Old Dominion will open the first Filipino-American Student Cultural Center on the East Coast next month.

Philippine Ambassador Raul ch. Rabe’, along with several hundred Filipino- American students, community leaders and university officials, will officially open the center at 4 p.m. Monday, Dec. 7. The new center is located on campus at 1411 W. 49th St.

Dedicated to Filipino-American students and community members, the center will provide a place where they can come together to learn more about the Filipino culture from speakers, events and a resource library. It will house documents, artifacts and memorabilia which portray the Filipino-American history and Filipinos’ immigration to America.

Approximately 700 Filipino-American students currently attend Old Dominion. The Filipino-American population in southeastern Virginia exceeds 40,000.

To support the center, the Filipino-American community raised more than $110,000, with matching funds provided by the university.

While similar centers exist in Hawaii and California, no university-operated facility exists in the eastern U.S. Some American universities offer Philippine and Filipino-American history courses and cater to a larger group – Asian/Pacific Islanders – but Old Dominion is creating the first stand-alone cultural center devoted specifically to the needs and culture of Filipino-Americans, according to Carretta Cooke, director of multicultural student services.