Renovation Overview

An overview of the Henderson Building renovation

Establishing a Front Door to Student Success

The College of Health and Human Development (HHD) is prioritizing the creation of a modern student success center. This center will serve as a "front door" for students, families, and prospective students, offering tech-enabled spaces for advising, academic coaching, career guidance, life-skills development, and student organizations.

The aim is to develop a multipurpose space that could be used for a variety of purposes, such as meetings with prospective students and their families, career counseling and mock interviews, and small-group presentations to help students enhance their learning through extracurricular activities, such as student organizations, research, or study abroad opportunities. 

Academic Advising

Enabling a one-stop service approach, the improved space will provide an enhanced waiting area for students, redesigned offices for academic advisers that enable both in-person and remote individual meetings as needed, and opportunities to highlight and display HHD programmatic information, as well as career and mentoring event information. It will provide a space to highlight student achievements. 

Career Engagement

Housing career-related resources and a designated meeting space where employer/recruiter information sessions and presentations can be held, this revitalized space will allow the college to create opportunities for cross-program career exploration and to host employers interested in our graduates across a range of our academic programs.

These improvements will emphasize the importance of career planning, job-seeking skill development, and interaction with potential employers right from the start of their Penn State journey.

Integrated Smart Technology

These enhancements would provide a reservable space for HHD students and student groups and could also be used for meetings with families visiting the college, small student groups working together during LEAP sessions, mock interviews, and more.

Student Services

In addition to helping students address their academic challenges, a student-centered success model helps address student needs in financial aid, housing and basic needs, mental wellness, food insecurity, and more. A dedicated space for student services/success will help students understand how to tap into HHD support, as well as connecting them to broader Penn State services to enable their success. Having academic advisers and college staff who focus on these issues located together enables a team-based collaborative approach to help students resolve challenges.

Engaged Learning Resources

HHD’s approach to academics has always included robust experiential learning, and the sooner we can connect students to these exciting opportunities, the better. A space to serve as a dedicated engaged learning resource center will enable student exploration and discussion of how to get involved in research opportunities, study-abroad and global experiences, student organizations and activities, and internships and volunteer experiences. Staff and programs connect students to the opportunities, and the close connection with academic advising, career engagement, and student services facilitates conversations on how these connect with academic and career plans, as well as the resources to support such engaged learning.

Penn State's commitment through capital planning

Constructed in 1933, the Henderson Building is now in need of comprehensive systems renewal, including elevator, restrooms, plumbing, HVAC, fire suppression systems, and more. The Board of Trustees has approved a $10.7 million improvement project for the building to be completed as part of the University’s next Capital Plan.

Vision for the Future

Most of that funding is designated for systems improvement work, with the remainder available to the college to put toward renovation in support of programming. While the funds available for program-related renovation are anticipated to cover the needed reconfiguration of the floor plan, they will not be sufficient to bring the program space to where we need it to be to best serve our students.

Seizing the Opportunity

HHD needs to seize the unique opportunity being presented by the upcoming capital project to thoughtfully match the configuration of our Office of Undergraduate Education to the programming needs of our prospective and first-year students.

If we can secure the resources needed to enable true design-for-purpose, we will have a transformative impact on prospective students’ initial impression of the college and first-year students’ journey through the initial phase of their college experience. This will help us optimally prepare our students to enter their course of major study as well as jump-start their ultimate transition into future careers.