Students approve fee to fund new Student Health and Wellness Center

UNT students voting in a campuswide election on a special  issue Oct. 5-8 gave the university the green light to begin planning for a new Student Health and Wellness Center.

Nearly 64 percent of the 2,277 students who cast ballots in the election voted "yes" to a measure requiring a student medical services fee increase of $19 per semester. The increase, which will allow UNT to build and equip a new state-of-the-art health and wellness center (at an estimated cost of $18 million), will be collected only after the new center opens in Fall 2006.

Bonita Jacobs, vice president for student development, says the positive vote successfully capped the volunteer efforts of the 25-member Student Health Advisory Committee, which formed last spring with the goal of bringing a new health facility to the UNT campus.

UNT's current health center facility was built as a student hospital in 1958.

Administrators will now move the initiative on to the Board of Regents, and if the regents agree, the university will request approval to proceed from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
Among the new services Jacobs says a new health and wellness facility will bring to the UNT campus are:

• medical care using the best and latest technology
• a low-cost pharmacy with a drive-up window
• a campus drugstore
• low-cost medical services
• low-cost dental services on the campus (open to faculty and staff)
• low-cost eye care on the campus (open to faculty and staff)
• more examination rooms offering confidentiality and privacy
• clinical areas on one floor to better facilitate care
• new health and wellness programs
• an environmentally friendly state-of-the-art facility
• expanded services for women
• counseling and substance abuse services
• expanded counseling and testing services

BY RODDY WOLPER rwolper@unt.edu

Other featured articles in this issue

• Homecoming event celebrates UNT desegregation anniversary
• Still time to participate in State Employee Charitable Campaign
• UNT professor of physics to deliver Regents Faculty Lecture Nov. 3
• ABC's 20/20 co-anchor to give free lecture
• General Election Day is less than two weeks away
• Campus events planned for Halloween
• Growth trend continues at UNT Dallas Campus
• Technology competition coming to Denton
• Latest UNT crime statistics available
• November is Native American Month

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