The Hall of Languages is being renovated and renamed to David. A Talbot Hall of Languages in dedication to the memory of Dr. D. Arlington Talbot, the first African-American faculty and a longtime professor and mentor to students.

“This is something that has been requested for a long time going back a number of years. Some of the motivation behind this is Dr. Keck,” Dr. Hunter Hayes, Department Head, said.

“I met with him in the fall along with the Dean of the College of Humanities, Social Sciences, Dr. Attardo, and we spoke about it and sent a request to Dr. Keck to rename the building. The Dean and I sent the request together, and the president approved it and sent it to the system. It has taken several months.”

In 1968 Dr. Talbot joined the faculty of East Texas State University as the first African-American professor and served as Special Assistant to the President for Affirmative Action, as professor in the Department of Counseling and Guidance, and as Director of the Counseling Center. He also planned, organized, and directed both a Multi-Cultural Teacher Training Institute and an Inter-Cultural Living Experience.

The Board of Regents authorized the naming of the Hall of Languages, and a dedication ceremony, which will include an address by former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, is planned for April 18.

Also, the old building is under renovation on the ground floor of the lobby, and they are repainting and installing new lighting to brighten the environment.

“It’s been slightly dark with that type of light that’s available and lack of natural light that comes through,” Dr. Hayes said.

“We are going to have much brighter LED lighting in there, and brighter colors on the wall instead of different colors of brown everywhere if you look downstairs.”

“That’s going to be the uniform design across the ground floor on the exterior wall. We are going to have to redo one room as reception room, have a conference room type place by redoing the main office to tie it in with everything else by doing some renovations inside of there,” he said.

Another renovation will be that the lounge area will be replaced with a café.

“Because right now for students all on this east end of campus, there’s nothing nearby. The closest would be for a student to go to the library or walk to the student center,” Dr. Hayes said. “There is nothing right here when you looking  at the buildings around us. There is not any student activity. They have nowhere they can go to drink a coffee or water unless they use the vending machine,” he said.