Jacqulyn Love first stepped inside Kansas University’s Multicultural Resource Center last year looking for a tutor to help her with some homework.

The sophomore from Olathe found support and unlimited resources at the center, which is behind the Military Science Building.

“I think a lot of people have the misconception that the Multicultural Resource Center is for minorities only,” Love said. “That’s totally not true. It’s a place for everyone.”

Love first heard about the Multicultural Resource Center during a campus orientation tour. The center gave her a place to study and socialize with fellow students.

“I came in to utilize the STEP tutoring session,” Love said. “But I realized that I could always come here and find an open computer instead of waiting at the library.

“I got the chance to meet with the staff and instructors who would work with me on a one-on-one level. And I even hung around to watch the free cable.”

Santos Nðñez, Multicultural Resource Center program director, was pleased to learn that Love’s encounters at the center seemed on par with the place’s mission statement:

“The focus of the MRC is to serve as a primary resource for developing cultural sensitivity through the curriculum and other academic programs and to assure that the social and classroom environment of the campus is inclusive with respect to the cultural, racial, ethnic, religious and other differences represented in the diverse university community.”

Nðñez, who has served as the director the past four years, says some 1,200 students per academic year pass through the resource center, and “we hope to serve and facilitate all their studies while at Kansas.”

In addition to the resources and networking opportunities, the center has actually made strides by being host to student-based forums, including the Brown Bag Diversity Series and Diversity Dialogue Series.

The resource center also will be expanding physically in the fall of 2006, when its new home will be a newly constructed addition to the Kansas Union.

“We’re very excited about that expansion,” Nðñez said. “A larger building will allow us to expand not only our larger discussion programs that sometimes are difficult because the size of our current building, but we can also expand on our day-to-day activities and resources for students with updated programs and new technologies.

“But until then, we hope all students will take advantage of our current programs.”

Love said by the time the new building is built people won’t have an excuse to utilize all of the center’s resources.

“I think a lot of people don’t know the location,” Love said, “or really what the MRC is all about.

“But once they come in an see how useful it can be toward their studies, they also usually find out how to utilize its other options. In that sense it’s not only multicultural, but multidimensional.”