LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 10, 2005) -- The University of Kentucky Board of Trustees today approved the construction of a new $24 million health service building and a new $27.5 million basketball practice facility.
The University Health Service (UHS) facility will contain 64,770 square feet and primarily will serve the healthcare needs of UK students. It will be built on the southwestern side of the Kentucky Clinic between the clinic and the Charles T. Wethington Jr. building, which is at the intersection of Rose and Limestone streets.
The UHS is expected to elevate UK to somewhere near the middle of its 19 university benchmark institutions based on the average amount of space devoted to student health services.
Bonds will be issued to pay for the new three-story facility and the bonds will be financed with an increase of $60 per year on the student health fee phased in over two years.
The new UK basketball practice facility will be built behind Memorial Coliseum. It will contain practice facilities for both men’s and women’s basketball teams, new locker facilities and lobby areas where UK’s rich athletic history will be displayed. The construction will be funded entirely from athletic sources. The basketball practice courts are expected to be available for UK athletics use by October 2006 and the remainder of the facility is expected to be completed early in 2007.
The board approved the practice facility by a 15-4 vote.
At the end of the board meeting, Michael Kennedy, faculty trustee and UK geography professor who will leave the board in June, told board members he had surveyed some 1,200 UK faculty members in the spring and concluded that there is a “major challenge” facing UK in undergraduate education.
To face the challenge, Kennedy recommended UK raise its admissions standards and admit fewer and better students; use the money from recently announced tuition increases to employ more faculty, and recognized undergraduate teaching, as well as research in meaningful ways, such as promotion.
UK President Lee T. Todd Jr. responded to Kennedy’s comments by noting that during recent state budget funding problems faced by UK that faculty and staff “held up extremely well. In a tough time of financial duress we have worked our way through it well,” the president commented.
Todd also cited a recent $75,000 commitment to the UK Senate Council to study how academia can do “more with less, a common problem throughout higher education in the United States;” a recent gift of $1.5 million through action by the Provost’s Office, matched with “bucks for brains” funding to the Center for Undergraduate Education Excellence to develop ways to “coagulate the outstanding things we’re doing in undergraduate education;” and an expansion of the Honors Program.
In other action, the UK Board:
--Established a Partnership Institute for Mathematics and Science Reform involving the College of Education and College of Arts and Sciences. The PIMSR will build on the successes of UK’s Appalachian Mathematics and Science Partnership (AMSP), a program funded with a $22 million National Science Foundation grant aimed at improving math and science teaching in all Appalachian schools;
--Established a University Hospital Committee of the Board of Trustees that will govern the University Hospital, assuming the duties of the former University Hospital Affiliated Corporation;
--Accepted several gifts and pledges to the university including a $50,000 gift and pledge from UK Executive Vice President for Health Affairs Michael Karpf to create and endow a Patient Quality, Safety and Rights Research Endowment in the College of Medicine’s Department of Internal Medicine, and
--Accepted gifts totaling $51,585 from 62 donors to support the UK Center for Research on Violence Against Women Endowment Fund in the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research.
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