RUMFORD — University College at Rumford/Mexico celebrated the opening of its new center on the third floor of the River Valley Technology Center at 60 Lowell St. on Wednesday.

The highly visible, centralized space will serve not only as a beacon of academic aspiration, but as a space that will welcome the school’s neighbors and partners, school officials said.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the River Valley Chamber of Commerce, people gathered in the public meeting room to speak about the center.

“We’ve sort of themed this evening as ‘reintroducing University College at Rumford/Mexico, community building together’ because we really aren’t new to the River Valley community,” the college’s director, Lisa Cooper, said. “We’ve been here for more than 20 years. We’ve just become more visible.

“I feel this project demonstrates how when we all work together,” she said. “We can build together. We raise the community up together. We give it a forward-looking vision.”

Cooper said the project has been about resiliency and persistence.

“Resilience of a community that reinvents itself despite the changing circumstances of the economy and the population,” she said. “Persistence in its efforts to constantly reinvent itself and renew its sense of hope for the future.”

Marianne Young, a student at the college and a Rising Scholar Award recipient, said, “To those who think starting school again at any age (is a challenge), I’m here to tell you, you’re right. It is. But the challenges are not insurmountable and there are a lot of people — right here — to help you through those difficult times.”

Young said a university like this provides young and old with more and better options for themselves and their families.

“A college education would be nothing more than a wish and a hope for so many without having a facility nearby that accommodates, helps, informs, influences and encourages its students,” she said.

Rich Allen of the River Valley Technology Center spoke about the history of the building over the past 14 years, from the time when it served as an incubator for the precision metals industry to now being the home of other businesses like Community Dental and Child Development Services.

Jennifer Kreckel, president of EnvisionRumford, said she represents a group of volunteers in the community networking with other organizations to educate the local population and provide jobs needed in the community.

“We can do all we want in terms of economic development, but if we don’t have the people who are going to be educated to take those jobs, we are nowhere,” she said. “We’re all committed to changing the destiny of our area, which was largely based on a paper mill. And we still, thankfully, have our paper mill. But we have to look beyond where we were and go farther, and develop a plan for our future.”

“We want to be the fabric of the communitites that we serve,” said James Conneely, president of the University of Maine at Augusta. “And the River Valley region is so fortunate with the university college in how we enhance the quality of life and how we enhance the community and economic development within those regions.”

The center was constructed by Building Solutions LLC. Brian O’Donnell and crew were recognized for being very responsive to the extremely fluid nature of the project and worked diligently to bring it to completion within a very tight schedule.

The center is using about 25 percent of the 16,000 square feet available on the third floor of the former International Paper bag mill.

“Ironically, the size of the new space is only about half the size of the old center,” according to Cooper. “But from a usability standpoint, it’s far more usable. We have much better flexibility in the use of the spaces than we did in the older center.”

The new facility includes:

• A student lounge area; a quiet lab for testing for incoming students;

• A computer lab, which allows up to 10 students and an instructor to teach on site;

• Space for video conference classes;

• A cafe area;

• A small video room for students; and

• A larger classroom for traditional instruction, with an overhead projector and a laptop connector can also serve as a public meeting room.

Cooper, who also directs the Western Maine University and Community College Center in South Paris, said the average age of the students in their centers is 37 years.

“What that means is the majority of students coming to us are working people, people with families,” Cooper said. “They are students who may have started college and either dropped out or stopped out and now want to come back. We tend to see students less right out of high school and more about three years afterward.”

The Rumford college averages about 200 to 250 students per semester, including online students.

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