‘Dream deferred’ becomes dream realized

GRAMBLING — There was an air of exhilaration and perhaps a little relief as Grambling State officials, faculty, students and guests from around the state gathered to cut the ribbon on the university’s long-awaited Digital Library and Learning Commons, some seven years after the project’s inception and five years after its groundbreaking.

But as Louisiana Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed put it at Thursday’s ceremony, “a dream deferred is not a dream denied.”

GSU’s long-held dream to replace the A. C. Lewis Memorial Library, opened in 1962, was at last realized as hundreds of students and visitors opened the doors of the $16.6 million facility and entered for the first time.

“This is not just the opening of a building,” GSU President Martin Lemelle, Jr. said. “ It is the continuation of a promise. A promise echoed in the words of our fight song: to light the torch of victory.”

The state-of-the-art, 50,000 square-foot, state-funded facility is designed as a space for students and faculty to connect, create and collaborate, featuring more than 150 computer stations, 17,000 square feet of study space, multipurpose space, a STEM lab, access to more than 1.6 million digital works, and more.

GSU becomes the first university in Louisiana to offer a digital library, as well as the first Historically Black College and University in the country to do so.

Lemelle was on Grambling’s administration under previous president Rick Gallot — now president of the University of Louisiana System — when Gallot began the digital library project.

They brough tin Adrienne Webber in 2019 to take the helm as dean of the upcoming facility, before the construction delays and weatherproofing complications that pushed back the facility’s timeline.

Now, more than five years later, Webber stood in front of the completed facility and reminded the crowd of its importance to the student experience going forward.

“I remember doing my interview. I was asked by these same two gentlemen (Gallot and Lemelle), why GSU?” Webber said. “Behind all of us stands over 50,000 square feet of why. The students wehave on this campus, they’re the why. They not only deserve this — they need this. They are the leaders of tomorrow.”

The idea behind a digital library is that the students of the modern age need more than just books.

Not only will this facility connect students to databases containing much more research and learning material than could ever be held physically, but the library will also develop a digital repository where students can contribute their own written works in their chosen field to be read by other researchers.

“This special place is my parents’ campus, but this is certainly not my parents’ library,” Reed said. “But it is still the heartbeat of every campus, the library.”

But as much as it’s more than just books, the facility is also more than just reading material in any form.

For example, there will also be a maker’s space featuring 3-D imaging, laser and etching machines, a soldering station, and many other hands-on features for creatives to get creating.

“Our students think differently than I did,” Webber said. “I figured I would go to class, learn something, graduate, and I could do what I learned. But these students are a little different. When they think about it, they dream about it, write about it, they draw about it, and then they want to put it together and see what will happen.”

In his remarks, Gallot recalled examining the condition of the old campus library and realizing it was not up to the standard of what students needed.

And while the project did not arrive at completion in his tenure, he knows the vision he and his team had will now be realized by generations of students to come.

“There is no vision too big or too bold for Grambling State University,” Gallot said. “And today is a representation of just that.