As students return to the University of Georgia for a new academic year, a new campus destination is ready to welcome them.
UGA recently celebrated the ribbon cutting and opening of its new 68,000-square-foot Dining, Learning, and Well-being Center, a multi-story facility designed to bring together experiences and resources that have traditionally existed in separate places across campus.
Located at East Cloverhurst Avenue and University Court, the new center combines dining, academic spaces, student gathering areas, and health and well-being services in one highly connected campus hub.
For May Architecture, which partnered with Robert A.M. Stern Architects (RAMSA) on the project, seeing the doors open represents the culmination of years of planning and design centered on a simple idea: support the whole student by making the resources they need part of everyday campus life.
A New Destination for Campus Life
At the heart of the facility is the new Hillside Dining Commons, an 800-seat dining destination designed to serve approximately 5,000 students each day. Multiple dining concepts, flexible seating options, and extended service hours make the space more than a place for meals—it is designed to become part of the daily rhythm of campus.
That same thinking extends throughout the building.
Active-learning classrooms support a range of teaching styles and class sizes during the academic day, while providing flexible meeting and gathering spaces for student organizations after hours. A nutrition kitchen creates opportunities for hands-on cooking, education, and programming through UGA Dining Services and the Fontaine Center.
The center also brings health and well-being resources closer to where students already spend their time. A satellite location of the University Health Center provides private spaces for medical and mental health services, making student support an integrated part of the campus experience rather than a separate destination.
Together, these spaces create an environment where students can move naturally between dining, learning, gathering, and accessing support throughout their day.
Designed Around the Student Experience
The Dining, Learning, and Well-being Center represents more than the addition of new programs to a single building. It reflects UGA’s intentional approach to how the physical campus can support student success.
Rather than designing individual destinations around individual needs, the project brings them together. A student may arrive for breakfast, stay for class, meet with a student organization, access a well-being resource, or spend time with friends—all within the same facility.
That integration was central to the planning and design process and required close coordination across the University and the full project team.
May Architecture worked in partnership with RAMSA, along with Whiting-Turner, Newcomb & Boyd, Webb Foodservice Design, Breedlove Land Planning, Koons Environmental Design, Shear Structural, and additional project partners to translate UGA’s vision into a facility capable of supporting the many different ways students will use it each day.
The result is a building shaped not around a single function, but around the student experience as a whole.
Ready for a New Academic Year
The timing of the opening gives the project an added sense of energy. With students returning to Athens and a new academic year beginning, the center is moving almost immediately from a completed project to an active part of campus life.
Soon, its classrooms will be filled, meals will be served, student groups will gather, and spaces that have existed for years in drawings and plans will begin to take on a life of their own.
For May Architecture, that transition is an important part of every campus project. The true measure of the Dining, Learning, and Well-being Center will be found in how students use it, move through it, and make it part of their everyday UGA experience.
And this fall, that story begins.
