On Monday, October 7, a crowd gathered to celebrate the grand opening of the Grad Commons in the Wells Library. A space dedicated to graduate students, the Grad Commons occupies 2,500 square feet on the eighth floor of Wells and was designed as a flexible, multipurpose space in the heart of the stacks to provide graduate students easy access to resources and experts vital to their research.
Speaking at today’s ceremony were Dean of the Graduate School and Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs James Wimbush, Ruth Lilly Dean of Indiana University Libraries Brenda Johnson, and president of the Graduate and Professional Student Organization Brady Harmon. In different ways, every speaker touched on the IU Libraries’ role in providing a space for graduate students to concentrate on their research and succeed.
GPSO President Harmon credited IU Libraries leadership with the vision it took to provide this kind of space and specifically thanked Dean Johnson, Executive Associate Dean Carolyn Walters, and Associate Dean Diane Dallis. Dean Johnson mentioned the Libraries continuing effort to fulfill user needs by reimagining different spaces from the Info Commons to the Grad Commons to the Scholars’ Commons, which now provides programming but soon will be an actual space on the first floor of the East Tower. Concluding the round of remarks, Vice President Wimbush dwelled on the space before and after. He had visited before work began and was delighted at the transformation from floor to ceiling and everything in between. He graciously acknowledged the investment the Libraries have made in seeing this space become a reality.