The new building will house growing student and faculty population in the college.

University officials said construction on a new $80 million engineering building should begin some time next year.

The Texas Legislature approved the university issuing $70 million in tuition revenue bonds to partially pay for the project. The university is waiting on Legislature approval for the funds.

Before approving the bill, 17 legislators wrote letters to university President James Spaniolo regarding the protests surrounding the Vietnamese national flag hanging in Nedderman Hall’s Hall of Flags. The letters urged Spaniolo to resolve the flag issue and threatened cutting the university from House Bill 153, which also included resolutions to provide funds for other Texas public universities.

Roger Tuttle, public relations director for the College of Engineering, said the remaining $10 million would be received from a variety of sources, including corporate donations and alumni.

Tuttle said the College of Engineering needs the new building because they’ve simply outgrown the existing facilities. The new building might be located at the corner of Yates and West streets where a faculty parking lot is now.

“Enrollment and number of faculty have both gone up since we built Nedderman Hall in the late ’80s,” he said. “The new building is going to help bring more research to the university. All of the major schools -— Stanford, Penn State, UCLA — are research-oriented and if we want to attract big names to UTA, we’ve got to have more research.”

University officials are evaluating changes to the original plans, drafted in 2003, and will present a new proposal to Spaniolo and the UT System Board of Regents by the end of the summer.

Aerospace engineering junior Austin Cosby said he’s glad the university will have the new building, which will house several new research labs.

“It’s good for engineers and it’s good for the program,” he said. “New research will further the program here and new research always expands the prestige of a college.”

Mechanical engineering senior David Gibson said the new building is great, but it came too late.

“We needed a new building four years ago when the college was top-rated,” he said. “Engineering at UTA just isn’t what it used to be, and this new building is too late to do anything about that.”

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