A 27,700-square-foot, three-story structure connected to Cleveland Hall on the university’s Pullman campus, the project is intended to provide additional teaching labs, workrooms, classrooms, and offices within the College of Education. Also included within the plan for the $12.7 million project will be a limited renovation of the original 80,966-square-foot Cleveland Hall building.
Built on the site of an existing parking lot and linked to Cleveland Hall by a covered pedestrian bridge, the Education Addition will contain six classrooms wired for the latest communications technology, two project rooms, eight offices and a number of open common spaces for study groups and informal interactions.
The new facility will provide more modern communications technologies than can be retrofitted into the original Cleveland Hall building without extensive and cost-prohibitive renovations. Built in 1963, Cleveland Hall’s architecture incorporates design features – such as ceilings too low to allow for new ducting and cable raceways – which preclude it from being adapted readily to incorporate advanced technologies. With the scheduled conclusion of the construction project in August 2005, the original Cleveland Hall will continue to meet student, faculty, and administrative needs that do not require the use of such technologies.
The decision by the WSU Board of Regents to include the Education Addition as part of the 2003-2005 capital budget request also was prompted in part by changes in accreditation requirements and state regulations, as well as projected increases in sponsored-project research and graduate and undergraduate program enrollments. After initially allocating design funding for the project, the state Legislature and Washington Gov. Gary Locke authorized about $11 million in capital construction funding for the project in mid-2003.
WSU President V. Lane Rawlins and Provost Robert C. Bates will join Dean Judy Mitchell and other representatives of the College of Education as speakers at a public groundbreaking ceremony at the future site of the Education Addition at 4p.m. May 5. A reception will follow.
