NORMAN — For the last two years, the School of International Studies hung in limbo at the University of Oklahoma.
But now, its over.
The former school — which OU President David Boren said has grown in “leaps and bounds” — is standing on its own as the College of International Studies, following approval by the OU Board of Regents on Wednesday.
“Our students are going to be living in a global environment ... acting in a global environment,” Boren said. “And preparing them for that environment is essential.”
The move unites under one college the International Programs Center, the School of International and Area Studies, the offices of Education Abroad and International Student Services, the OU in Arezzo program, the Center for U.S.-China Issues, the Center for Middle East Studies and the Arabic Language Flagship Program.
Zach Messitte, former executive director of the International Program Center, will serve as dean of the college. Suzette Grillot, former associate director of the center, is the associate dean.
“I need to get new business cards now,” Messitte joked.
Messitte said the move is mainly a name change, adding that it won’t alter operations within the college.
“For a while, it was hard to classify what we were,” said Messitte, after the school was dropped from within the College of Arts and Sciences in 2008. “But our numbers have been growing so rapidly, that this makes sense now.”
He said within the two-year incubation of the school, it grew by 9.7 percent just last year. Messitte credited the program’s combined liberal arts and professional curriculum to the growing interest.
About 450 undergraduate students and 20 graduate students are majoring in international and area studies at OU, university officials said. The college includes seven majors, eight minors and an accelerated Bachelor of Arts/Master of Arts program and a new Juris Doctor/Master of Arts in international studies, the agenda states.
“They’re the newest, but they already have enough majors that they won’t be the smallest college on campus,” Boren said.
This past week, Boren interviewed candidates for new faculty positions within the college to include courses on Brazil, India and Iran.
Seven new faculty lines for the college have been funded by gifts from the Farzaneh family and the estate of Wick Cary.
A $14 million campaign is planned to launch next month for the new college, Boren said.
And if that funding is met, the college could hire four more faculty members in the next two years, Messitte said.
During the Regents meeting, Boren said a $2 million donation had been given to the college from L. Francis and Kathleen Rooney of Tulsa, who are heading the $14 million campaign, to complete the renovation of OU’s facility in Arezzo, Italy.
“This just adds to the whole vitality of the campus,” Boren said of the new college.
In other business, Regents also voted to award a $2.4 million contract to Oklahoma City-based Flintco, LLC for the demolition, excavation and development of the corner site that once attracted Sooner fans on game days.
Construction of new student and student athlete dorms at the former location of O’Connell’s Irish Pub and Grille and a small strip of stores already have been approved.
According to the agenda, the $75 million project, which will include a mix of residential and retail space, has a deadline of fall 2013.
Regents also approved the consolidation of about 2,000 special student fees into 12 “Consolidated Course and Program Fees.”
Beyond a 10 percent increase in information and technology fees, the move doesn’t include a significant fee increase, which vary based on students’ courses.
Boren said the information and technology fee uptick was “absolutely necessary” this year for colleges, whose budgets were cut by 5 percent, to accommodate the constant technology advancement.
He noted that these fees were frozen last year, and that this increase was minimal.
This change will be made official following approval by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.
Boren said the move follows an escalating possibility that the university will increase its tuition and mandatory fees for next year when the regents meet in May or June.
“I think it would take an act of God for the state to suddenly make up its $206 million shortfall,” Boren said. “So we wanted to keep these individual fees as low as possible.”
Nanette Light 366-3541 nlight@normantranscript.com
