MEDIA ADVISORY: Dedication of new engineering building

Contact: Sammy McDavid

Mississippi State President Robert H. "Doc" Foglesong and other officials will lead ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremonies Saturday [Nov. 10] for the university's new agricultural and biological engineering building.

The 9:30 a.m. public ceremony will take place at the north entrance of the facility located on Creelman Street between Dorman Hall and the McCarthy Gymnasium. In case of inclement weather, activities will be held in the front lobby.

The modern, 40,000-square-foot building will house administrative and faculty offices, classrooms and laboratories previously situated in the 6,000-square-foot, 1950s-era Howell Engineering Building near Humphrey Coliseum.

A reception and alumni reunion immediately follows the ceremony. The building will be open for tours until 11 a.m.

Because of the 11:30 a.m. regionally televised MSU-University of Alabama football game at nearby Davis Wade Stadium, game-day parking regulations will be in effect on campus. Limited parking for credentialed members of the news media will be provided--for duration of the ceremony only--in the former construction assembly site between the building's south side and the intramural tennis courts.

The department of agricultural and biological engineering is jointly administered by the university's two oldest colleges, the James Worth Bagley College of Engineering and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Among other missions, it prepares students to enter medical school, research and develop new energy sources, manage agricultural enterprises, and pursue a variety of natural resource and ecosystem preservation careers.

Entering agricultural and biological engineering majors consistently have the highest ACT scores of all students at the land-grant university.

For more information about the program, contact Kristy Riley at 662-325-4214 or kriley@advservices.msstate.edu.

For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.