Art, architecture college to return to UI campus
MOSCOW, Idaho – The state Board of Education has revived the University of Idaho’s College of Art and Architecture.
Eight hundred students will attend the college, which was dissolved in 2002 and absorbed into the university’s College of Letters and Science to form the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences. Alumni, students, faculty and staff protested and lobbied the Education Board to reactivate the college.
The Education Board reversed the dissolution in October, saying it wasn’t done properly. And on Thursday, it largely approved the university’s business plan to get the college up and running by fall.
“We’re ecstatically happy that the college has been reactivated,” interim Dean Bill Woolston told the Lewiston Tribune. “We didn’t get everything we came for, but we got most of it.”
University administrators had asked the board to approve a $774 annual professional fee for every student in the college, regardless of major. The fee would have raised $280,000 toward the establishment of the new college. The board went along with the fee for most students, but some members thought fine arts majors weren’t in a “professional” discipline and shouldn’t be charged the fee.
That decision sent administrators scrambling to figure out what the impact would be.
The Education Board approved the professional fee for virtual technology and design, landscape architecture, architecture and interior design students.
Bachelor and master of fine arts students were exempted. It extended the fee for architecture, a five-year program, into the freshman year to help make up some of the loss.
With that fee structure, students will contribute $240,000 to the college.
The rest will come from $270,000 in existing resources within art and architecture base budgets and reserve funds, the university said in a news release.
Students who don’t pay the professional fee will still pay much smaller fees for specific courses.
Students who do pay the professional fee won’t pay the course fees.