Office of University Relations Moves to New Offices

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Davis Hall at the northeast corner of Garland Avenue and Maple Street is the newly renovated home of the office of university relations.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The office of university relations for the University of Arkansas is now located in the renovated Davis Hall, at the northeast corner of Garland Avenue and Maple Street. The staff of university relations had been working on the eighth floor of Hotz Hall since 1993.

The office of university relations is in charge of providing campus and public information about the university, managing media relations, and communicating about advancements in science and research. The office is also responsible for providing design and creative services for numerous campus publications, documenting campus people and events through photography and video productions, and overseeing Web development and continuity for the university.

The office of university relations is part of the Division of Advancement and works closely with the university’s office of development, which is based next door in University House. The location of Davis Hall will make the office of university relations and its services more convenient to faculty, staff, students and administrators on campus.

“Moving the office of university relations to Davis Hall has been on our wish list for many years,” said Brad Choate, vice chancellor for the Division of Advancement. “Our offices have always had good working relationships, but the closer geographic proximity to the office of development, the offices of enrollment services, the college and school offices, and the administration building will make communication between our offices that much easier and more effective.”

The renovation of Davis Hall cost about $4 million, which was funded through private sources. The project modernized the historic four-story building, adding an elevator to bring it up to standards for the Americans with Disabilities Act. The renovation added 3,300 square feet to the rear of the building, and the redesign includes offices, conference space and a multimedia studio.

Recycled construction materials, part of which came from Davis Hall itself, were used in the renovation, and the building was designed to be among the most energy-efficient buildings on campus. Most of its rooms and hallways, for instance, use motion-activated lights that turn off automatically when no one is using the room.

Davis Hall is named for Mary Anne Davis, the university’s second dean of women and a member of the faculty from 1893 until her death in 1939. The building was opened in 1942 and was first used as a “cooperative women’s residence hall,” which meant that students who lived in the hall were expected to do many of the chores of the hall as well as furnish some produce and canned goods for the hall’s meals.

Over the years, the hall has been used to house the Army Specialized Training Corps during World War II, three different sororities from the 1960s to the early 1990s, and auxiliary offices of the School of Law, including the Legal Clinic, the Arkansas Law Review and the agricultural law program. Davis Hall has been vacant since these offices moved to the Leflar Law Center after its expansion was completed in 2008.

The campus mail stop for Davis Hall is DAVH.