Regents approve construction of new Arts & Humanities Building

A five-story building dedicated to the arts and humanities was among the new construction projects approved by the Texas A&M University Board of Regents during its meeting on Thurs., Dec. 2.

The 107,000-square-foot building will permanently house the departments of English and Performance Studies. It will be located in the historic core of the Texas A&M campus, between the Melbern G. Glasscock History Building and the Jack K. Williams Administration Building.

The majority of the funding for the $46 million facility is coming through the Permanent University Fund. The balance will come from university and private sources.

The faculty in Texas A&M's Department of English include three recipients of prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships, the editor of the World Shakespeare Bibliography and international leadership of The Donne Variorum project. The new building also will house the Institute for Digital Humanities, Media and Culture, one of the university’s Academic Master Plan initiatives.

Established in 1999, the Department of Performance Studies was the first department at Texas A&M solely devoted to the arts. Faculty and students from the department have already received several national and international performance awards and invitations to perform at many of the top venues in the world.

Additionally, the building is expected to enhance interdisciplinary collaborations in the arts and humanities on campus. It will be located near the history department, the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, as well as the Department of Visualization within Texas A&M's College of Architecture.

Enrollment in the College of Liberal Arts currently ranks second among Texas A&M's 10 colleges at more than 6,800 students, including approximately 6,000 undergraduate majors and 823 graduate students. The college’s more than 360 faculty members generated $7.6 million in competitively funded extramural funding in the liberal arts in the last academic year and support 46 degree programs, including 11 at the master’s and 10 at the doctoral levels.

Construction on the arts and humanities building is expected to begin in early 2011.

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