Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

UC Davis Debuts Renovations to 85-Year-Old Walker Hall

  • By Matt Jones
  • 10/11/21

The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in Davis, Calif., recently debuted a nearly total renovation of the 85-year-old Walker Hall. The two-story, north side of the facility will now serve as the campus’ Graduate Center, giving about 7,000 graduate and professional students and about 1,000 postdoctoral scholars a centralized hub for the first time in the university’s history. The back three wings of the facility have also been converted to general classroom space. The university has scheduled a grand reopening ceremony for Friday, April 8, 2022.

Walker Hall, which has been vacant since 2011, provided the ideal location for the Graduate Center. “My original motivation for proposing the center was as a space to enhance the sense of community among graduate students across campus,” said Professor Jeff Gibeling, who also served as the vice provost and dean of Graduate Studies until 2016. “Finding a place was a challenge from the beginning, especially because we had limited prospects for raising funds to build a new building.” Several other possibilities were explored before one university chancellor suggested Walker Hall, which was already scheduled for remodeling.

The Graduate Center houses amenities like mentoring and advising offices; financial and mental health services; meeting and conference rooms; a collaborative studio; a writing lounge; a graduate commons area; and a kitchen, lactation room and parent study lounge. The facility also plays home to the Postdoctoral Scholars Association, the Graduate Student Association and the GSA pantry, according to a press release.

The facility measures in at 35,805 square feet of renovated space, and it came with a price tag of about $33.4 million, according to the university’s Design and Construction Management. The university partnered with Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects for design and with Soltek Pacific for general contracting.

The project also included retrofitting spaces for seismic safety and accessibility purposes.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Myrtle Grove Elementary

    Phased Construction Keeps Students on Campus During Rebuild

    When Escambia County School District needed to replace most of Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Pensacola, Fla., it had three distinct challenges: honor the school's legacy in the community, bring state-of-the-art learning environments to the county, and be seamlessly built on the same site as the active school campus.

  • Minnesota District Converts Middle School into Community Hub

    White Bear Lake Area Schools in White Bear Lake, Minn., recently announced the end of a major renovation project that converted a former middle school into a new centralized district and community hub, according to a news release.

  • nursing students talk while studying in a hallway

    Elsevier Launches VR Simulation Solution for Nursing Students

    Elsevier has introduced Shadow Health Lab with Virtual Reality, a simulation platform that allows nursing students to interact with virtual patients and build clinical judgment skills in a safe, realistic environment.