West Virginia University officials will kick off a $9.5 million expansion of the Agricultural Sciences Complex with a groundbreaking ceremony at 10 a.m. Friday, Feb. 25.
The event will take place in the Area 43 parking lot adjacent to the Agricultural Sciences Building on WVU s Evansdale campus. Construction will begin Monday, Feb. 28, with plans calling for completion of the project by December.
The purpose of this project is to relocate faculty and staff in our plant pathology and environmental microbiology program from Brooks Hall on the downtown campus to the Evansdale campus,said Cameron Hackney, dean of the WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences.
This project allows us to bring our faculty closer together and to reinforce the collaboration and innovation that are so critical to our research efforts,he added.
Scheduled speakers for the groundbreaking include WVU President David C. Hardesty Jr.; Hackney; Barton Baker, director of the Division of Plant and Soil Sciences; and a graduate student in plant pathology and environmental microbiology.
Faculty members in the program conduct research in areas such as soil microbiology, plant disease, food microbiology and safety and mycologythe study of fungi. The program offers advanced study for masters and doctoral candidates and recently developed an undergraduate minor in environmental microbiology.
The program is home to INVAM , the International Culture Collection of Arbuscular and Vesicular Mycorrhizal Fungi. The collection is the largest of its kind, and INVAM s staff acquires, propagates, characterizes and maintains germplasm of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in living cultures for preservation and distribution to any person or institution. Scholars from around the world use INVAM samples in their research and learn propagation techniques at the collections Morgantown facilities.
The two-story, 37,500-square-foot building will contain research and teaching laboratories, a small greenhouse, office space for professors and graduate assistants, a state-of-the-art tiered lecture hall that will seat 250, ADA -accessible restrooms, and unfinished shell space on the first floor that will be used for future growth and expansion. The facility will be on the south side of the Agricultural Sciences Building and extend into the Area 43 parking lot.
Mosites Construction of Pittsburgh will be the contractor for this project, said John Sommers, construction manager with WVU s Physical Plant. The firm recently completed construction of the WVU soccer stadium and is currently working on a 2,800-square-footclean labin the Engineering Sciences Building.
Alpha Associates of Morgantown did the architectural design and H. F. Lenz Engineering of Johnstown, Pa., did the mechanical/electrical design, Sommers added.
The Ag-Sciences expansion is among more than $200 million in capital improvement projects planned for the WVU campus over the next few years. Other projects include new residence halls on the Evansdale and downtown campuses; renovations to Allen/Percival, Brooks, Colson and Oglebay halls; improvements to the downtown campus infrastructure; and a refurbished Mountainlair plaza.