“Let Your Light Shine” – the UCCS Motto.

You may have noticed that for the past five years, UCCS has been doing some campus revamps including more housing, more opportunities, and more diversity. The goal of this campus is to allow for lower income individuals to gain an excellent education while still having a great college experience.

Take a look back at 2008: the University Village plaza was a useless field of grass with the Santa Fe Trail running behind it along the creek and was not much of a town for a small-medium sized university. Then came the decision to revamp the lot into a shopping plaza. We got businesses such as Lowe’s, Kohl’s, and (the best of all) Costco. Restaurants popped up in the empty stores; shops like Rocket Fizz opened up. A Trader Joe’s eventually was opened up along with a Christy Sports. Concerts free to the public began playing behind Hacienda and Smashburger. A BMW dealership opened up, along with new apartment complexes and more.

So what does this have to do with UCCS? For one, it created jobs for students living on Campus; it also helped to make plans to grow the small University. In 2012, A 260 million dollar master facilities plan was approved by the CU Board. The plan mainly involved creating more medical and health science facilities. The grant got passed because of CU-Boulder and it’s highly liberal surroundings have stopped construction of its facilities and is mainly working on making old ones new. This is the same for CU Denver, Colorado State University, and Colorado College have slowed down their construction of facilities for theirs students. Therefore, all eyes turned to developing UCCS into a larger University.

The steps toward making the University began with budget cuts. The addition of solar panels and more energy efficient buildings helped cut costs by about 2.5 million dollars. Revenue was gained from food services, bookstores, parking, tuition, and housing.

In 2012, approximately 9,850 students attended UCCS. By 2020, this number is expected to be about 17,000, making it one of the fastest growing Universities in America. About 125 million dollars will be put towards the health and wellness village starting with a 54,000-square-foot Lane Center for Academic Health Sciences. This is now constructed on the east side of Nevada Avenue. This will include the Peak Vista Senior Community health clinic for low-income clients, CU Center for Aging, the UCCS Gerontology Center, and soon a CU medical Campus for third and fourth-year students.

60 million dollars will be put towards a 300,000 square-foot visual and performing arts center including the UCCS Gallery of Contemporary Arts and the UCCS music program. 75 million dollars will be put towards sports facilities such as the parking garage with the soccer field on top of it. Other additions include a 3,000 to 5,000 seat, multi-purpose arena and field house that can be home to Mountain Lion Athletics, concerts, lectures, and community events.

More housing will be added for the growing numbers to help diversify the University, making it open to students outside of the Colorado Springs region. That is actually the main goal of the construction and expansion of such facilities: to gain the eyes of students across the nation and even across the world. With its surroundings growing exponentially and its student body increasing by a solid 90%, UCCS has brought quite a community to Colorado Springs.