Contact: Maridith Geuder
The man heading the nation's primary wildlife conservation agency comes to the Mississippi State campus Monday [May 5] to help formally dedicate a new facility considered one of the few "sustainable" academic complexes in the country.
Steven A. Williams, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will be among those speaking during 2 p.m. ceremonies at the university's new Landscape Architecture Building. He leads a Department of the Interior agency that employs more than 7,500 and operates on an annual budget exceeding $1.25 billion.
Occupied since December and situated just off Stone Boulevard near the western edge of campus, the brick-and-glass complex of three buildings houses MSU's landscape architecture and landscape contracting academic programs.
Also speaking will be President Charles Lee and other campus administrators, as well as state Sen. Hob Bryan of Amory. Bryan chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee that supported a construction bond bill that provided $3.6 million and included provisions for the energy conservation features in the facility.
The complex was designed by the architectural firm of Dale and Associates of Jackson, with a faculty team serving as consultants. Meant to exist in harmony with its surroundings, it dramatically reduces energy needs and provides natural mechanisms to harvest and recycle water and treat wastes.
Major design features include:
--Ground-source heating and cooling expected to reduce utility bills by as much as 50 percent;
--Large building overhangs that will keep buildings 8-10 degrees cooler in the summer;
--Wall and roof designs that won't allow summer heat to penetrate the structures;
--Interior concrete floors to prevent the emission of volatile organic compounds. In places requiring floor surfaces other than concrete, coverings are either recycled rubber tires or natural soybean-based materials.
Exterior landscaping will include areas of prairie grass and butterfly, perennials and vegetable gardens.
MSU's landscape architecture program began in 1964 as a four-year curriculum within the horticulture department. With the leadership of early instructors Ed Martin, Bob Chapin and Charlie Parks, it eventually gained accreditation by the American Society of Landscape Architects.
In 1973, the program evolved into its own department within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Previously, offices and studios were located in historic Montgomery Hall.
For more information about the program, telephone Associate Dean Lynn Reinschmeidt of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, at (662) 325-8112.