on students’ needs through construction

Mechelle Hankerson
Executive Editor

With the introduction of the ASPiRE program and new West Grace North housing going up, VCU President Michael Rao’s Quest for Distinction is becoming more visible as it enters its second phase of implementation.

Rao’s next steps, which will occur over a number of years, is more construction, with an emphasis on the student experience stemming from completion of the construction projects.

According to Rao, VCU still has one of the lowest ratios of square feet per student in the state and the physical size of VCU has to increase to keep up with the number of students and faculty Rao hopes to attract.

In an interview with The CT last week, Rao said one of his priorities is to build more residences for incoming students.

“Because … of my interest in safety but also because I want students to actually persist and get through to graduation, I think we need more residences,”Rao said. “Our residences are more secure, but they’re also places where … if younger students make a social mistake…somebody’s there to guide them through it.”

The ASPiRE program, spearheaded by Rao himself, is a model that he’d like to recreate in future dorms. The current program, housed within the West Grace Street South dorms, focuses on service learning. The West Grace Street North residence hall, which is currently under construction, will house a program centered around global education.

Although there are no plans for when or where, Rao said he would also like to see a dorm that focuses on leadership.
“I don’t want (going to VCU) to just be a college experience of 40 courses, I really want it to be the whole experience,” he said.

While some construction projects can be funded through state funds allocated to VCU by the General Assembly, projects like dorms and parking lots are paid for by the people that use them. Room and Board charges would pay for any new dorms on campus.

In addition to looking to add more residence halls to VCU’s campus, Rao is also weighing the benefits of helping areas bordering the campus to build up more retail space immediately outside of campus.

In February, VCU commissioned a retail study from Robert Charles Lesser and Co., a real estate development company. Building up retail space around the VCU campus would attract more students and help create a buffer zone to increase safety on campus, Rao said.
Vice President of Finance and Administration, David Hanson, stressed the benefit a retail plan would have to the security of campus.

Hanson oversees the implementation of the Clery Act on VCU’s campus, a federal law that requires any public university or college that participates in the federal financial aid program to report certain types of crimes within a specific time frame.
Hanson said that a retail plan for the area immediately surrounding the edges of VCU’s campus will help create a buffer between the campus and potential off-campus crime. With a higher activity level brought on by retail density there would theoretically be less crime.

“There may or may not be an economic benefit, I don’t care about that,” Hanson said. Hanson and Rao both said their priority with all construction projects is to create a safe environment for students to pursue their studies and engage in the VCU experience.

VCU has no set plans for new residences or to begin implementing the findings of the retail study.

Currently, the university is finishing construction on West Grace Street North dorms and is still raising money through private donors to begin the construction of the Institute for Contemporary Art, set to begin in 2013.