Stephen F. Austin State University College of Forestry and Agriculture

Stephen F. Austin (SFA) State University's Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture (ATCOFA) is a premier institute in natural resource education. The College offers the only doctoral program in forestry in Texas, providing hands-on learning experiences to students on millions of acres of forested land.

Kirksey and SFA worked together to design and implement the modernization and upgrade of the College's existing site to facilitate SFA's long-term vision and goals. The new four-story, 90,000-sf Forestry & Agriculture building is a modern, multi-disciplinary building designed to consolidate operations and expand the university's capacity for education and research in forestry, agriculture, and environmental sciences. Located at the corner of East College Street and Raguet Street, the facility houses instructional spaces, research laboratories, administrative and faculty offices, large assembly spaces, including an auditorium and a student resource multipurpose room.

While much of the building structure is concrete frame to meet the 2-hr building requirement, approximately 20,000-sf of the building is constructed using glue-laminated columns and beams supporting 5-ply CLT floors and roof deck. The second floor auditorium features long span glulam beams highlighting the use of southern yellow pine (SYP) and providing a useful teaching tool within the classroom space of future forestry students. Highlighting the exposed SYP construction will also link the cultural history of the East Texas timber industry to the very students who are from the piney woods region. To further link this story, local pine trees were harvested from nearby landowners by commercial timber fabrication plants and will be used in the assembly of the cross-laminated timber floor panels for the structure.

The new building for the ATCOFA will open in the Spring of 2027 with a wide array of branding and graphics to further bind the efforts of the college in producing the best forestry and agriculture graduates. The primary focus will be to link east Texas timber history and showcase the prominence, importance, and career opportunities that are growing throughout Texas and southeastern United States.