Buckley Center is fifty years old, dedicated February 7, 1969.
When new, Buckley Center met a major need on the UP campus for faculty office space, general-use classrooms, and nursing and communications labs.
The Alumni Bulletin (January 1969) touted the advantages of the new faculty and classroom building, “a modern facility in every sense of the word“, including fresh features like:
AIR-CONDITIONED 400 seat auditorium …
the newest audio-visual equipment…
the most up-to-date nursing apparatus…
three psychology instruction rooms equipped with two-way mirror glass…
the language laboratories, the radio and TV laboratories…
and study rooms and seminar rooms look more like a board room…. and [where] students and professors may study Shakespeare or Buber, whatever the class may be, around polished tables, surrounded by formal arm chairs, or colorful posture chairs. … Variety abounds!
… a total of 92,1187 square feet. It’s big!”
Plastic-molded desk chairs will always have disputed chiropractic effects, but The School of Nursing’s Learning Resource Center, has continued to grow in space and clinical sophistication, and Buckley has come to house student services such as The Shepard Academic Resource Center and The Learning Commons. As a result of changing with the times and adapting to student needs, even at age fifty Buckley Center remains a positive contributing factor in the University receiving high national and regional rankings for the quality and value of the student experience in our community.
For more photos and memorabilia of Buckley Center: Clark Library Digital Collections