The Patricia A. Doyle Women’s Center employees are getting ready to move to Warner Hall following the completion of the Ullsvik Hall.

After the university’s Academic Advising Team and Advising and Career Exploration Services (ACES) move to the first floor of Brigham Hall, the Women’s Center will move into the available space.
The reason for the move is that the Department of Performing and Visual Arts is expanding.

“They’ve [the department] grown, the number of students have grown and so they’ve added faculty and they need more faculty offices,” Michael Viney, assistant chancellor for student affairs, said.

“They made the request that they have that space where the Women’s Center currently is.”

The Women’s Center was named after Patricia A. Doyle, the first employed director of the Women’s Center, after she lost her battle with breast cancer in 1994.

Barbara Parsons, a retired University of Wisconsin-Platteville philosophy professor and co-worker of Doyle, said that “it was quite a blow to us” after Doyle passed away.

“She worked very hard to get the Women’s Center really going,” said Parsons. “That’s why it was named after her, because she worked with it for some time.”

Doyle was the director of the Women’s Center as well as the affirmative action officer for the campus. Doyle was a very strong advocate leader for women’s rights here on campus. Mittie Nimocks, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Education, said that the chancellor made the decision while listening to her input and to Provost Carol Sue Butts’ input.

Sheng Xiong, business administration major and a student worker at the Women’s Center, said she believes the Women’s Center should remain in Doudna Hall because “the students, staff and community that visited Women’s Center is those who want quiet place to relax. Because of the three different rooms in the Women’s Center, people feel comfortable coming in knowing that the
Women’s Center staffs don’t monitor them, which gives them privacy.”

“It’s all about opening Ullsvik Hall with the classrooms and the new space for administrative offices,” Viney said about the moving of the different offices, “and being able to rearrange and reorganize Brigham Hall to better serve students.”