NOTE: a diagram of the expansion plan is available via e-mail at david.Glasgow@vanderbilt.edu or click here for a high resolution .jpg version. NASHVILLE, Tenn.–Vanderbilt University will undertake a $2.5 million renovation and expansion of the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center in an effort to advance the University’s goal of achieving meaningful diversity that will benefit all students, officials announced today.
Dedicated in 1984 in memory of Vanderbilt’s first African-American student who enrolled 50 years ago, "The House," as it is known, provides educational and cultural programming for the University and Nashville communities. The project, approved by the Executive Committee of the Board of Trust earlier last week, will enable the center to become "a place of learning and community for African-American students and all of our students of all backgrounds," said Chancellor Gordon Gee.
The current 4,100-square-foot building, located in the heart of the Vanderbilt campus, will be upgraded to include a lounge area for students, three offices, a library, a computer lab with 12 computer stations and a seminar room that will accommodate approximately 20 students. In addition, an approximately 4,000-square-foot adjoining building will include a multipurpose space that could accommodate a platform stage and would seat 100 people for classes, lectures, performances and gatherings. The new space will also include a catering kitchen, two offices, storage and a gallery for art in a connecting link to the existing building. Work is expected to start this summer and be completed by the start of the fall 2004 semester.
"The project meets a compelling strategic goal," to "create on this campus a unique living and learning community," Gee said.
Nia Toomer, president of the Black Student Alliance, said the new center will provide much needed social and meeting space for African American students. Noting that University officials had said the project would be given the go-ahead this year, she said, "They kept their promise. They answered our wishes. I’m very excited about this."
Yollette Jones, the center’s acting director, said, " The center was dedicated initially and stands even now as the most tangible commitment of the University to its African-descended faculty, staff and students. It is only appropriate that the center reflect the University’s continuing efforts to serve proudly the needs of the entire Vanderbilt community.
"The center’s expansion will provide us with a very much improved physical plant and new opportunities to promote understanding of African-descended culture," she said.
The center’s namesake, Joseph Johnson, entered the Vanderbilt School of Religion in the fall of 1953 and received his bachelor’s degree the next year. In 1958 he received his Ph.D. from the Vanderbilt Divinity School after several years of taking classes while serving as the minister of Nashville’s Capers Memorial Church.
During a distinguished career in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, he served as a professor of Atlanta’s Interdenominational Theological Center, dean of Fisk University, president of Phillips School of Technology and presiding bishop of his denomination for Mississippi and Louisiana. He also was a member of the Vanderbilt Board of Trust. He died in 1979.
With the planned improvements, the Johnson Black Cultural Center should be better able to attract "a broad cross-section of Vanderbilt students," Gee said. Rather than a campus in which diversity is a parallel experience, the center will help create a "cross-stitched" community, he added.
A search is currently under way for a new director of the Black Cultural Center, which is a member of the Association of Black Culture Centers from which it received a commendation for facilitating the retention and graduation of African-descended students.
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Contact:Elizabeth Latt, 615-322-NEWS elizabeth.p.latt@vanderbilt.edu