Expansions needed to support growth

The new legislative session brought two major projects before the state for decisions that could mean expansion for GC&SU.

The projects include a renovation of Parks Memorial Hall and the Health Sciences Building, which would ultimately connect the two buildings with a breezeway, and a renovation and expansion of Herty Hall.

According to university President Dorothy Leland, a renovation of Parks Nursing and Health Sciences has been at the top of a long list of Board of Regents projects since Gov. Sonny Perdue recommended the project for funding last year.

“The Governor’s budget recommendations are very important because it tells you what his priorities are,” Leland said.

The Parks Memorial Hall and Health Sciences Building project is projected to cost $10,648,760 and the Herty Project is expected to top $5 million.

After recommendations are made by Perdue, the House and Senate also make budget offers that may or may not correlate with the Governor’s recommendations. This is precisely what happened last year to the renovation project of Parks Memorial and the Health Sciences building.

According to Leland, the project was recommended by the governor last year, but not by the House and Senate. Although the project remained at the top of the list of projects for the upcoming fiscal year in July, Perdue did not recommend the project again this year. The House and Senate will have to determine whether or not the project will be funded.

The proposal for the project includes joining Parks Memorial and the Health Sciences Building, updating the Student Health Center, and providing better training methods for the nursing program.

“It includes handicap access and totally redoing the Health Center,” Leland said. “It involves adding teaching labs for the nursing program so that before our nurses ever touch a patient they have had realistic simulations in dealing with patient care. It will not only improve the quality of nursing education but it will also allow us to educate more nurses.”

Although Perdue did not recommend this project again this year, he did recommend a renovation and expansion of Herty Hall.

“Herty Hall was built in the 1960s and it hasn’t been expanded since,” Leland said. “Since that time our student body has doubled and biology and chemistry taken together are one of our fastest growing majors. So, we consider the addition of new teaching labs, laboratory space and office space to be very critical to the university at this time. We need to see Herty Hall also in the recommendations of the House and Senate.”

Sophomore and pre-nursing major Ashley Herbermann. “I think (the renovation) will be good for the classes because in Herty the classrooms are old and real small, and all the seats are really close together,” Herbermann said. “I definitely agree that they should renovate Herty.”

Herbermann also said she believes the use of simulated patient interaction that would come along with the Parks Memorial and the Health Sciences Building project would benefit nursing students.

Leland said she will work closely with the community and local legislators such as Senator Johnny Grant to help support these projects.

“We believe that Parks Nursing and Health Science renovations and the addition to Herty Hall are both critical projects and we will work very hard with our partners in the legislation and the community to try and get these projects funded,” Leland said.

According to Leland, students are ultimately affected when projects such as these are not funded by the state because the projects can only be put off for so long.

Director of the GC&SU budget office Susan Allen said this funding would not currently be a burden on the university’s budget.

“(These projects) are special bonded through outside of the university,” Allen said. “We simply run it through, it’s not something that comes out of the college’s books.”

However, Leland said when unavoidable projects such as these are not funded by the state, the costs ultimately fall somewhere.

“As the state has been unable to pay the costs, students and their families are asked to step up,” Leland said.

In response to campus-wide concerns about how ongoing construction projects affect the campus and community, Leland said these upcoming projects should not interfere with everyday activities.

“If we’re lucky enough to get those construction projects, I think they will not impeded the flow of students as some of the other projects have,” Leland said.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Jan 27 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry