Auburn's Board of Trustees gave initial approval to a plan to construct a new College of Education building on the south side of campus.
The board gave unanimous approval to initiate the project, which will result in a building with room for faculty offices, classrooms, multi-use rooms and laboratories.
With an enrollment of more than 1,800 undergraduate and roughly 1,000 graduate students, the College of Education is the fifth-largest academic unit on campus and the largest graduate school at Auburn.
The board's decision Friday allows Auburn Facilities Management to begin a search for an architect. There is not yet a board-approved budget or a detailed plan for the building.
Provost Bill Hardgrave said the main objective of the project is to move operations out of the Haley Center and other facilities into its own facility, consolidating all but one of the college's schools and departments into a single facility.
"One of the things it will give us that we need desperately is faculty office capacity on campus," Hardgrave said. "We are extremely constrained right now to the point of every time that we hire one additional faculty, we are literally trying to move things around to make space."
The new building is part of a long-standing goal of moving personnel and classes out of Haley Center for a potential renovation or redevelopment, and it would open more space for the University to hire additional faculty, Hardgrave said.
"If look to hire 500 faculty in the next five years and increase our capacity, we need space for these faculty," Hardgrave said. "By consolidating the College of Education faculty, it will free up spaces across campus ... for faculty. So it's going to give us much-needed capacity."
The school is currently spread across seven buildings on campus including the Haley Center, Dawson Hall, Ramsey Hall, Wallace Hall, the Kinesiology building and two other buildings.
"The new College of Education Building will enhance the student experience of those in the College by providing up-to-date and modern classrooms, instructional laboratories and clinical spaces, as well as administrative offices for faculty and staff," the proposal read.
The School of Kinesiology would be the only department or school within the College of Education that wouldn't relocate to the new building.
The proposed building would be located on P.O. Davis Drive to the west of the Poultry Science Building.
"A peripheral location is desirable given that the enrollment of the College is upper division and that student engagement will occur entirely within the new facility or off-campus in local schools," the Campus Master Plan notes.
Constructing a new home for the College of Education has been a priority for campus planners since the Campus Master Plan was updated in 2013.
"One of the nice things about this site and this building at this time is that it would not require demolition of an existing facility," Hardgrave said, "so that we could go ahead and get started on this and as soon as its building that would immediately gives us capacity in the other areas."
Planning for the building is only in its initial stages. The board's approval Friday would allow for the selection process to choose an architect to begin.
Though few plans are publicly available for the building, the Campus Master Plan set a minimum required total square footage of 73,942 feet and a few planning considerations:
- A goal is to expand outreach activities through GED adult learning centers, regional in-service centers, the community music program and the counseling program.
- A growth in distance education and community outreach will require new technologically enhanced services and spaces.
- More innovative learning spaces, including combined lecture and laboratory space are needed to support current pedagogy.
- Academic departments are currently spread across campus; the College would like to bring departments together in a new facility.
- Inviting, flexible spaces that promote collaboration
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Chip Brownlee, senior in journalism and political science, is the editor-in-chief of The Auburn Plainsman.
