Opening doors, building futures
The Uintah Basin Regional campus will be expanding by more than the original size of USU in 1888 thanks to a gift of 138 acres.
Lifetime Vernal resident, businessman and entrepreneur, Bob Williams, donated the land across the street from Uintah High School last year.
The land was being looked at as housing development, but Williams didn’t like that idea.
“He came in at the eleventh hour, swooped in and purchased the land and gave it to the university for educational purposes,” said Robert Behunin, associate executive director for the Uintah Basin Region.
Behunin noted Williams was very concerned about higher education. Although not a USU alumnus, Williams gave the land to the university, which has a campus in Vernal. The Uintah Basin Regional campus included a building in Roosevelt and one in Vernal. Behunin said the Roosevelt center has seen growth and building improvement, but the Vernal one hasn’t. It sits on Highway 40 and is in the same building it has been housed in since its beginnings in 1985.
The land will host a 87,000 square foot building, Behunin said. It will be a joint building between USU and the Uintah Basin Applied Technology College. It will be used for night classes, face-to-face instruction both broadcast from Logan and given by faculty in Vernal, and to house science programs for USU. At this point it is the only building planned, but Behunin said that they expect growth and when it comes they will work towards more buildings.
Work is beginning on the new site and Behunin said they expect the building to be completed by December 2008 and ready for students Spring 2009. Funding for the new center comes from a $10 million appropriation from the state and $6.9 from the community, including private and government donations.
“The communities of Roosevelt and Vernal are very supportive and take pride in the Uintah Basin being a home of the Aggies,” Behunin said.
Besides the monetary donation to help build the center, the community is putting in $16 million of roads around the 138 acres. One of the roads will be called “Aggie Boulevard” and will connect the old and new campuses. Behunin said there will also be $1.5 million in water, sewer and utilities put toward the campus from the city.
The land donation totals $5.3 million and is the second largest gift in USU’s 119-year history. The land for the original Vernal campus was donated by the city to the university. The Uintah Basin campus is the largest of the three regional campuses and includes the Roosevelt and Vernal sites. It has 2,200 students, including traditional and concurrent enrollment students. The campus offers three associate degrees, 12 bachelors degrees and 11 masters programs.
-alison.baugh@aggiemail.usu.edu