Public gets first look at SMC’s renovated Daugherty building

Published 9:58 am Thursday, September 29, 2016

As Greater Dowagiac Chamber of Commerce President Kim MacGregor noted in her remarks to the crowded lecture hall, many attendees of Tuesday’s Business After Hours event at Southwestern Michigan College had a serious case of déjà vu.

Nearly a year after showing off the transformation of the Dowagiac college’s O’Leary Building to the public, the community got its first chance to see the completed renovations to the science hall’s sister building, the Daugherty building, that night. Around 50 people came out to check out the new building, which, while featuring a similar look and feel as its twin, serves a completely different function for students and faculty as the new home of the college’s humanities courses.

Both O’Leary and Daugherty were among the first buildings constructed on the Dowagiac campus of the community college when it began operations in 1965. Having remained in good physical
condition, without any serious remodeling work, for nearly 50 years, college leadership embarked on an $8 million renovation project around two years ago to bring the interior of the buildings more up to date with the current educational goals of the college.

Originally known simply as the “science building” before being officially christened after longtime SMC board member Foster Daugherty in 1988, the newly remodeled building now houses nearly everything but science, including communications and social science courses.

“We decided to go back to what did we need and what did our students need from this facility,” said SMC President David Mathews, in his remarks to attendees Tuesday.

The facility now houses more than 10 classrooms, with modular furniture designed to create more a flexible learning environment, in line with other recent college remodels, Mathews said.

The administration’s goal for the building is to have faculty “lecture very little, and interacting a lot,” the president said. In order to create that kind of environment, the building’s staff offices were relocated to just outside a student-faculty commons area, which is brightly lit due to the massive windows that replaced the former wall on the north end of the facility.

“At any time during the day, you will find our students and faculty working together in that beautiful area,” Mathews said.