As a senior graduating in May 2013, before the Commonwealth Honors College Residential Community (CHCRC) opens its doors to students, I won’t ever live in its apartments or suites. I won’t learn in its classrooms, eat in its café, or attend events in its function rooms and lecture hall. The construction for these and other new buildings across campus, which will never be the setting of my college experience, has closed off my favorite cross-campus paths and increased the time it takes me to get from Lederle to Bartlett. Despite all this, I look at the construction of the CHCRC – and other construction across campus – warmly.

At the end of March, The Boston Globe published a piece by UMass professor of architecture and history Max Page focusing on the concrete buildings built here in the 1960s and ‘70s – for example, the Campus Center, Fine Arts Center, among many others – and proclaimed that these buildings represent “the belief that long-term public investment is a value rather than a burden; that working-class as well as wealthy students deserve outstanding learning facilities; and that excellent higher education should be affordable to all.”

The CHCRC represents the pursuit of those ideals. These new buildings are a clear symbol of the University’s commitment to improve the experience of all its undergraduate students.

Academia tends to devote the majority of its time and energy to its graduate students and faculty. These are the individuals who typically bring research funding to the University in the form of grants and prestige in the form of published research. The Commonwealth Honors College, in contrast, is the only UMass division that exclusively serves undergraduate students. This model demonstrates that a research-oriented university like UMass can be committed to enriching the academic experience of its youngest students. Without graduate students, CHC devotes its energy to providing connections and funding for undergraduate research and allowing even first year students access to the passions of the University’s outstanding faculty.

As the CHC advocates for its undergraduate students and opens pathways toward a more rigorous and collaborative undergraduate experience, the University pays attention and follows suit. Innovative curricula pioneered by the Honors College, like the model for freshman seminars and a commitment to undergraduate research, are often adopted by the University. This active development of a challenging and opportunity-rich learning environment at the Commonwealth’s flagship public university serves to make UMass a competitive, affordable option for the brightest students in Massachusetts.

Where before, the highest-achieving high school students may have kept their eyes on Ivy League options or large research universities out-of-state, a growing commitment to academic excellence at UMass has made it so that each year the incoming class is “the highest-achieving class” UMass has ever admitted. A consistent commitment to valuing and fostering academic excellence will ensure that this trend continues, giving UMass student opportunities previously though to only exist as private institutions. To paraphrase Page, excellent higher education in outstanding learning facilities should be accessible to all.

Although not every student will live in the CHCRC, this new learning community will benefit every student on campus. The 1,500 new beds in the community’s residential halls represent newly open space for another 1,500 students in other residential areas, including the much-coveted North Apartments. The classrooms, study spaces, function rooms, lecture hall and café in the community will be open to all University students. The pathway through the community will provide a safer route between Southwest, the Recreation Center and the main academic buildings on campus. The location of the CHCRC will encourage honors students – many of whom in the past have chosen to live in Orchard Hill, which offers residential academic programs, or RAPs – to eat at Hampshire and Berkshire Dining Commons instead of Worcester and Franklin Dining Commons, which will foster more interaction between groups of students who may not have encountered one another as much in previous years.

Furthermore, no honors student is just an honors student. Every member of CHC is also, and in fact, primarily, a member of the University community. Honors students are members of every college across campus. CHC students are athletes, artists and musicians. They participate in the SGA and are widely involved as volunteers in the Amherst community. Professors who teach honors classes also serve throughout the University, teaching regular departmental classes and acting as faculty sponsors for groups not affiliated with CHC.

The demographics of the Honors College are not significantly different from the University community as a whole. The CHC is comprised 18 percent of African American, Latino, Asian, and Native American descent in relation to 21 percent of the entire University’s population. Furthermore, although there is a fee associated with the Honors College, it should be noted that the college distributes many merit and need based scholarships to its students every year – this academic year 130 students were recipients of a total of $252,940 in scholarships, and and additional $117,508 was awarded in the form of 131 research grants and fellowships, according to officials at the CHC. The funding for these awards comes from generous donors who believe in the power of affordable higher education. The college also aids its students in the application to prestigious and valuable national scholarships.

The benefits of the new Honors Community will act as an incentive for even more students throughout our campus to strive for the 3.4 GPA required for admission to the Honors College. More students working hard to achieve and participate in research from the very beginning of their academic careers could hardly affect our University negatively. In fact, this positive potential side effect of the new buildings is what excites me the most about them. In the years to come, as the UMass campus community grows, expands and improves, the “UMass Amherst 2013” on my resume will only become more valuable. When prospective employers or graduate schools read that line, long after my GPA or course work is relevant, what will resonate is the University’s demonstrated commitment to a culture of academic ambition and achievement.

I, like many of my peers, have loved my UMass experience, and if I had the opportunity to go back four years into the past, I would choose UMass again. However, I’m glad that UMass and the Commonwealth Honors College are moving forward. Although the concrete buildings of the 1960s and ‘70s have served us well, all of the new construction on campus promises to serve a new generation of students even better. I am confident that the Professor Pages of the future will be satisfied that all of these new buildings represent our University’s commitment to ensuring that public higher education in the state of Massachusetts continues to be a source of pride.

Michelle Wade is a Collegian contributor. She can be reached at [email protected].