The Catawba College Board of Trustees voted unanimously Tuesday to award the contract to a Concord company to construct the college’s new athletic field house.
Snipes Construction Co. was the lowest of seven bidders on the project. Dr. Kenneth Clapp, senior vice president over building and grounds, said construction will begin in about a month. The architectural firm Ramsey Burgin and Smith of Salisbury has designed the facility.
The board also voted unanimously to increase tuition and fees and room and board rates by 4.97 percent for the 2001-2002 academic year.
The overall cost of attending Catawba would rise from $18,310 annually to $19,320. That’s comparable with the costs at other N.C. private colleges and universities, according to college officials.
Part of the increase takes the form of a new student activity fee, recommended to the trustees by a unanimous vote of Catawba’s Student Government Association. Student Government President Todd Bachman said the new fee would provide increased funds for on-campus programming and entertainment for students.
To commemorate Catawba College’s sesquicentennial, the board of trustees held its annual meeting Tuesday in a place President Fred Corriher, Jr. called “the hallowed hall.”
The meeting took place in the Great Hall of Salisbury-Rowan Dormitory, the location of trustee meetings on campus from 1948 to 1971.
A record number of trustees, 42 of the board’s 47 members, attended the meeting held in what Corriher termed “the sanctum sanctorum” of the college. Corriher and several of the trustees attending Tuesday’s meeting had been in the room as Catawba students, representing the Student Government Association at the annual board meetings.
Three board members there Tuesday — Claude Abernethy, Jr., Richard Cheek and Wade H. Shuford Jr. — were trustees when the board was still meeting in the Great Hall.
Along the walls of the room hung portraits of the college’s 18 previous presidents. Corriher, the 19th president of Catawba, remembered his and the board’s predecessors.
“In this room, men saw visions and dreamed dreams,” he said. “In this room, men were inspired to keep the torch burning.
“I suggest that we are challenged to dream once again, to develop a greater vision of what Catawba College might become and also keep the torch burning as we celebrate the 150th year of our founding.”
In other business, the board:
- Voted to add a new member: Salisbury native Greg Alcorn, who had sat on the board as a representative of Catawba’s Board of Visitors. Alcorn becomes the board’s 48th member.
- Unanimously re-elected the board’s Class of 2005, including C. Shuford Abernethy III, Edward A. Brown, Richard A. Cheek, Thomas O. Eller, Ralph W. Ketner, Samuel A. Penninger Jr., Julian H. Robertson Jr., Wade H. Shuford Jr., Ronald L. Smith, Fred J. Stanback and Martha K. West.
- Unanimously approved a resolution of respect honoring longtime trustee Adrian L. Shuford Jr., who died Dec. 30. Shuford served as a trustee from 1944 to 2000 and as chairman from 1951 to 1977.
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