photo by: University of Kansas

Marvin Hall on the University of Kansas campus.

The University of Kansas’ hope of winning $10 million in state funding to help spur an expansion of its architecture and design school has cleared one hurdle.

The Kansas Board of Regents on Wednesday unanimously agreed to recommend the request to the Kansas Legislature when it convenes in January.

As the Journal-World reported, KU hopes to undertake a $120 million expansion of Marvin Hall, which houses the KU School of Architecture & Design. While Marvin Hall, on the west end of Jayhawk Boulevard, houses the bulk of the architecture school, it also has elements in six other buildings on campus. KU is proposing to add 50,000 square feet of space to the 1909 building to largely bring architecture students all under one roof.

The Regents included the $10 million funding request in their annual list of appropriations that is given to the governor’s office and to the Kansas Legislature for consideration. Inclusion on the list doesn’t guarantee that KU will receive the money, but if Regents had refused to include it on the list, it would have been nearly assured that KU would not receive any state funds for the project.

In total, the Regents are seeking about $273 million in state funding, which would be about a 1.7% increase over the amount the state awarded to higher education this year. Funding for scholarships and student affordability assistance is the largest request from the Regents, at about $90 million.

A program to help fund health-related research at KU, Kansas State and Wichita State also is one of the larger requests at $51 million. The $10 million architecture school request was the only KU-specific request. Kansas State had two specific requests that were included on the list — $5 million for an advanced manufacturing project and $7.5 million for an animal health initiative. Wichita State is seeking $5 million for a project to study the feasibility of establishing a school of dentistry at WSU. Currently, there is not a dentistry school in Kansas, although there is one in Kansas City, Mo.

Universities will find out whether their requests are funded during the upcoming Kansas legislative session, which begins in January.