Regents to Consider Proposed Renovations to UA College of Pharmacy Building

The Arizona Board of Regents will be asked to approve $26 million in renovations and additions to the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy's Skaggs Pharmaceutical Sciences Center during this week's meeting at Arizona State University.

The focus of the renovations will be to create new chemistry labs for drug discovery and research, according to Rick Schnellmann, dean of the College of Pharmacy. Research lab space, he said, is in demand and critical to student learning.

The site of the project, the northeast corner of East Mabel Street and North Warren Avenue, would include a new two-story addition and renovation of existing building space to provide approximately 33,000 gross square feet of modern research labs and associated support space, including 20,000 gross square feet in new space, 12,000 gross square feet in renovated space and 2,000 gross square feet dedicated to the College of Pharmacy's History of Pharmacy Museum.

The 35-year-old building would be updated and expanded in order to facilitate increased research capability, faculty recruitment and increased revenues. The additional space would also provide greater opportunities for students in the College of Pharmacy's new four-year Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences – the college's first undergraduate major.

The UA plans to fund the construction with $10 million in UA Health Sciences funds, $6 million in gifts and an additional $10 million provided by The ALSAM Foundation, a Utah-based trust founded by L.S. and Aline W. Skaggs – the donors for whom the building is named.

Construction would begin in the spring, with completion slated for the summer of 2020.

Other items on the agenda (PDF) include:

• A request from the UA for the board to approve a multiple-year contract for head football coach Kevin Sumlin, who was named to the position on Jan. 14.
• The board plans to provide guidance on upcoming tuition and fee setting and take possible action to implement revisions to guidelines and board policy on student fees.
• The board will be asked to approved several new undergraduate and graduate academic programs at the UA, based upon the recommendation of the ABOR Academic and Student Affairs Committee. The full list is here.
• Regents will take up the UA's request to disestablish two colleges. The first is the Colleges of Letters, Arts and Sciences, which was created in 2009 as an umbrella over the colleges of Humanities, Fine Arts, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Science to "facilitate the establishment of new programs and research collaborations through the umbrella college." The affected students will be assigned specific advisers until they select majors, at which time they will work with advisers in those programs. The second college is the Outreach College, which is no longer active, as its functions have been moved to other units.

The board's next meeting is April 5-6 at the UA.