MSU Roy Blunt Hall addition to yield opportunities in science, officials say 

Missouri State University dedicated a 77,000-square-foot addition to science building Roy Blunt Hall in an outdoor ceremony Sept. 12. 

Formerly Temple Hall, the building is the home of the university’s College of Natural and Applied Sciences. Former U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt was on hand for the dedication, as were Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, MSU President Biff Williams and past MSU President Clif Smart. 

During his remarks, Williams quipped that a university can be spotted from the moon due to the existence of a crane or a backhoe on its campus. He said MSU currently has 194 projects underway, and they represent $258 million worth of investment. 

The roughly $80 million Roy Blunt Hall addition marks the first phase of a larger project that will also renovate the original building. That project began in December 2022 and is on schedule, university officials say. 

For the addition, Williams said under Blunt’s leadership, the federal government contributed $49.8 million through the Health Resources and Services Administration ($30 million) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology ($19.8 million). 

Additionally, the state of Missouri contributed $30.2 million through the American Rescue Plan Act in fiscal 2023 and 2024, and numerous individual donors also stepped to the fore. 

Opportunities 
Williams said Roy Blunt Hall will house two departments – the Department of Biology and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry – and three centers: the School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability; the Ozarks Environment and Water Resources Institute; and the Center for Resource Planning and Management. 

The building will house some 100 faculty, Williams said, and each semester, over 9,000 students enter the building. 

He added that the building is part of the university’s soon-to-be-launched five-year strategic plan, called “Igniting Opportunity.” 

“This new facility is igniting many new opportunities for our faculty, our students, our staff and our community,” he said. 

Kehoe praised Blunt for his 12 years of service in the U.S. Senate from 2011 to 2022, a period during which he kept his eye on the needs of the state, particularly in the area of workforce development. 

“He understood what these projects were; he understood how important they were, and he understood what the wins would be for Missouri and his citizens if he would help deliver some of those projects,” Kehoe said. 

Kehoe added that the new building will offer students – including 1,100 science majors – state-of-the-art educational facilities in myriad scientific fields. 

“Investments like these keep Missouri at the forefront of cutting-edge work in these fields. We’re prepared to compete in these industries across the country and the world,” he said.  

Kehoe said the initiative ensures students are ready for the workforce of tomorrow and that the state is poised to be a global leader in preparing its economic development workforce for opportunities and investments.  

“This building is the brick-and-mortar piece that really makes sure we deliver that,” he said. 

University, science growth 
Smart said the project is personally important to him. He said when he became president in 2011, the university cobbled together funding for much-needed improvements. 

At the time, he said, the university had multiple needs. It lacked a welcome center and didn’t even own the land that would become the main entrance to campus. Its recital hall had the worst acoustics on campus. 

“The student section of Plaster Stadium consisted of wooden bleachers that looked like they would collapse any moment under the weight of the Pride band,” he said. 

Numerous building projects and upgrades took place during the Smart administration, from building a welcome center to establishing the Brick City arts complex.  

The biggest project undertaken was Glass Hall, home of the College of Business, at $36 million – “And this was going to be at least three times that much,” he said of the science building upgrades. “I never thought we could get it done.” 

Smart recalled a dinner with Blunt at Gilardi’s on April 6, 2021. 

“I’ll never forget that day,” he said. 

Smart requested a half-hour of Blunt’s time to pitch a $20 million project to partially renovate the science building. 

“I knew that wasn’t enough, but I thought we could at least get started,” he said. “I clearly didn’t have a big enough vision or a true appreciation of what Roy Blunt can accomplish.” 

Smart said on April 8, 2021, his chief of staff heard from a member of Blunt’s team, who said the plan was to renovate the science building for $30 million. 

“The project had already grown by 50% in two days,” Smart said. 

Another $30 million was added the following year, then grew to $40 million each year so the project could be done right – numbers that include both the renovation and the expansion now underway, he said. 

“Roy, thank goodness you had a bigger vision than I did,” he said. 

He said at its conclusion, the addition and renovation project will be the largest in the history of the university – $121 million. 

“It’s twice as much money as it cost to build Great Southern Bank Arena, for example, and it’s all because of Sen. Blunt,” he said. 

Blunt took the podium to thank the board of governors for naming the building, which he said blends well with the other campus buildings. 

“It dramatically enhances, in my nonarchitecture view, the brutalist building that was here before – not my favorite thing, in architecture or actually in anything else,” he said. 

He was referring to a modern, utilitarian building type popular in government buildings in the 1950s to 1970s. 

The upgrade reflects advances in what happens inside of the building, according to Blunt, particularly in medical science in the era following the mapping of the human genome in 2023. 

“In the last 25 years, medical science has changed more than all time up until 25 years ago – and my guess is, and I’m also pretty sure I’m right about this, is that in the next 25 years, and maybe in the next 10, health science will change more than all time up to this minute,” Blunt said. 

He said synthetic chemistry transformed the 20th century, and synthetic biology has the potential to transform the 21st. 

“What an exciting time to be in science. I might even wear one of these ‘Science Is Fun’ shirts,” he said, referring to commemorative T-shirts sported during the event by science students and faculty. “Until just a few years ago, the ‘Science Is Fun’ concept never occurred to me, but it will occur to lots of people in this building.” 

Doctoral programs 
After the building dedication, a smaller celebration was held with Kehoe ceremonially signing copies of legislation that authorizes MSU to offer doctoral degrees. That legislation, House Bill 419 and Senate Bill 160, advanced to the governor’s desk in May and was signed in July. 

MSU is working to achieve an R2 designation as a university that prizes research. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education applies that designation when a university awards at least 20 research doctorates annually and has at least $5 million in annual research and development expenditures. 

In a news release from MSU, CNAS Dean Tamera Jahnke said the Roy Blunt Hall project strengthens the university’s ability to recruit students and support faculty research, both of which advance the goal of achieving the R2 classification. 

“Our faculty are already producing outstanding research, and now we have a building that reflects the quality of their work,” she said. 

In an interview today, Williams said the university is close to the R2 designation, having been named a research university, or RU, in March, and he called the higher designation an aspirational goal, but one that makes sense for MSU. 

Expanded doctoral programs are going to help the university reach that goal, he said. 

“We do great research here, and we’re pretty close,” he said. “With Blunt Hall, it doesn’t seem like it’s that far of a reach, but we do need to be intentional about it.”