EDITOR'S NOTE: View video interviews with Dana Rooks and Ted Estess. Visit our web site for a photo of Rooks and Estess

January 22, 2004

By Francine Parker
Staff writer

The University of Houston surpassed its $20 million fundraising goal by the end of December for the M.D. Anderson Library/Honors College building project, making it possible to claim a $500,000 challenge grant from the Kresge Foundation.

The $20 million in private gifts, along with $25 million from the university, will finance the library's $45 million expansion and renovation project, which is scheduled to be finished in October.

“It is a realization of a dream for those of us who have been at the library and the university for many years,” said Dana Rooks, dean of libraries. “We have planned for this building since 1983, which was the first time the library staff started looking at future space needs. So, 20 years later, the university is building a library that will be transformational for the campus and, I think, it also will be a jewel in the crown for the Houston community.”

Rooks received the good news that $19.5 million had been raised before the end of the year. It was a requirement the university had to meet in order to receive payment of a $500,000 challenge grant from the Kresge Foundation.

“We were quite pleased to be accepted for the challenge grant, and, of course, even more so to have achieved the goal and to receive it,” she said.

Rooks attributes the campaign’s success to the generosity of more than 4,000 donors, including 364 faculty and staff who contributed more than $130,000.

“The community realized the importance of the library not only to the university, but to the entire city,” she said.

The renovation and expansion project calls for the addition of 170,000 square feet of space, 1,800 new individual study spaces, 10 more group study rooms and 200 new electronic information workstations. The library also is receiving a new facade, a new entrance and a 24-hour study lounge and café — offering vending facilities and computer workstations.

Additionally, the project will provide the Honors College, which was located in the library’s basement, with new and expanded quarters on the second floor.

“From its early days, the Honors College moved around from one temporary site to another, none of which was particularly suitable,” said Ted Estess, Honors College dean. “In 1977, the program moved into the library’s basement, a 6,000-square-foot site. That was all right when we had 300 students, but as the program expanded and evolved into a college in 1993, we simply were not able to accommodate the 1,200 or so students.”

Estess is eager to move into the college’s new space, which will include 15 faculty offices, four seminar rooms and one classroom.

“This will be one of the finest, if not the finest, such Honors College facility in the country,” said Estess said. “Beyond these very real services and advantages, there is a strong symbolic value in all this, too. This is a clear declaration by the university that it wholeheartedly supports student scholarship.”

Estess added that the new facility “will offer tremendous benefits not only for the current generation of students in the Honors College, but also for future students. It also will make the University of Houston more competitive in attracting outstanding new students.