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>>After Dr. Eisenhart retired, the college had to choose a new president.
Dr. Gordon Blank, president of North Carolina's Western Piedmont Community College was selected.
In Dr. Blank's administration initiatives were made in the
academic, career education, continuing education, and community relations areas.
Enrollment soared. In the past five years enrollment nearly doubled to three thousand
full- and part-time students.
Again the college found itself badly in need for new construction.
The new campus was bursting at the seams.
In a conversation we had with President Blank in Dearlove Hall's new Miller Auditorium
Dr. Blank explains why the college had to begin a construction program.
>>Well, the new facilities were built out of a recognition that the college's growth
in programs and services required more suitable space than was available at the time.
The college was originally built for nine hundred students,
well, enrollment has grown and grown and grown over the years
to the point where we were literally bulging at the seams
and we were using some facilities on a temporary basis for instructional purposes
that were really designed and intended and needed for other purposes.
For example, we use the basement of the library for temporary classrooms.
The basement of the library was intended to develop into a learning center
with computerized terminals and other support services for a learning center.
We also use a maintenence building for temporary classrooms, and that facility of course
was intended and needed to be used for maintenence purposes but because of the lack of space
it had to be used for the period of rapid growth when other facilities were not available;
that maintenence building had to be used for instructional purposes.
So the new facilities were built out of a recognition of need.
>>Dr. Blank then described the new buildings.
>>The new facilities involve essentially two kinds of facilities.
One is a new educational building which is called Dearlove Hall,
and we're now seated in what is referred to as Miller Auditorium of Dearlove Hall.
And this building is primarily designed in support of the instructional and educational
programs of the institution.
The other category of expansion involved the Student Center building
and included in this was an expansion of the kitchen area involved with food service on
campus
and the creation of an additional dining meeting room on the upstairs level of the student
center.
So the combination of these two types of construction in this project better permit the college
to meet its needs.