By Mike Greife,
August 14, 2017
WARRENSBURG, MO – The University of the Central Missouri will celebrate the completion
of the renovation of the W. C. Morris Science Building on the UCM campus with a public
event at 1 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25.
The community is invited to join faculty, staff, students and friends of the university
at the east entrance to the building for remarks, and then move inside the building
for tours of the renovated facility.
Completion of $18.4 million renovation reinforces the university’s commitment to current
and future generations of students to provide state-of-the-art facilities for the
study of the sciences, mathematics and computer science.
Also included in the renovation is the construction of the new Cybersecurity Laboratory.
This new facility will provide students enrolled in UCM’s Cybersecurity degree program
with the state-of-the-art technology required to future success.
Although various classrooms and laboratory facilities have been updated throughout
the years, this is the first major renovation of the building, which was built in
1968 at a cost of $3 million. Renovation construction began following the end of the
spring 2016 semester, with completion in time for the fall 2017 semester. The project
was completed with minimal impact on building occupancy.
In addition to the renovation of offices and classrooms on the four floors of the
building, 10 of the laboratories in the building were renovated with much-needed,
updated equipment and facilities.
McCownGordon Construction, Kansas City, was the general contractor for the project,
with design work completed by Gould Evans architects, Kansas City.
The project was funded with $12.2 million in state capital appropriations, along with
$5.97 million in university reserves and $174,000 in the department reserves from
the College of Health, Science, and Technology at UCM.
The state funding was provided by the passage by the Missouri Legislature of House
Bill 19 in 2016, which provided $200 million in state appropriations for STEM-education
related capital projects at state colleges and universities across the state, including
the $12.2 million for the W.C. Morris Building renovation.
The current building is the second W. C. Morris Science Building dedicated to the
study of the sciences on the UCM campus. The first W. C. Morris Science Building,
built in 1915, is now the west section of the Humphreys Building. The buildings were
named for Dr. Wilson C. Morris, who joined the faculty in 1906 as a professor of physics
and served a chair of the Department of Chemistry and Physics until his death in 1947.
