WSU Has Big Plans For Spokane $100 Million Request Would Double Branch Campus

Washington State University wants to double the size of its Spokane branch campus by adding $100 million in buildings and a bundle of new programs at the Riverpoint Higher Education Park.

The university announced Monday that it will ask state lawmakers for tax dollars to erect a library and build additional classroom, laboratory and student services space to increase its Spokane branch campus and nursing center from 800 to 1,500 full-time students.

Officials, however, were unable to demonstrate student demand for the programs, saying that proposals largely are based on requests from Spokane economic development agencies and projections about growth industries and employment.

“The goal is to have WSU do for Spokane what the University of Washington does for Seattle,” WSU President Sam Smith told more than 100 business, government and education leaders in Spokane.

Riverpoint is a 48-acre campus just east of downtown between Trent Avenue and the Spokane River.

The Legislature gave control of the campus to WSU earlier this year as part of a reorganization of higher education services in Spokane.

At the same time, lawmakers ordered WSU and Eastern Washington University to prepare operating plans for serving students in Spokane without duplicating efforts.

Eastern’s plan, which was released last week, focused on building enrollment at its Cheney campus while retaining Spokane programs in business, dental hygiene, physical therapy and others.

Eastern provost Niel Zimmerman said the university expects to work out any differences with WSU “in the spirit of collaboration.”

Preliminary plans by both universities are due today at the state Higher Education Coordinating Board in Olympia; final plans are due Oct. 15.

WSU Spokane, with 300 full-time students, is the smallest of the university’s three branch campuses. Another 500 students attend the Intercollegiate Center for Nursing Education/College of Nursing, a consortium of four schools that’s managed by WSU.

Eastern, which operates its College of Business and Public Administration at Riverpoint, has 1,300 full-time students in Spokane.

WSU’s draft plan calls for partnerships with Eastern, Gonzaga University, the Community Colleges of Spokane, Whitworth College and the University of Idaho to develop business, education, engineering and health science programs. Some programs will be available this year; others will develop into the next century.

WSU vowed to not duplicate programs offered by other schools, saying it would only target undergraduate and graduate programs not served by existing institutions.

Under the draft plan, some of the WSU programs expected to be offered include:

Bachelor’s degrees in computer, manufacturing and environmental engineering.

Bachelor’s degrees in hotel and restaurant administration.

Bachelor’s degrees in real estate and risk management and insurance.

Master’s degree in technology management.

New programs for teacher training and technology education.

Bachelor’s degrees in agriculture.

A health science consortium led by WSU that could offer degrees in biotechnology, molecular pharmacology and toxicology, genetic counseling and health policy and others.

WSU said its College of Pharmacy could be moved to Spokane once sufficient laboratory space is available.

With the addition of these programs, WSU officials said that Riverpoint will need a $39 million health sciences building, a $40 million academic building, another $10 million in infrastructure and $11 million to construct a library inside the Secretary of State’s archives building.

Marc Gaspard, executive director of the HEC Board, said the odds are against WSU getting all the funding requests through the Legislature.

Raymond Soltero, Eastern’s dean of the College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, who attended the presentation, said the Cougars emphasized cooperation, but gave scant detail about how they would develop programs with other schools.

“All of this is still up in the air,” he said. “I’m not certain that some of these markets are there, but health sciences is definitely going to be strong.”

Some programs were proposed in response to requests from the Spokane Area Chamber of Commerce and other economic development officials, said WSU provost Gretchen Bataille, who headed the WSU in Spokane task force. The university also met with the HEC Board staff and competing schools to determine which programs are in the greatest demand but not yet offered in Spokane.

“When you add student programs, you add student numbers,” Smith said.

This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEXT? The state Higher Education Coordinating Board is scheduled to hear proposals for higher education services in Spokane at 1:30 p.m. next Tuesday in the Paccar Atrium at Seattle University. The public is invited to attend.