WSU requests $7.4 million from the 2008 Legislature
for design of a new Veterinary Medical Research Building required to
strategically advance the university’s biomedical and life science research
and education effort.
The WSU College of Veterinary Medicine neuroscientists
and muscle biologist who will be housed in this building conduct
cutting-edge research in the WSU strategic emphasis area of Brain, Behavior,
and Performance.
Provided with modern research space, these programs – especially in key
areas of sleep and performance, control of energy metabolism in obesity and
diabetes, substance abuse, protein bioengineering and biotechnology, and
cardiac physiology, biophysics and disease – will contribute significantly
to understanding basic disease mechanisms and to discovering new treatments
and methods of diagnosis.
Currently housed in outdated 55-year old buildings,
these cutting-edge research and graduate education programs suffer from poor
quality, fragmented, and
limited space that impedes their growth and productivity.
Inadequate existing facilities at Wegner and McCoy Halls slow
research progress and make it difficult to recruit and retain the faculty
and graduate students needed to keep these research programs nationally
competitive.
WSU proposes a 128,000-gross
square-foot Pullman laboratory facility
that provides state-of-the art space to support interdisciplinary research
and graduate education. The building will be located east of the WSU Life
Sciences Building near Beasley Coliseum.
The Veterinary Medical Research Building will also
serve other WSU Programs. The project also
includes vivarium and core laboratories to be shared across multiple WSU
research programs including infectious disease, animal health, molecular
biology, and chemical engineering, among others.
Construction could be completed in 2011.
Legislative approval of $7.4 million in design funding in 2008 makes this
project eligible for $83.5 million in construction funds to complete the
building in 2009-2011. If this
project fails to win legislative approval, construction may be delayed until
2013.
Pre-design of this project was been completed as provided in the
2003-2005 preservation backlog provision of the capital construction budget.
Design funding in 2008 could also be provided as one-time money in the state
supplemental operating budget or a bonded funding from the capital
construction budget.
The Veterinary Medical Research Building is the top
Pullman Campus Priority. This project is the
highest capital construction priority for the WSU Pullman campus and the
only state-funded building anticipated on that campus for construction in
the 2009-2011.
(The sole WSU project already funded for design and eligible for
construction next biennium is the highest priority of the WSU system, the
WSU Vancouver Applied Technology Classroom Building.)
Three-fourths of the WSU Veterinary Medical Research Building will house
scientists and faculty in the Department of Veterinary and Comparative
Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Physiology (VCAPP.)
Continual expenditures of minor capital funds are needed to make existing
space even marginally suitable, and as programs have steadily grown, there
is an acute shortage of space.
Space for Bioengineering.
The fourth floor of the building is expected to house
expansion of the College of Engineering & Architecture’s bioengineering
program. That growing program currently housed in Dana Hall requires
critical space for research in molecular, cellular, and nano-bioengineering.
Given the close interdisciplinary association with VCAPP, locating
bioengineering on the fourth floor of this building provides synergies to
improve the competitiveness of multiple programs.
The State of Washington will benefit
from enhanced life science undergraduate and graduate education and increased
basic biomedical knowledge that improves human and animal health and drives the
economy through discovery and commercialization of those discoveries.
This capital request aligns with university strategic operating priorities that
will have impacts all over the WSU system. For instance, these interdisciplinary
basic research programs are integrated with translational health science
research in Spokane. The resulting synergies from updated Pullman facilities
will further fuel research growth on both campuses.
This research is a major economic activity in and of itself and will
drive innovations in biomedicine and biotechnology, as well as development of
new technologies (including those brought to market by creating
commercial spin-offs).
Completing the WSU Veterinary Medical Research Building will also free up space
in Wegner Hall for subsequent reassignment and renovation to relieve space
shortfalls in the College of Pharmacy, provide a much-needed expansion of the
Health Sciences Library, and meet the needs of other growing research and
education programs in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
(Draft 5A)
For more information, contact Larry Ganders, Assistant to the President,
360-956-2165
www.olympia.wsu.edu
