As today's Arizona Board of Regents meeting begins in the Catalina Room of the Student Union Memorial Center, people within the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture are keeping their fingers crossed.
Tomorrow the regents will vote on whether to approve the expansion of the architecture building that will require an additional $2.2 million for construction.
Melissa Dryden, the program coordinator for facilities design and construction said the college needs to expand because it has simply outgrown its space.
"They have programs in many buildings; the update will help them consolidate," Dryden said.
Architecture students have studio and classroom space in the Architecture building and Landscape Architecture students use facilities on the north side of East Speedway Boulevard.
Many involved in the schools say this separation is a problem for their programs.
Richard Eribes, dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture said the separation limits interaction between the two disciplines, which in turn, limits opportunities for collaboration.
"There's no interaction like other schools have," Eribes said. "When they are together, the breadth of education will be much greater, it will foster interdisciplinary research."
Students also see the advantages of the extended space.
John Dietrich, a pre-architecture freshman, said he would benefit a lot from the addition because he has four years left at the UA for his undergraduate degree in architecture.
"First-year students only have room upstairs," Dietrich said. "The second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-year students would benefit as well. You can see how cramped and crowded their space is."
The UA has about 25 square feet of studio space per student compared to the national standard of about 75 square feet per student, Eribes said.
"The addition will allow us to be more in line with our national peers," he said.
Eribes also said that the addition would increase the space available to about 60 square feet per student.
"It would be nice to have more work space," said Sarah Ingham, an architecture sophomore.
The extension would be added in the parking lot behind the current Architecture building. It would be about the same size as the existing building.
Eribes said the College of Architecture will move into the addition once it is completed, then work will be done to renovate the existing building.
Once that is complete, the college will use both buildings as one.
He said the existing building is "old and technologically obsolete." The air systems need work, and the building was not designed to support as many computers as it does now.
Dryden said if the regents approve the expansion, construction may start in late 2004 or early 2005, but the building is still being designed.
According to the agenda for the regents meeting, the project budget is $6 million. Added to that is the $1 million that the university will provide and the $1.2 million the college has received in gifts.
Tomorrow the regents will also review a summary of the Translational Genomics Research Institute.
TGen is a non-profit biosciences research institute that partners with the universities and other public and private groups around the state.
The board will be asked to approve an agreement with TGen that outlines the goals and purpose of the institute, which will draw on resources from ASU, NAU, and the UA.
The UA is providing TGen with $17 million that includes $7 million for salaries.
The board will also consider relocating the greenhouses used by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences that are located in the back of the chemistry building so that both the chemistry building and the green houses can be expanded.
The UA also would like to increase the fee for law students.
Students in the College of Law already pay fees in addition to their tuition. If the fees are approved, they would be used to improve technology in the law school and to recruit and retain faculty by increasing salaries to rates competitive with other universities.