Student-designed murals bring Bearcat spirit to UC residence halls

The recent graduate of UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning lived in Marian Spencer Hall during her freshman year. The residence hall, named after one of UC’s most celebrated alumni, opened in 2018 and was just a couple years old when Miklowski, a native of Cleveland, arrived on campus.

Nestled in the heart of campus, Marian Spencer Hall offers great views of Sigma Sigma commons, various living-learning communities for students and modern suite-style rooms and communal spaces for study or recreation.

But as a student with a passion for interior design, Miklowski would wander through the beautiful residence hall and notice areas that could still improve.

“There was a lobby area between the Marian Spencer bridge and Scioto Hall that felt like a white box,” recalls Miklowski. “There were a couple of places to sit, nice light fixtures, but the walls were blank. I remember going in there and thinking, ‘They could really do something in here and add something to pull the space together.’”

Miklowski, part of the University Honors Program, got her chance to make those improvements as a co-op student with UC’s Housing Office. It was her fourth co-op experience.

Cooperative education was invented at UC in 1906. The first co-op class involved 27 engineering students and 13 Cincinnati-area companies. After proving its success, the co-op experience began expanding to other fields. Today UC is highly-ranked in the U.S. News & World Report's list of leading institutions for co-op and internships. 

Miklowski was charged with helping to create murals and identify spaces in campus residence halls to place them. The lobby connecting Marian Spencer and Scioto residence halls now has an image of the UC skyline along with a display of the UC mascot, a ferocious Bearcat. 

She collaborated with the Campus Services Marketing team. The mural project was assigned to the team’s co-op communication design majors, Kat Burke and Tyler Adams, both in their first co-op rotation. It was an ideal pairing with Miklowski.

“Communication design co-ops are an integral part of the campus services marketing student team, Studio 513,” explains UC Campus Services Marketing and Publications Director, Tiana Christman. “They not only expand our production capacity but ensure that our designs reflect students’ perspectives. We also employ marketing and digital media majors who do co-op and part-time work for us.” 

Miklowski says as an interior design co-op she was also tasked with working on other projects around residence halls such as reupholstering furniture, creating furniture layout and handling smaller projects to keep living spaces fresh and lively.

“Something else about this role that is different from my other co-op experiences is the autonomy that I have,” explains Miklowski. “In this role, you have more responsibilities than you typically would in an architectural firm. You have the opportunity to choose what projects you want to work on and can decide the direction they go in. 

“You are also able to see your work completed. That’s different from other co-ops because normally you work on a small part of a project. You usually don’t see them finished because you are there for a short time,” she adds.

Miklowski says the work at UC Housing offers great beginner projects for young designers. She was allowed to work with outside partners such as furniture dealers and other internal departments at UC to make decisions. That differed from the three architectural co-ops she held before. Two were at New York firms, INC Architecture & Design and at AvroKO, and a third at Chicago firm Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture.

“I was able to explore many project types through these co-ops,” says Miklowski. “I started with an adaptive reuse project of a historical building, where we renovated an old children’s museum into a residential apartment-style building. I also experienced a more interior design focused perspective with my second co-op. During my last co-op, I had the best of both worlds.”

Co-op and the opportunities it offered is what brought Miklowski to UC. Her older sister studied at DAAP as well and offered a great testimonial about her education and she is now working for an architectural firm in New York City.

“DAAP was very challenging, but taught me a lot about architecture and design,” says Miklowski. “It also taught me a lot of life skills. Going in as a freshman, I had an idea of what to expect from my sister, but experiencing it for myself was something else. I think the first-year is tough because you don’t necessarily grasp what you are doing in school. It’s very theoretical.

“As a new architecture student, you think you will go in and design buildings,” says Miklowski. “However, you don’t design anything that concrete until later. What they are laying out for you in first-year are fundamental design principles. They are teaching you to think as a designer. I don’t think I appreciated it as much going through it, but I do now.”

Michelle Sujka, associate director of UC Housing facilities operations, says her division created a co-op for students two summers ago to “show more interior design love for buildings.”

“Abigail joined us in January. She jumped right in, learned the role from our veteran co-op student and then saw ways to make an impact,” says Sujka. “The murals are a project that has flowed from one co-op student to the next, but she has really embraced the mural design by coming up with concepts and working with campus partners to get them installed in her short tenure as a co-op.”

UC manages 12 residential facilities for students. New murals will be seen by students living in Morgens, Scioto, Turner, CRC and Calhoun residence halls. 

Sujka says housing officials wanted to bring more UC and Cincinnati pride into residence halls with their decorative murals which showcase iconic buildings and images from the campus and the Queen City.

“We have gotten positive feedback about our co-ops and the experience our co-op students are receiving,” says Sujka. “It has taken on a life of its own, and it’s pretty awesome to see them go out and get full-time jobs knowing that we have contributed to their work experience.”

Featured image at top: Recent UC graduate Abigail Miklowski poses in front of a student-designed mural in a UC residence hall. All photos/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand