University of Akron Ready to Start Fall Classes in Lakewood

Classes at the University of Akron’s satellite campus in Lakewood are expected to begin this fall at the Bailey Building on Detroit Avenue.

In the beginning, there will be only a few dozen students attending them.

However, within five years, there could be as many as “a couple hundred” University of Akron students on the streets of Lakewood.

Holly Harris Bane, the university’s associate vice president for strategic initiatives, said that usually there are 150 students on the first day of classes at a satellite branch.

“It’s going to be a very small number because of the targeted degrees for students we’ll have in there,” she said. “We will really begin to ramp up our programs in the spring of 2012 and the fall of 2012.”

Last month, the University of Akron trustees in a 11,000-square-foot space in the Bailey Building, .

City officials, representatives from LakewoodAlive and the university's project team had been working on the satellite project for much of the past year.

During that time, UA was conducting studies to discover the higher education needs in the area. The results showed the health care and education were a couple of the fields that were needed.

Courses in those fields will be offered, but Bane said that additional courses will be offered over the next few years — including business classes and two-year programs for emergency management.

“We’ve got some unique programs at the University of Akron that will be a good fit for Lakewood.”

While there may not be hundreds of students in downtown Lakewood right away, the UA’s impact is expected to be quick, said Dru Siley, the city’s assistant director of planning and development.

“When you have a building like the building like the Bailey Building and an institutional draw like the University of Akron, you’ll have an immediate impact on the downtown,” Siley said.

“The biggest immediate benefit is that the workplace in 2011 is changing, and if Lakewood residents have more access to higher education resources so they can continue to be competitive in the changing workplace, that’s the call of the day.”

Bane said the university receives dozens of requests from cities across Ohio, requesting that the university open a branch campus.

“They say ‘boy, do we have a piece of property for you,’” she said. “Sometimes a higher education facility in a community is what a baseball stadium was 20 years ago.”

“Lakewood is one of the most exciting requests that we’ve had,” Bane added. “The leadership in Lakewood really convinced us that Lakewood is the kind of community for us. Education is an economic engine for a community. Lakewood represents the ideal kind of community.”