College of Education breaks ground for new building

On Wednesday, the Utah State University College of Education and Human Services broke ground for its new building, the Sorenson Legacy Center for Clinical Excellence.

The building will be located behind the Emma Eccles Jones building, just north of the Edith Bowen Elementary School. The Sorenson family was a large donor to the building, which is why it will be named after them.

The building will include two to four classrooms, research areas, a garden area, lobby, a café and distance education classrooms. The facility will be 100,000 square feet and will include an underground parking garage.

While the center will include graduate and undergraduate classrooms, it will mainly serve as a center for counseling, research, assessment and treatment services. The center will aim to cater to people with low income who may not otherwise be able to afford the physical and mental care they need.

Patients who are seeking multiple services, such as speech therapy and optometry, will now be able to receive those services from the same place.  Utah State University currently holds most of its health and psychological services in different buildings, which many patients find inconvenient.

The Center for Clinical Excellence will include speech language pathology, audiology, marriage and family therapy, psychological counseling, health education, nursing, early intervention and consumer finance programs.  Rather than being spread across campus, these programs will all be held in one building.

Teigan Beck, the USUSA senator over the College of Education and Human Services, believes the center will be “very convenient for students and patients receiving services.”  

She says the center will be beneficial for students because they will be able to gain experience in a variety of medical fields.

Beth Foley, the dean of the College of Education and Human Services, said she “has very high expectations for this building and believes it will be a tremendous resource for the community.”

The Center for Clinical Excellence is expected to be finished by November 2017, and will be in full operation by the beginning of the 2018 Spring Semester.

-aligirl123@att.net