WSU To Spend $11 Million On Scholars Hall WSU Regents Approve Plans For Dorm To House Students In Honors Program

To accommodate the needs of 1,000 of its brightest students, Washington State University plans to spend more than $11 million for a scholars’ residence hall at the heart of campus.

WSU’s Board of Regents gave the university authority to select a consultant and begin designing the facility Friday.

The new scholars’ hall will be more than a dormitory, combining student beds with classrooms and offices of WSU’s honors program, which is changing its name to the scholars program.

The $11.7 million project is planned as a renovation to the existing White Hall. Currently the home to WSU’s Department of Apparel, Merchandising and Interior Design, White Hall is located at Campus and Spokane streets.

WSU’s honors program has grown significantly in recent years, topping 1,000 students this fall even as overall enrollment at Pullman fell slightly. The fall 1997 freshman honors class grew nearly 30 percent from the year before.

This fall’s freshman class was 337 students, up 77 students from fall, 1996.

Announcing university enrollment this year, WSU President Sam Smith emphasized the increasing “quality” of WSU’s students, noting the expanding ranks of entering students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their class and rising grade-point averages of first-time freshmen.

Each year, the top 10 percent of the entering freshman class, based on high school grade-point average, tests and counselor recommendations, is invited to participate in WSU’s honors program.

Currently, honors students are housed together in Coman Residence Hall.

No design work has been done, said Gerald Marczynski, interim director of housing services and a member of the scholars hall programming committee. Generally, he said, the concept calls for bringing much of the honors program under a single roof.

Many universities already maintain scholars residence halls, Marczynski said, following a decadelong trend.

The purpose for creating the new residence, Marczynski said, “is primarily to try to create a living and learning environment where (students) have more opportunity to interact with faculty.”

Having program offices, and some classrooms located below student bedrooms should allow for more specialty programming and increase informal contacts between professors and students, he said.

WSU already maintains dormitory space catering to students studying science and mathematics.

When work begins on renovating White Hall for the new dormitory, the apparel, merchandising and interior design department will be displaced. That department is scheduled to move into a new building of its own in 2006.

An architect for the new structure, which will additionally house WSU’s landscape architecture department, has been selected and a design committee will begin meeting this year.

While White Hall is being remodeled, apparel, merchandising and interior design will be housed in temporary quarters.