Swedish furniture giant IKEA made a very special award to South Seattle College last week.

The college was the winner of a $10,000 furniture and office makeover. The TRIO/Upward Bound program was awarded IKEA’s “Life Improvement Challenge” which in addition to the products, mean that IKEA designers came out and worked with the staff there to complete the project. TRIO operates out of one of the older buildings on campus, Rainier Hall and a makeover was a way to revitalize the mission and serve students more effectively.

This is the second year of the program for IKEA and over 100 nominations from IKEA co-workers were received. A steering committee from each location then selected up to three organizations for IKEA co-workers and consumers to vote online where over 83,000 votes were cast. Out of three final candidates South Seattle College and the TRIO program were selected. It's an open nomination process and organizations can submit an application to be part of the program. That's followed by a review process and finally online voting for those that are finally approved. Only non profit organizations can apply.

TRIO/Upward Bound is celebrating its 50th year across the nation. They work on college access programming for low income, first generation and disabled students.

At SSC the makeover replaced a lot of old 1970's era furniture. "It was a great opportunity for us to purge and completely make the space more student friendly," said Sebastian Myrick, Executive Director.

"It's place where students can feel at home," Myrick said.

Emily Ness from IKEA said that the designers spent a week looking at the rooms, measuring them and then planning and finally constructing the actual furniture. There are standup desks, study desks, lamps wall hangings, file cabinets, storage shelves and more all in white, yellow and other iconic IKEA colors throughout the space.