Gullickson Hall is home to all sorts of athletic facilities and classrooms. The building holds the Cam Henderson Center, Frederick A. Fitch Natatorium, Gullickson gym and much more. 

Gullickson Hall was built in 1961, and in the years since, it has been neglected of the care it needs. Marshall’s new athletic director, Christian Spears, hopes to take the building and transform it through the Pathway Project.

“There’s these routes that you take to get to your locker room, that you take to get to the facilities, that you take to get to athletic training [and] the strength room. So again, we can’t fix the whole building, but we can upgrade the pathways so that you know you’re in an athletic building; you know you represent Marshall and you feel good about your experience,” Spears said. 

The building has needed attention for a while, according to Spears. The Gullickson gym, which is a training facility for a variety of athletic programs, has never had the floor sanded. The process is something Spears said should be done every 7 to 10 years, but, in the gym’s fifty years of existence, it has never received that treatment. 

In trying to upgrade such an old facility, more problems were discovered, resulting in Gullickson gym receiving a brand-new look. The gym now has two large ceiling fans to cool off athletes on hot summer days. 

Within the building, all the doors have been repainted, and the areas surrounding athletic facilities have been re-designed to feature new logos. 

“Yeah, I realize it’s just paint, but you know if you pay attention to the areas that our kids walk through and the doors that they pass when they go into the different facilities that they use, it kind of makes sense to have some uniformity to it. Hopefully it’ll give it a cleaner look, make you feel like ‘hey I’m going into a space where I’m going to get better’ and ‘I’m proud of the space that is mine,’” Spears said.

By bettering these pathways, Spears hopes that student athletes can feel that they are a part of something bigger than themselves. Student athletes quickly noticed the changes as the hallways they so often use looked cleaner, and, as junior student Grace Valenza said, “more modern.” She said it is nice to see the change and the effort going into their commonly used spaces.  

Next up is for the building to get air conditioning. Spears said it is “unconscionable that we don’t have air in so many areas within that facility.” The building becomes so hot during the summer months that students have to wipe down the floor so that they don’t slip on their sweat. Spears said that he has figured out what the cost will be, and now it just comes down to raising the money.