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�A place to meet and learn� Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell photos Newly redone RCC building in Medford opens to accolades Rogue Community College students Jaime Ludwig, left, and Tricia Williams check in at the testing lab in the college�s newly refurbished Ward Building Friday. The building provides cohesion for a once-scattered campus, students and officials say. By John Darling Amid much praise for a fashionable, spacious, urban campus, Rogue Community College and local officials Friday cut the ribbon for the grand opening of the $2.25 million, newly refurbished Ward Building. "What it means is that we have a center for student life," said RCC Associated Students President Todd Price. "We�ve got a place now to meet and learn about each other." The new building at Eighth Street and Central Avenue houses 13 classrooms, a comfortable student lounge, tutoring center, counseling center and financial aid office. "Before this, they were scattered in different buildings around Medford," said RCC president Rick Levine. "Now, students are a lot more comfortable." "It makes you feel like you�re actually on a campus and going to college," said student Rosie Pittock. "There�s a nice central place you can go now and not be crammed together in a little building." "It�s a lot more relaxing," said student Mark Wilson, Medford, who�s picking up all the basics at RCC before transferring for a dental hygiene degree. "It�s a lot easier to find everything and relax and read between classes." "I love it, said Sally Wybrew, an exchange student from England. "There are always teachers around to help you." All the RCC and governmental players who made it happen rolled up in five cars from the 1930s for celebratory speeches, as well as hot dogs and sodas priced as they were when the art deco Montgomery Ward building, designed by noted local architect Frank Clark, was erected in 1928. "Our community vision has taken a big step forward into a vibrant downtown," said Medford Mayor Lindsay Berryman. "It�s a big part of our goal of lifelong educational opportunity that supports a good quality of life. It has significant street appeal and, with trees and new sidewalks, will be an absolute knockout. It will be cherished for generations." The school was wise to plant itself in the center of town and expand outward, said former RCC President Harvey Bennett, because "following this notion that a college needs a 60-acre campus on the periphery of town � that�s the slowest way to bring it into the community. "I love an urban campus," he said. "People ought to be able to walk through all the needs of their lives in a downtown, not just commercial needs, but medical, dental, public, private. This mix also helps sustain the downtown when the economy isn�t so good." "This building fills a need for our students to have access to buses, downtown � and to be where it feels like a real college, not some temporary building," said RCC Foundation Director Kathie Olsen. "It�s like my mother used to say: This is a place!" Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.