ASU Opens Humanities/Social Sciences Building
by September 20, 2015 2:47 pm 180 views
It was nearly a two-decade long journey that led Arkansas State University officials Friday to formally open a 123,832-square foot building for its humanities and social sciences programs. The students who will have classes in the four-story building on the Jonesboro campus will start a new journey as well, university officials said.
A formal ribbon cutting was held in the $38.9 million building, which will have 29 classrooms, six computer labs, eight seminar rooms and two auditoriums for students to use.
The building will house criminology, sociology and geography; English, philosophy and world languages; history, political science and the university’s Heritage Studies program.
Arkansas State University-Jonesboro chancellor Dr. Tim Hudson said he has had an opportunity to visit several college campuses during his career. The building at ASU tops them all, Hudson said.
“Well, how about this building?” Hudson asked a crowd of about 100.
Hudson said the construction and work on the building took many years to complete after its original conception in the late 1990s. Former university president Dr. Les Wyatt played a key role in the building becoming a reality. ASU System President Dr. Charles Welch said Wyatt and former university president Dr. Eugene Smith, who both attended the event, worked to add to the university’s expansion projects.
Welch also thanked former Gov. Mike Beebe, who also attended the event, for his work on the project. Beebe, who graduated from ASU, said the Jonesboro campus has changed a lot since he first arrived in 1964. The changes have been part of a group effort, Beebe said, noting most of the projects on campus and in the state have been done in a piecemeal approach.
Beebe said the sight of “big, ugly steel in the ground” was transformed to a building. The former governor also told students who attended not to take things for granted and understand their opportunity.
“Your chance in life is due to this university,” Beebe said, noting his mother, who was a waitress, and several others worked to instill the need of education into him.
The building will replace Wilson Hall, which was built in the 1930s. Virtually every ASU graduate since then has had classes in Wilson Hall.
The building is being retrofitted and will be used as the campus for the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, officials have said.