RICHLAND The WSU Board of Regents approved the creation of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, the School for Animal Global Health and moved forward an aggressive residence hall upgrade plan at its regular meeting Friday, March 21, at the WSU Tri-Cities campus.
The College of Communication will become an independent program, separated from the College of Liberal Arts. The change was recommended by a panel of communications deans who visited the program last year.
“We believe this will help the college achieve its educational goals, as well as position it better to attract external support,” said Robert Bates, university provost and executive vice president.
The Murrow School currently has nearly 600 students with certified majors. The major options are advertising, applied intercultural communication, broadcast management, broadcast news, broadcast production, communication studies, journalism, organizational communication and public relations. The school also offers master and doctoral degrees in communication, with 50 graduate students in those programs.
President Elson S. Floyd said the School for Global Animal Health will be administered by the College of Veterinary Medicine, and will also bring together researchers from across the university who are working on research in the areas of human and animal disease. The school will coordinate the university’s efforts in infectious disease research and diagnostics, with a particular focus on the intersection of human and animal disease.
About 70 percent of the diseases that affect humans have their origins in animals, Floyd said.
The regents also approved the budget for the 229-bed, $26 million Olympia Avenue student housing project, to be built east of the current McEachern Hall. The new residence hall, the first built on the Pullman campus since the early 1970s, is part of a 10-year, $200-million plan to improve student housing on the campus.
The project is designed to give students a variety of housing options and to provide open, public spaces that encourage student interaction.
The university will break ground on the Olympia Avenue hall this spring, with the new building scheduled to welcome its first group of students in fall 2009. Construction of the Olympia Avenue project would be the most visible of several residence hall projects that are being undertaken on the Pullman campus in the coming months.
In February, the regents approved funding for the renovation of the south and east towers of Stephenson Hall, which will be completed during the summer. Stephenson’s north tower and McEachran Hall are slated to be refurbished for fall 2009, with Regents and Scott/Coman halls to follow in fall 2010.
The long-term plan calls for construction of two additional new residence halls in the southwestern part of campus for fall of 2012 and the fall of 2015.
The projects will be funded through bonding and student residence hall fees.
