AUGUST 21, 2020
Students walking around campus this fall may notice a new addition to the campus layout, namely the West View Building, which has been under construction since 2019. This new building is located just west of the Joseph F. Smith Building and enjoys a great view of the city of Provo below. This is particularly exciting news for the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences, as our very own Department of Economics will be calling this new building home.
After two years waiting, the Department of Economics is preparing to transition to the new West View Building. The department had previously been housed in the long-standing Faculty Office Building (FOB), which was demolished in winter 2019. The FOB was constructed in 1955 and originally served as a bathroom and ticket facility for the old football stadium. Following the completion of the LaVell Edwards Stadium, the building was repurposed to become the Faculty Office Building.
While construction on the West View Building was underway, the department worked from the Crabtree Building, home of the technology departments.
The move into the new building has already begun and will take place in multiple stages. Computers, furniture, and other office materials are being transitioned quickly into the new offices in an attempt to be prepared for fall semester. According to Mark Showalter, Department Chair of Economics, “the new building will have lots of great new space for students.”He further explains the new features of the building that will improve the academic experience, saying, “The computer lab will be about double the size of our old lab in the FOB. There is more room available for Teaching Assistants, a new space for Professor Joe Price's Record Linking Lab, and multiple rooms available for Research Assistants who are working on a variety of projects.”
The West View Building will house not only the Department of Economics but will also be the new home of the Department of Statistics and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. As the move comes closer to completion, Professor Showalter says, “We miss the unique structure of the old FOB with its natural light and community space, but it will be nice to have heating that works in the winter and cooling that works in the summer.”
