MORGANTOWN -- The West Virginia University Alumni Association cut the ribbon at its "new home for the Mountaineers" on Oct. 23.

The recently completed Erickson Alumni Center, more than five years in planning and construction, updates the organization's technology and quadruples its space with casual and formal meeting venues of all sizes.

More Enrollment Means More Alumni

When the association's last Erickson Alumni Center was built in 1986, WVU's alumni base was about 90,000, according to spokeswoman Tara Curtis.

Today, it stands at more than 170,000 -- and with annual enrollment up from 17,000 in the mid-1980s to more than 28,000 today, that number promises to grow quickly.

To serve those graduates into the future, the association asked about 800 alumni about their ideal home on campus.

Alumni asked for a facility that is both traditional and practical, Curtis said.

So designers IKM Architects of Pittsburgh took the look of historical Woodburn Hall to the newer Evansdale campus and included a bell tower in the building's design that echoes Woodburn Hall's iconic clock tower.

The design also marries indoors and out, with gathering rooms opening onto small and large terraces and courtyards, and large windows that emphasize the building's location directly between the Coliseum and Milan Puskar Stadium.

Gracious and comfortable, the new center can host a dozen events at once and provides state-of-the-art communications technology while offering alumni a convenient stopping-off point during a visit to Morgantown.

Continuing and Creating Traditions

Important alumni are remembered throughout the new alumni center.

A donated seal set into the ground at the main entrance memorializes Jim Samuel, one of two alumni lost at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

A wide, windowed arcade adjoining the Ruby Grand Hall dining and conference room will memorialize long-time Mountaineer sportscaster Jack Fleming.

The building also will have more space devoted to the Academy of Distinguished Alumni. Photographs of the more than 80 inductees will come over from the old building and hang alongside new biographies describing the inductees' accomplishments.

The center also will create tradition, Curtis explained.

The bell tower contains four new cast bronze bells, part of a primarily electronic carillon system that is programmed with more than 200 songs. The carillon also may be played manually.

The system will play "Take Me Home, Country Roads" at the end of each university work day. It also will play several traditional songs an hour before each home football game.

A West Virginia Building

The alumni association made a deliberate effort to incorporate structural materials and decorative items from West Virginia manufacturers.

"All the way from the metal and bronze by (Matthews International Corp.'s Bronze Division) in Kingwood to the stained glass 'flying WVs' from Blenko Glass of Milton to the flooring from Greenbrier County, Mullican Flooring Co.," said association President and CEO Stephen L. Douglas.

"Also, there are 227,000 brick in the building from the last brick company in West Virginia, Continental Brick Co.," he added. "It's really a West Virginia building."

But Douglas said the alumni center is more than just a building.

"That's because of the traditions that we've been able to incorporate and bring back from generations, from a hundred years back," he said. "That really adds to it -- so it's not just a building, not just steel and brick, it's an opportunity for people to come home and take a look at those memories from when they were on campus."

Within a couple weeks of its Oct. 1 move-in day, the alumni association had hosted more than a dozen events in the new Erickson Alumni Center to rave reviews, Douglass said.

"We do truly think it's the best alumni center in the country," he said.

The association will conduct a formal building dedication in spring 2009, after the many sponsored items such as bricks contributed by donors all are in place.