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By Matthew Winston
Students participating in the Honors and Foundation Fellows programs will soon enjoy new facilities in a historic campus building. The university is renovating Moore College, one of the  oldest structures on campus, restoring classrooms and creating additional academic space.
“We are very excited about the new facilities and moving to this landmark building on the campus of the University of Georgia,” says Jere Morehead, associate provost and director of the Honors Program and the Foundation Fellows Program. “With our expanding programs, this restoration project will elevate UGA’s Honors Program facilities to be among the finest in the country.”
U.S. News and World Report has twice featured UGA’s Honors Program as one of the nation’s best in their “Best Colleges” guide. The 1999 edition included an interview with UGA graduate Scott Hershovitz, a 1998 Rhodes Scholar. UGA’s Honors Program has produced three Rhodes Scholars in the past four years.
The number of students participating in the Honors Program has doubled over the past three years and currently numbers 2,600. The Foundation Fellows program has also experienced tremendous growth, tripling to 60 students in that same time frame.
The Foundation Fellowship is the most prestigious scholarship available to undergraduates at the university. Established in 1972 by the trustees of the UGA Foundation, the fellowship award covers full tuition, room and board, as well as three travel-study grants and a stipend for research and conference expenses. The fellowship endowment now stands at $47 million.
“The growth of our facilities has not been able to keep pace with our participation rate,” says Morehead. “What we have currently amounts to one classroom and gathering space. What we are doing in Moore College will create and foster a sense of community within these programs. This renovation project is an example of the commitment that the president and the provost have to these programs and to the students at this institution.”
Moore College was constructed on North Campus in 1874 and provided space for the technical and scientific classes offered to fulfill UGA’s new role as a federal land-grant college. The building housed the university’s physics department until the 1950s and then became the home of the department of Romance languages, now located in Gilbert Hall.
According to Neal Anderson in the Office of University Architects, the renovation project will create six classrooms for the Honors Program. One of these rooms will be a “high-tech” classroom containing approximately 24 individual workstations with Internet connectivity, as well as a projection screen on which professors can show videos, slides or computer-generated presentations. The building will also contain a 30-station computer lab on the top floor and two seminar rooms.
A Foundation Fellows library will be included in the facility, in addition to classroom space and administrative offices. The library will provide students with research space and access to library resources. The Foundation Fellows play a key role in the evaluation of nominees for the prestigious Delta Prize for Global Understanding, which is funded by Delta Air Lines and administered by the University of Georgia.
The 20,000-square-foot building will not change much structurally, although some alterations will make the building ADA-compliant—such as an elevator, ramps and accessible doors.
“The building will keep the current exterior design, but we will add an entrance to the Herty Field side,” Anderson says. “Because Herty Field terminates at Moore College, that additional access to the field will be an attractive feature, both aesthetically and functionally.”
Herty Field, as a first step in the university’s new physical master plan, is being converted from a parking lot to “green space.” The area originally was used as UGA’s athletic field.
Anderson says the two-phase, $1.2 million restoration project should take about 18 months. The Honors and Foundation Fellows programs are scheduled to move into Moore College during spring semester 2001. Space in the Academic Building vacated by the Honors Program will be renovated for expansion of the Office of Student Financial Aid.
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