Community members say goodbye to CPD building

After 44 years of service, Utah State University’s Center for People with Disabilities will be torn down at the end of May. To thank the CPD for leaving a positive mark on the university, community members left their own marks on the building.

On May 10 the CPD hosted a fundraiser, selling cans of spray paint for $10 to members of the community and allowing them to spraypaint the red brick exterior of the CPD building. The proceeds will pay for supplies for classrooms in the new CPD building that is projected to be finished in April 2018.

The original CPD building was built in 1972. Its purpose was to help educate special needs students who weren’t allowed into mainstream schooling at the time. Over the years, the CPD has expanded its services to help citizens with special needs of all ages and of almost any condition.

The building has been a second home for some students studying fields related to CPD.

“I started working here as freshmen and just graduated with our masters,” said Lyndsay Nix, director of the Autism Support Services: Education, Research, and Training (ASSERT) program provided by the CPD.

For many students the CPD building has been a constant place of study for them and seeing it torn down has become bittersweet.

“It will be nice to have a new building, but it’s sad to see a building where I started my college career at be torn down,” said Kassidy Reinert, a case worker for ASSERT.

Many of the faculty have different sentiments toward the old CPD building.

“The building is like a rat maze … there are no windows and offices within offices,” said Kelly Smith, an administrator for the CPD.

Though administrators and other CPD faculty dislike the old building, they look forward to the prospects the new CPD provides.

“The new building is not just a new CPD. It will encompass a lot of programs from the College of Education as well,” Smith said.

Some of these College of Education programs include communication and speech disorder clinics, dietary clinics and psychological testing clinics. All centers will be available to both students with special needs and students researching fields related to special needs. And with all these new programs being brought together in one place, administrators hope that they will be able to better communicate with one another and in turn better help those suffering from any kind of disability.

“I hope to see more interdisciplinary collaboration throughout the new building,” said Karen Cox, a CPD administrator.

But whether people were saying a fond farewell to the building or excitedly looking to the future students, staff and students with disabilities whose lives were positively affected by the CPD were able to leave their last marks on the building.

“The building left its mark on us and now we get to leave our mark on it,” Reinert said.

—shaniehoward214@gmail.com