Chapman announces early stages of new on-campus Student Success Center
Over the next few years, Chapman will be developing a Student Success Center with the purpose of helping to prioritize student academic and personal needs.
Over the next few years, Chapman will be developing a Student Success Center with the purpose of helping to prioritize student academic and personal needs. Bhathal Student Services Center (pictured) is one location the university is eyeing for the new center. Photos by SIMRAH AHMAD, Staff Photographer
On April 4, an email was sent out to Chapman University students, faculty and staff detailing that a new Student Success Center was in the early stages of development for the Orange campus. The email also explained that input from students was encouraged to help create the vision of the project.
Students were told to fill out a form over the following week that asked questions such as “What services or resources would you expect to find at a new Student Success Center?” and “What are some obstacles on the Orange Campus that currently impede student success?”
Chapman is also eyeing DeMille Hall as a possible location for the new center.
Brad Petitfils, Chapman’s vice provost for undergraduate education and student success, is helping lead the project. Petitfils explained what the early visions currently look like for the new center.
“The conversation about this building started about two years ago as part of the new strategic plan, and at that time, to think about what would go into this type of a building,” Petitfils told The Panther. “We know that it will never be all the things that we imagine because we just don't have that much space.”
Petitfils explained that the new center will replace a current building on campus. The current buildings that are possibilities of being replaced by the new center are either DeMille Hall or Bhathal Student Services Center by the Fowler School of Law. Both of these buildings are currently housing resources that help students and are in convenient locations for the potential building. However, one aspect of this plan that still needs to be decided on is where the people in the current building will be moved to, either in the new building or somewhere else on campus.
Currently, there are several student services that are in talks of joining the center when it opens. Academic Advising, the Tutoring and Learning Center (TLC), the Center for Undergraduate Excellence and Disability Services could all potentially be housed in the new building.
“(This would) help eliminate the ‘Go to this office there, go to that office here.’ That’s really my hope. If we can sort of make students’ lives easier by reducing the number of places they have to go, that would (make the center) a successful building.”
Another hope for the new center is to create more spaces for students to hold club meetings instead of having to use classrooms and library study rooms.
Fashion Castillo, a junior public relations and advertising major, believes that the new center would be very helpful for students on campus.
“I feel like this would be a really great space, not necessarily just for the TLC and (Academic Advising) to be, but (be) a place where students can use the space to study and gather together,” Castillo told The Panther.
Junior psychology major Kaylee Scott explained that Chapman’s Career Center may not be the best option to be housed in the new building.
“I think having everything in one place would be a good idea, but I also think it would be confusing to have the Career Center in one place. I feel like it might be difficult to put every single major’s career advisor in that place since the needs of each major are so different.”
The new Student Success Center is expected to be finished and open to students sometime between fall 2026 and spring 2027.
“It's exciting that this is happening, and it's a huge project,” Petitfils told The Panther. “We want to do it in a way where a building is designed to make students’ lives easier, and I think that we'll get there.”
