The drawing shows a rendering of the student chapel in the Kirby Center, which will be the first thing visitors see when they enter the building.
Courtesy | Anne Scherer
An 18-month-long construction project has begun at Hillsdale in D.C. to keep up with the growth of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government.
Current operations and elements of the school’s Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program have been temporarily relocated to a nearby office space and townhouses. Renovations are scheduled to be finished in the fall of 2025.
“It’s exciting,” said Matthew Spalding, dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government. “We need more space as we are growing. These renovations will make the D.C. campus, even more so than it is now, a beacon of Hillsdale’s teaching mission for undergraduate and graduate students and friends and alumni in the nation’s capital.”
The concept of expansion has been in the works since Hillsdale came into possession of multiple buildings near the Kirby building on the Hillsdale in D.C. campus as early as 2019.
The plans include annexing the building next door to the Kirby Center for more faculty and staff offices, seminar spaces and classrooms, and public gathering areas for conferences and speakers. There will also be more student housing on the same street.
“The purpose is to integrate the Kirby Center and the Van Andel School of Government, with all our programs and fellowships, into a campus that is architecturally beautiful and very much a permanent Hillsdale presence in Washington, D.C.,” Spalding said.
To accommodate the project, faculty, staff, and students have vacated the Kirby Center. Many faculty and staff members collaborated in cataloging, packing, and storing the D.C. campus’ large library, alongside moving all of the offices, furniture, and artwork to the new, temporary work spaces.
“A huge logistical part of the planning was making sure that we were able to do this without stopping any programs,” Executive Director of Washington Operations Andrew Heim said. “The students have been wonderful and understanding as well as the staff, putting in extra hours and really coming together as a team to make all this happen. So that’s been wonderful to see.”
In addition to its functional purpose of gaining space, the project will also involve a number of architectural and decor changes.
“The architects have done a really wonderful job in keeping with that sort of traditional, classical style that we have at Hillsdale,” Heim said. “It’ll be a beautiful place to learn.”
The Kirby Center renovations will also create a new chapel that will be the first thing visitors see when they enter the building. Its official name is still in the final stages of approval.
Hillsdale secured funding for the chapel and the rest of the project before beginning to build.
“That is one of the great sort of fiscally responsible things about Hillsdale, as opposed to other institutions who are like, ‘Build it and the money will follow,’” Heim said. “It’s like, well, no, we have to make sure that that’s first. And that is part of why this has been in the works for years.”
The next two classes of WHIP will have to make slight adjustments compared to what has been customary in the past. But, according to Undergraduate Program Coordinator Mary Wheeler ’22, the character of WHIP will not change.
“It’s not going to affect the housing or the programming,” Wheeler said. “I hear this from countless students, and I know this was the case for me, it was our most formative semester. So I honestly wish every Hillsdale student would do it just because of how much you grow professionally, of course, but also personally how your character develops.”
