Smith Hall renovations planned each year

by D. MICHAEL ANDRICK photo editor

Signs reading "4th floor closed due to renovations" have been posted in Smith Hall all summer, but that is just the beginning.

No classes are being taught on the fourth floor. Workers removed asbestos from the ceiling tiles earlier in the summer and the floor is now undergoing complete reconstructed.

K. Edward Grose, senior vp of operations said, "We are completely redoing the fourth floor,"

"We've got a plan to take a floor [in Smith Hall] every year."

He said the walls are being repainted and the ceilings and lights are being replaced.

"We are completely redoing the fourth floor," Grose said. "We've got a plan to take a floor [in Smith Hall] every year."

Grose said the construction in Smith Hall will modernize the facilities while providing students with a better learning environment.

Smith Hall isn't the only place where asbestos is being removed. The Doctors' Memorial Building on Sixth Avenue, which is now abandoned, is also having asbestos removed this summer. After the removal, the building will be demolished and the space will be turned into additional parking.

It is planned for the building to be torn down in October and the area to be graveled and paved by spring, Grose said.

That area will allow for 190 parking spaces. Additional parking will be built as well. A garage which will be located across Third Avenue from the Henderson Center is designed for approximately 1,000 vehicles, Grose said.

"We hope to be in the position this fall to start that," Grose said.

Five buildings on campus will receive new roofing this summer too. Corbly Hall, Old Main, Harris Hall, Laidley Hall and Hodges Hall will all have new roofs when students arrive in the fall.

Morrow Library will be getting new heating and ventilation systems. The job will cost $500,000, but will make Morrow a more comfortable place in which to be, Grose said.

Construction on a new housing facility across Fifth Avenue from Holderby Hall will begin in Spring of 2002. The facility will consist of four separate buildings that house 500 beds for both male and female.

New science center work begins next term

by ANNA L. MALLORY managing editor

Developments on the Biotechnology Science center planned to be placed in the current Third Avenue parking lot across from the Science Building will get into full swing next semester.

K. Edward Grose,senior vp of operations, said the majority of the work so far has been planning.

Dr. Howard Aulick, assistant dean of research and graduate education agreed.

"We will be starting in earnest the last two weeks of August," he said.

The center's architectural components will depend on the needs and wants of faculty members.

In August, faculty members, administration and architects will begin discussions on phase one of the project, Grose said.

Phase one is basically the planning stages.

"This is a phase where every possible detail is looked at," Aulick said.

Other institutions such as the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Md., the University of Virginia and medical facilities at Duke University in Durham, N.C., will be visited by members of the planning committees early in the development to possibly borrow designs, Grose said.

He added the phase two portion of the project may not be complete until 2002 of 2003. That includes the complete construction and implementation of the facility.

Funding for the building has come from several different sources, but money is still needed.

"It's a $40 million project," Grose said.

Thirty five million dollars will hopefully come from federal sources. The Department of Health and Human Resources has released $25.2 million of that through a bill Sen. Robert Byrd enacted Another $10 million is still needed.

The last $5 million will come from private funds, he said.

The parking garage on Sixth Avenue built to compensate for the loss of parking spaces with construction of the center will utilize $2.4 million of the federal amount.

Byrd said he is backing the project because it will allow our economy to rely on mental strength instead of the traditional physical labor of the past.

Grose said the center could very well be named after Byrd because of his involvement in helping provide funding, but nothing is yet set in stone.

The Biotechnical Science center, commonly misidentified as the biomedical center, is being constructed as an effort to bring the science and medical programs closer together.

"Our reason for bringing this downtown is to integrate the basic science faculty with the biomedical faculty for a better learning experience," Grose said.

The current facilities for the first two years of undergraduate medical studies are located eight miles away from campus at the MU medical building at the VA Medical Hospital.

The new center will have research facilities for both undergraduate and graduate work, distance learning auditoriums and teaching labs equipped for cell and molecular biology.

"If you are in your last two years as a biology student, you will be doing research work with faculty members," Grose said, "The facilities will help with that."

The need for the center began in the early 90s when the school developed a forensic science program.

That program, coupled with the flourishing scientific faculty and increasing number of jobs in biotechnology led to the development of an idea for a more comprehensive facility for faculty and students from both departments.

According to information obtained from Grose's office, the proposed integration of Marshall's sciences is "on the right track."

The amount of collective outside funding received has increased over the past ten years.