The Libraries on Yavapai College’s Prescott and Clarkdale Campuses Receive New Names and Significant Updates
By Hilary Dartt
Thanks to significant renovations, the Yavapai College libraries—now known as the Centers for Learning and Innovation—will provide resources, technology, and usable space for everyone.
Jeff Falls, Senior Project Manager with Haley Construction, the firm completing the renovations, said, “As we’re moving into the future,” the team will “completely gut” both libraries “down to bare walls.”
It’s a big job: the Clarkdale building is 11,000 square feet, and the Prescott building is 30,000 square feet.
Since the project goal is to make the spaces high-tech, Jeff said, “A whole new level of infrastructure has to go in.”
The result, according to Tyler Rumsey, the college’s Associate Vice President of Community Relations, the centers will “include the newest and most interactive learning environments available … [to] increase the use of technology and innovation while also providing more accessible academic for students, add more flexible and interactive learning spaces, and create dedicated learning and content creation spaces for immersive and emerging technologies.”
“Books will still be around,” Tyler said, “just in a smaller physical sense. The update to these spaces will exponentially increase the ability for students, community members, and visitors to find information and use it to their advantage, to create content, and to blend the modern world of technology and innovation into their everyday lives.”
“Maker Spaces,” Tyler said, will allow faculty and students to “utilize modern media and immersive technology.”
“There will be spaces in both locations for video studios and podcasting, as well as spaces for faculty to create virtual and augmented reality experiences (and classrooms where it is taught).”
Jeff added that students and visitors can use virtual learning, Artificial Intelligence, and virtual reality spaces, including esports. From what he’s seen during his two decades of involvement in construction projects at the college, he said, “They’re always modernizing and striving to make the student experience as good as they can.”
For Jeff, the library projects represent a unique milestone: since about 2006, he’s worked on every building on Yavapai College’s Prescott campus (in fact, he was part of the team that built the original library there). Haley Construction and Yavapai College have a long history together, which makes for a team-oriented approach to each project.
Overall, Tyler said, the goal of this and every project at Yavapai College is to provide students and the community with the most accessible and quality learning experiences it can.
For more information about Yavapai College, visit www.yc.edu.