In preparation for presenting plans to the legislature, consultant architects and campus officials discussed a vision for buildings, green space, parking and athletic facilities at a series of meetings on campus Tuesday. University officials specifically noted that the legislature has not given universities money for significant building for the last three sessions.

“We’ve been told directly and indirectly…that universities are getting more significant money (in the 2015 session),” University President Jesse Rogers said in introducing the session. “We’re one of the older campuses in the state. We’ve been building a piece at a time and as a result we need to stop and be sure we don’t make any mistakes and maybe correct some things that we have in the past.”

Architect Christopher Rice and faculty planner Doug Abraham set a timeline for recommending projects to the Board of Regents within two weeks. They determined that building a new health and science building is the university’s first priority in requesting funding from the state.

The planners also determined that the campus doesn’t need additional parking. Instead, parking needs to be moved from the middle of campus to the exterior.

Plans were also proposed to expand the campus green space to beautify the campus and prioritize pedestrian walkways rather than roads.

Toward the end of the 90-minute presentation with the Faculty Senate, the planners discussed athletic facilities operating under the premise that baseball was not feasible due to the drought.

Rogers said city officials probably wouldn’t let MWSU build a baseball field until the area got some rain, stressing that he hopes the donors “will stick with us.” However, planners did present a long-range vision for everything from moving the softball field and practice fields, which they stressed would be artificial turf, to building a football stadium on the south side of Prothro-Yeager.

Rice — who worked with Vice President for Business Affairs and Finance Marilyn Fowlé at three other campuses — and Abraham met with students at 7 p.m. in the Comanche Suite of Clark Student Center. There they presented the same master plan, but emphasized student input.

Keith Lamb, vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, introduced the presentation, emphasizing that the master plan ultimately benefits the students.

“This is your university. It’s not mine,” Lamb said. “I just work here.”

Parking and Greek housing were the biggest concerns of the predominantly Greek audience of nearly 200 students.

“It’s about when they are available, not that there aren’t enough spaces,” one sorority member said, which was met with great applause.

Although any changes made to the campus will affect parking and likely decrease the amount of parking spots, Rice, Abraham and administrators have prioritized the new health science building as the most immediate change the university needs to grow.

“[Administrators] have strong plans to grow, certainly in very specific areas, and health science is one of them. It has a lot of students and a lot of programs that are popular right now, and they’re well over capacity,” Abraham said. “Science and mathematics are the same way, and those are two areas where the state legislature and education in general are heading in the future.”

Lamb said giving more space to the health sciences and other programs running at full capacity will allow them to take in more students, thus raising enrollment — which Lamb said is the only thing that could stop the master plan.

“These are all options, but once those options are decided and they’ve decided where that stuff is going to go, that doesn’t mean it’s all going to happen anyway. If we don’t grow, you’re not going to see much of that happen, quite frankly,” Lamb said. “In order for them to build some of these buildings, housing for example, you have to grow and have the demand there.”

Abraham said all universities must have a master plan to avoid spending money on expensive projects that will just be torn down 10 years later.

“All successful universities have a master plan. You have to plan for the future,” Abraham said. “Everybody does understand that the growth of the university cannot stay flat. It’s one of the few in the state that’s a public university that has stayed flat. Higher education in the state as a whole is growing by leaps and bounds.”

Because the university has received no significant amount of the funding requested over six years from the legislature in the past three sessions, Rice and Abraham changed MWSU’s Tuition Revenue Bond priority from renovating Moffett Library to expanding health sciences.

“We’ve had to jump start this one because of the TRB situation and needing to get that moving, and thankfully Doug was here to, I think, readjust the priorities,” Rice said. “Not because we think they ought to be that, but because that’s what the mirror is reflecting upon [Midwestern State University].”

Abraham said he recognizes that this is a liberal arts college, but the job of a university planner is to help the university grow the way it wants to grow.

“We have no particular agenda of turning this campus into the next A&M or UNT or anything like that,” Abraham said. “But the fact is, more and more students coming out of high school are wanting to go into the sciences and health sciences, and certainly with the way healthcare is going in the future with Obamacare and everything, there’s going to be more of these positions out there. Those are the growth areas.”

Cammie Dean, director of student development and orientation, said an online form for students to provide feedback on the master plan will be added to OrgSync on Wednesday. She said the form will be posted to the SGA page where all students can access it.

“I know there will be focus groups later, but in the meantime I think folks really want a chance to say something,” Dean said. “People are excited and nervous about the things that they saw tonight, and I’d hate to say here it is, now I’ll talk to you next month. It will be great to hear right away what people are thinking.”